Getting a luxury apartment is the single most Eyes Wide Shut experience one can have

You've finally made it. You worked your ass off in college and at the start of your career, and at long last, you've started making decent money at your job. You don't have to have your car to get broken into once a month anymore! You can't afford a house with a garage, or moving to a crimeless area, but maybe an apartment with a secured garage. Your only options are apartments branded as "luxurious living communities", but you will just sacrifice the money for comfort and to hopefully live around young successful hot people (fat trust fund baristas or H1B tech workers that throw trash into the hallway for some reason) with a vibrant and diverse social community (there is a room with a ping-pong table but it's been locked for 3 years).

You go on whatever website and look at apartments. The rents are high, but every single one offers a significant discount on leases, making the rates immune to rent control, as the apartment can just undiscount as much as they want while still staying under annual rent increase limits. At the same time, you can't see which rooms have which discount, or the actual final rent for anything, which concerns you. Then again, you really need a safe place to park.

You attempt to see the real rate for an apartment through the website, but it requires submitting an ID and paying an application fee first. It doesn't matter, you know you can get good service as a big spender. You ignore the stupid AI chatbot support on the website and just email the management team, and wow, they actually respond quickly! Except it's the same AI chatbot you intentionally ignored on the website, and it responds to 90% of questions with "I don't know the answer to that. Can I sign you up to tour tomorrow?". You call them, and go through a phone tree that reads off 8 possible digits you could press in 3 languages before asking you to explain your request. You say in extremely clear language, "Apartment rents and discounts". Halfway through your sentence, it replies, "You Said: Maintenance Request. Current tenants should use the tenant portal or call the property manager." and it hangs up.

You try again, and by spamming buttons and yelling at robots you are transferred to a line that has a live agent! Unfortunately they closed 20 minutes early because they felt like it. You try again the next day, and you get someone! They tell you that the apartment does have parking for 250$ a month, plus a 20% parking tax,. They can't remember if the rents posted on the website are including the huge discounts or not, but that they will ask and get back to you. They email you, and say that their manager said sometimes they are but sometimes things can cost more or less, and would you be available to tour tomorrow? You really really want your car not to get broken into.

You say fuck it, and go on a tour. On the tour, you tour a nice apartment with good light, and fantasize about being a young person with a nice apartment. Immediately after you get home from the tour, the agent tells you the unit you were considering is no longer available, but an identical one that costs 150$ more per month is. You don't make 3x the rent monthly including that, but amazingly, the landlords are so kind that they are willing to let you pass with 2.5x, only spending 40% of your income on rent. You REALLY need to stop repairing your car windows.

You suck it up and decide to commit. You then pay for the right to send them your salary, credit score, and social security number, in case you turn out to be dishonest in any way.

You move in! Yay! Finally, you will be productive and happy, the only thing holding you back was not having to use an app to open 4 different doors to enter or exit your home. You are certain you will now meditate everyday and do meal prep, and fantasize about working from home using one of the 3 communal offices. This place is the start of the new you, living your new life. What could be more perfect than an apartment gym that has enough to justify not paying for a real gym, but not enough to really be worth using.

You notice your apartment, unlike the one you toured, is directly under a downspout that for some reason curves towards the building. That's okay, how often does it rain anyways these days, and how loud can that really be?

https://reddit.com/link/1g437vy/video/qhaflyxzkvud1/player

Could Yelp reviews be a poor source of information? No... you brush off the thought and feel a wave of hope in you. You fling your windows open as far as you can (6 inches) and take a deep breath, absorbing the sounds of the intersection you live right next to. You decide to make your way down to the tenants office to sign up and pay for your parking spot. Unfortunately, they only built 60 spots for a 300 person building, because they realized they could sneak in some more apartments the size of 5 parking spots and make 10x the revenue per square foot. You join the 50 person waitlist, and the clerk kindly informs you that there is usually street parking available for 5$ an hour.

You park on the street, and your car gets broken into. Not that the garage would've made a difference, most days the main entrance door is stuck open (or closed) and the security guard is asleep in his car or watching tiktoks on his phone. You can't even make yourself feel anger towards him, he exclusively deals with crackheads that view him as a threat or tenants that view him as a servant all day. Then again, how do so many packages get stolen when he sits next to the entrance of locked mail room.

After 12 months of not getting anything repaired, paying extra unmentioned "Trash Valet" fees, "Payment fees", and "Fee fees", and somehow 3x as much as your utility bill was in a 1800s apartment with no insulation, they increase the rent and kick you out. They keep your entire deposit for "Repainting" unnamed walls. After 13 months of being trained to submit to property owners, you let them. Your friend calls you a gentrification sympathizer for living there.

Then, one day, for no apparent reason,

edit: this is like eyes wide shut in that in the movie, a doctor with some generational wealth realizes he is absolutely powerless compared to the elite members of society with huge generational wealth, connections, and influence. arguably the truly wealthy see him as a proletariat, and look down on him for having a job other than “shareholder”. it is a big club and he is not in it. in the richest nation on earth a doctor who’s globally and nationally in the top percent of incomes is nothing.

A truly wealthy person can buy a house or move to a crimeless area, or doesn’t have to worry about the fees, or HIRES someone to find them a place. They end up with actual comfort and convenience. You can’t afford that.