Landlord refuses to compensate tenant for repair work done but ends up regretting it

Many of us have had the displeasure of dealing with an unscrupulous landlord at least once. These are the type of individuals who dismiss your concerns, raise rent without justification, withhold security deposits, and more. Recently, an IT business owner took to Reddit to share their frustrating experience with a similarly challenging landlord. The tale unfolds with the storyteller's move into what they deemed a "fairly nice building." While residing there, u/Doctorphate faced minimal issues as a tenant, apart from the owner's consistently sluggish response to minor concerns. However, as time passed, a significant problem began to surface.

They said, "Little while ago, the AC unit that happens to sit above our unit in the ceiling started leaking into the unit." The post goes on to detail how the lease required that the landlord reimburse tenants for such repair work. However, the landlord refused and taunted the tenant to "sue him" if they cared so much.

The tenant considers themself to be fair, with their only fault being that they are slightly petty. They then talked about how as an IT specialist, they had taken steps to minimize power consumption despite it being covered in the lease. They justify it, saying, "1. It's good for the planet. 2. It's reasonable to save the building money by shutting down unneeded servers during off-peak times."

Following the landlord's lack of proper action, they decided that the server rack doesn't require constant spinning up and down, which saves the building approximately $100/month. They get a unique idea while observing the company's server GPUs that were used for password cracking. They said, "So now, I've got a couple of spare servers running some Monero mining at full tilt 24/7, I've got a couple of VMs that spin up overnight to do some Monero mining (not very effective in a VM for generating crypto but very handy for driving up hydro costs) and then our nice password cracking server filled with GPUs is doing some Ethereum mining."

Delighting in the genius of their crypto-mining initiative, the Redditor confessed to not having exact figures for power consumption but estimated it to be approximately $500 a month. Clearly happy with getting back at the unfair practices of the landlord, they described their idea as "delicious." They then talked about how the crypto-currency holds no value for them, so they decide to give back to the community by supporting the local food bank.

Users on the platform sided with the poster and voiced their support in the comments section. u/StinksStanksStonks said, "When the landlord comes to you about the excessive utility bill, tell him to sue you," a clever way to match the landlord's initial reply to their request for maintenance. Another user, u/LibaryMouse4321, excitedly wrote, "WIN WIN WIN!! I hope landlord implodes when he gets his electric bill." u/beginnerjay added, "At some point, you should tell him you can drive down his electricity bill if he'd pay for the labor to do it."