When the Crazy Comes Keeping Yourself and Your Self-Storage Tenants in Check
Most self-storage operators have had at least one interaction with a tenant who's irrational, inappropriate or even dangerous. Some have even reacted poorly themselves in a heated moments. So how do you keep calm when faced with crazy? Here are some pointers on staying Zen, diffusing the situation and knowing when to call for backup.
By Amy Campbell
Maybe it’s the heat. It could be the stress of moving stuff in or out of a self-storage unit. Perhaps it’s just that more people are in foul moods. One thing is for sure: there have been more than a handful of out-of-control tenants—and one self-storage manager—in recent weeks. Here’s a sampling from recent news items:
A customer at Cordata Self Storage in Bellingham, Wash., was arrested after allegedly pointing a BB gun at another tenant during a dispute over facility-gate entry.
A self-storage tenant is facing a murder charge after shooting and killing a man he believed was stealing from his unit at AAA Stow-A-Way Storage in Paducah, Ky.
Two men got in a fight after one man’s dog kept growling at the other guy’s pooch. The incident escalated when one of the guys stabbed the other!
A manager at A B Mini Storage lost her cool with a customer after the tenant accidentally locked herself inside the property and was unable to exit because she didn’t have a gate card. When the offsite employee arrived at the site 45 minutes later, the customer claims the manager “flipped her the bird.” Once free of the property, the tenant claims the manager sent her a text and called her “dumb.” The manager claims the tenant was aggressive, but admits her text was out of line.
These “what the heck?!” moments appear quite frequently on Self-Storage Talk (SST), the industry’s biggest online community of storage professionals. You can find a number of strange tenant interactions, bizarre requests and behavior, and other peculiar accounts from operators in the “Tales From the Trenches” forum. Thread titles include “I Couldn’t Make This Up If I Tried,” Did That Just Happen” and “I Don’t Know If It’s a Full Moon Here.” So, yeah, crazy comes quite often at self-storage facilities.
The question is, then, how do you handle it? Sometimes it takes more than just simple customer-service skills to handle inappropriate behavior, a criminal act or just someone who’s out of control. A recent article on the ISS website offers operators advice on the do’s and don’ts of handling difficult self-storage customers. First, of course, is to keep your cool. You should also watch your tone and choose your words carefully. As for the don’ts, author Linnea Appleby recommends to never get caught up in the backstory. While you need to hear the customer out, your goal is to find a resolution that is acceptable to all parties. For more guidance on the topic, check out this “Sounds of Storage