Fire Stop

In January my apartment complex decided to render my stove virtually unusable. In order to appease their insurer they had to install Fire Stops, devices that will explode fire extinguishing material all over the place if a fire starts beneath them. There was already a low clearance between the bottom of my microwave and the top of my stove and the Fire Stops took another few inches away, making it nearly impossible to cook. I believe the following pictures will accurately:

Realizing what complete bullshit it was to be forced to endure this loss of usable space on my stove top I removed the damn things. I figured I could just put them back up whenever they were going to need to check the apartment. When I got home today I found this note on my counter:

Which was annoying enough because they should (and usually do) let us know before they're going to enter our apartments and also meant that I had to reinstall the Fire Stops. I don't pay a cheap rent by Austin standards, in fact I pay a bit more than average all things considered. Given that I had 1 day to find an apartment when I moved here and I wasn't about to suffer living too far from the city now that I was actually going to be living someplace 1000 times more interesting than Annandale Virginia, I really can't complain about what I pay here. I pay less than I would for the same apartment in Virginia or Boston and it turns out that I'm very well located here, so by my standards it's well worth it. Or rather it was well worth it until they put in the Fire Stops.

I was seriously fuming when I got home and I had to reinstall these things, but now that the blinding rage has more or less subsided (at least until I try to cook something) I'll have to try and talk to someone in the apartment office this weekend and see if there's anything that can be done about this. I don't want to move, but I can't see renewing my lease in the fall with these Fire Stops in place. Are the smoke detectors, fire extinguisher, and even that spray can fire extinguisher they gave me not enough? In all the apartments I've had over the years I have never experienced this. It's just crazy.