A woman in Louisiana received threatening text messages from a building maintenance man who wanted to enter her apartment "just to see her face."
Bee, age 36, lives in a privately owned building. It's a mansion turned into a four unit apartment where the maintenance man and landlord have the phone numbers of all the tenants.
Bee's neighbor had just moved out, so she wasn't surprised to get a "How are you?" text from the maintenance man who may have needed to enter her apartment to fix something shared between the two units.
The text read:
"Good morning girl."
"How are you?"
Bee replied:
"I'm alright."
"Are you about to tell me you need to come into my apartment?"
The man answered:
"Yes just to see your face."
"I miss you."
Bee gave a short response back:
"Oh lol."
She tweeted the screenshots from the conversation.
Maintenance man at my last apartment:pic.twitter.com/cu28tjSEdl— \u2728Louisiana Bee\u2728 (@\u2728Louisiana Bee\u2728) 1633354443
She told Buzzfeed why she said "lol":
"When I responded 'oh lol,' it was the same as an in real life nervous chuckle."
"I literally did not know how else to respond to that kind of message from a person I was not interested in."
"Even the nicest person can be harmful."
The man asked if he could come in, and Bee replied "No sir."
@ThunderCatHeaux/Twitter
The man said:
"Coz I'm here (sic)."
"I'm coming in."
When Bee threatened to call the police, the man back peddled and pretended like it was all a joke.
"I'm in the next apartment stop tripping."
"Got you."
"Hope everything is fine."
@ThunderCatHeaux/Twitter
@ThunderCatHeaux/Twitter
Bee told Buzzfeed she broke the lease and moved as soon as she was able to do so because she felt unsafe in that apartment.
She also didn't feel like she could give a complaint to the landlords either.
"The owners were a married couple that just owned and renovated a house."
"They didn't care about anything but the rent."
"All of the tenants had several complaints about various things. Nothing was ever handled."
The couple mostly employed family and friends, so making a complaint would be difficult since their relationship to this man would be questionable.
Some people tried to victim blame Bee for whatever reason they could come up with, but many came to her defense.
Some even shared their own stories.
@la_ROCA__/Twitter
It\u2019s crazy because niggas see the evidence AND STILL questioning the validity of this exchange. Smh we gotta do better fellas. Atp I feel like we gotta hold a annual summit to teach men how to identify social cues to understand the right (and wrong) time to shoot their shotpic.twitter.com/JjNtcAtFSR— DonSolo (@DonSolo) 1633377328
@dazy51m/Twitter
@dazy51m/Twitter
The amount of men in the replies asking \u201cwhat made him comfortable to do that?\u201d Should really reevaluate themselves— Paige\ud83c\udf3b (@Paige\ud83c\udf3b) 1633370878
@mchistftbnbws/Twitter
Men in the comments spending more time tryna figure out why he got her number over wtf is actually happening in the conversation. Please. Any maintenance request form asks for contact info.— Shay (@Shay) 1633369072
I remember when i was in middle school our maintenance man broke into our apt and he replaced my moms ceiling fan with one that cast a star like shadow on the ceiling and he left a note about how he wanted her to see the stars (1/2)— britanie thee blogger (@britanie thee blogger) 1633565855
OMG I had a security guy message me at 11pm once that he saw I was home and did I want him to bring over the package for me in the office. This was not the only time he\u2019d been creepy including repeated comments about my long hours working (knew my schedule) 1/2— Bonnie F (@Bonnie F) 1634241548
When I was married my ex & I started wondering why food kept running out so quickly. One day I came home early to find the maintenance man in my kitchen making himself lunch. I immediately went to the office and they did nothing. We moved soon after.— Joyfulndiva (@Joyfulndiva) 1634244250
I hope y\u2019all see how comfortable these men are at using their positioning to threaten Women.— That girl. (@That girl.) 1633368976
Can't believe people are saying this wouldn't happen. I once was home alone, heard a noise, and saw a man trying to open the window from the fire escape. I hid, then suddenly the door unlocked and he walked in. My landlord had given a maintenance company my key and never told me.— Sarah McGonagall (@Sarah McGonagall) 1633397378
Exactly why I bought one of these. Maintenance was letting themselves in too often and coming up with dumb excuses like \u201cI didn\u2019t think anyone lived here\u201d yeah okay..pic.twitter.com/HuIGUXjeKJ— Sha-ny-uh (@Sha-ny-uh) 1633377566
The fact that he had the audacity to joke about entering your apartment is triggering.— Sherrell West Coast (@Sherrell West Coast) 1633366041
Bee shared how she felt seeing so many women share similar stories:
"I was really not surprised to see so many women share very similar stories."
"But even though I wasn't surprised, I was saddened and angered that so many women could relate."
"Some men just feel entitled to women."
It is never okay to wield your power over someone.
It's time men learn that lesson.