Sum Yi Tai, a popular bar in Singapore recently took to Facebook to voice their disgust after stating on how they were bullied by their landlord.
Here is the full story.
Today was very sombre and also sobering. We were scheduled to hand over SYT to the landlord today 18 Nov at 4 pm, free of loose furniture and rubbish. We could have chosen a 10 pm hand over if we were not more considerate about the landlord’s working hours at the expense of ours in F&b. We also could have just fled like some other tenants would have, just up and leave everything behind. But we are not like that. We spent a lot of money and time clearing out the premises: we spent 4 days packing and sweeping; we spent 4 days running a sale of 6 years of stuff; we spent close to 4000 dollars just to dispose of rubbish and furniture. And we really lost weight not eating doing all that
At 9 am today 18 Nov, the day we were meant to hand over SYT, our landlord sent two young female employees to “inspect” our premises. They said there is still so much rubbish left! We said yes, we have trucks coming today, we already told you that previously. They said: 4 pm is the deadline, no extension! And eh stop telling people we kicked you out ah! We did not!
We said, we never said that; we said you insist on pre Covid rent. Is that not true now? Are you deciding to give us a discount? SILENCE WITH BLACK FACE ATTACHED. Noting the black face and attitude, we felt inclined to tell her she’s only an employee and should not conflate her own character into the mean streak of her employer. But this particular girl seemed adamant to take the face of her employer. So be it.
Anyway, we toiled for the next 7 hours and 4 pm rolled round. We were nearly done with 5 or 6 trucks of disposal and everybody starving, when those employees of our landlord showed up again. They took a look at SYT from the outside, not even bothering to do a walk through, and proclaimed that the hand over was not going to happen because there was still stuff around and “look at the state of this place”. Some stuff (like maybe 2% of what we had already cleared) needed to be cleared out yes, and we said give us 30 mins. They said no, hand over is scraped, and our lawyer will call you tomorrow. Wow.
Excuse me? We need a bit of time to do what a lot of tenants would not. So can you please be reasonable? Can you not SEE the disposal guys literally rushing to get things out? We could stop right now too if you would like to keep to 4 pm on the dot? Maybe we are expected to have a magic wand? No matter what we said, they still refused to wait for the hand over. So we said well, we will have to leave the keys behind when we are cleared out then and you come take them by midnight.
They agreed! Which is very confusing, really, when you think about their original position. But they agreed anyway. So we’ve left the keys behind and signed out of 25 Boon Tat Street, hopefully to good riddance.
For interest value, here are photos taken at 4 pm 18 Nov when they came by and said NOT CLEAN! Yes there were boxes around, we admit that, but the boxes were on the way out, and for the most part, this is how the 4 floors looked. How they were not clean, we cannot understand. We feel absolutely bullied and are completely in shock that there are people in this world, like Taiko Properties representing Ricardo Portabello Peralta, with so little empathy.