Best plumbers' shoes ever

I've been renting places to live in for a long time now. The benefit of renting, as any renter will tell you, is that when something in the place of residence breaks, leaks or just behaves improperly, all you have to do is call the property manager. From there, a magical maintenance person shows up in a timely manner (ideally) and fixes the problem.
In my house here, we all of a sudden have a toilet with running water, a tweaked out toilet seat, a slow-flowing tub drain, and a seemingly ever-increasing number of bugs invading the building. So, as a renter, I did what I'm supposed to do: I faxed a maintenance request with the problems to the property manager.
The response? An e-mail stating that the maintenance technician costs the owner more than $65 an hour, and he'd send him out for the slow drain, but could I please try to fix the toilet issues myself? (I paraphrase the text, but that was exactly what it told me.) It went on to helpfully suggest maybe unscrewing and re-screwing the toilet seat to fix it, and then to maybe shorten or mess with the chain in the tank to make the toilet water stop running. Mmm. Um ... okay. So, I'm on my own? Whatev. I can do anything, bitches!
The seat was an easy fix. In fact, it did just need unscrewing and then a careful, slow and precise re-screwing to ensure that the seat would sit straight on the tank. (With a toddler practicing on that seat daily, it simply had to sit properly. The last thing Syd needs is an unstable perching place.) Time: 10 minutes. Effort: Medium.
The running toilet water though, was more involved. I had to dig into the tank itself, get my hands all wet, and investigate the issue. The bulb rod needed to be tightened (easy peasy), but the main issue was the warped and unsealing flapper at the bottom of the tank. The fix: I wandered over to Home Depot, bought the new flapper, and this afternoon, replaced it, thereby making the toilet better and no longer running. All. By. Myself. Time (including drive and Home Depot): 45 minutes. Effort: High, but not major.
So I sent an e-mail back to the property manager tonight telling him that yes, I did fix the toilet issues myself, and that I told Brian they should pay ME for my new-found plumbing abilities. I asked that yes, he do send the maintenance man to take care of the drain. And I said that fine, the bugs would be our responsibility (an entirely different bitching point for another day).
So that's done. And right now, I care so little about their opinion on my having a gate installed along the side yard without their prior approval.