Barring Common Sense

All ground floor apartments in Manhattan have bars over the windows. Some of the bars are built into the window frame on the inside of the apartment, like this:

Others are built into the facade of the building, like the two apartments in this photo:

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I happen to live in a ground floor apartment with outdoor bars, which always makes me wonder what would happen if there was a fire in my building and I couldn't use my door to get out, but that's another story. Today's story is not about a potential fiery death in an inferno, but about stupidity.

Back in January, a leak developed in my building that required the super to rip up my bathroom to fix the plumbing. The damage was poorly repaired, prompting Husband and I to consider a bigger bathroom renovation project. We decided to replace the wall tile and the floor tile, as well as put in a new toilet and sink and spruce up the shower. As long as we were ripping open the wall again, we thought we'd see if we could install a washer and dryer in the hallway closet which has plumbing hook ups in the wall between the closet and bathroom.

We hired a contractor, who drew up a scope of work and submitted the plans for approval to the building management, which first ran it by an architect, who made some suggestions that we agreed to, and then submitted the architect's suggestions to the Board. The Board approved the plans on Monday (yay!), with the following condition: we remove the trash through our window.

Yes, the windows which have bars soldered into the facade. Yes, it is literally 16 steps from my apartment door to the front door of the building. No, it makes no sense that there is less potential to damage the building by ripping cast iron bars out of the facade than walking 16 small steps from my apartment outside.

Excuse me while I curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth while I await my appeal of this insanity.