Tuesday, April 26, 2005
It’s the stupidity…
I have a job. I come to work pretty much every day. My job is NOT THAT BAD. But that’s about all I can say for it right now, “not that bad”, because it’s annoying the shit out of me. I feel the need to unburden what is left of my soul to the great black hole of the internet.
I work in Property Management. I manage condominiums, which is probably the lowest rung of property management. There are other properties you can manage, like rentals (which arguably is potentially worse than condominium management) (which they call “Residential Management” to distance themselves from the stink of slum-lord association), commercial properties, industrial properties and Office properties. Office properties are technically commercial properties, but still, when you’re managing a portfolio of office buildings, you get a little more respect because it’s probably a bit harder than the other stuff. Higher population density with more complex systems (HVAC, elevators, that sort of thing). And within all those categories is inter-mixing, so you can have a commercial condo, which would be a building built with a bunch of units that are owned individually by the owners with some common areas that a condo manager would manage. I even have several such buildings in my condo portfolio.
Anyway, lots of properties. All the properties out there that are not single-family dwellings (houses) need to be managed by someone because if you just leave it to the owners, they’ll all slit each others’ throats and the world would be messy with all that blood. Then I’d have to get a job in hazardous medical waste cleaning or something in order to make money. As it stands now, condominiums being what they are, I manage them as best I can. The main problem with this job is that they are lived-in by people who have no idea what they are living in (being condominiums). When someone buys a condominium, they are most likely buying it because it’s cheaper than a house or they have an aversion to shoveling snow. Other than that, they treat these dwellings JUST like a house and expect to live in them just as though they were living in a house, which is not the case.
See, in a condominium, you have close neighbors. You share walls (in most cases) and common areas. You have rules to abide by, called By-Laws. And all condominiums in Alberta are governed by the Condominium Act. Your By-Laws can’t contravene the Act, but they can support and specify. Basically, the By-Laws that affect the owners are called the “Owner responsibilities” or are headed by a nice sentence that says “An Owner SHALL NOT:” and then it lists what you can’t do. If people would just fucking learn to read, and read these By-Laws, my job would be a lot simpler. But people cannot read, or choose not to read, and are stupid and mean.
For instance, in a condominium, if you want to have a pet, you have to get Board approval first. FIRST, before you go to the pound and pick out the cutest little puppy that will grow into the world’s largest dog with big feet and a severe inability to distinguish between good jumping up and BAD jumping up (like onto Board Members). If you get a puppy without approval, then the Board has to be mean and tell me to be mean and tell you to get rid of it because you live in a fucking condominium, for Christ’s sake, and you can’t reasonably have a dog that big without a yard. And no, the common area out back of your unit is not your yard, it is shared by all the other people who live there, some of whom are afraid of dogs. Yes, even in this day and age, there are still some people who are afraid of dogs, or who just plain don’t like them.
Also, you have to pick up all the dog poop your dog poops IMMEDIATELY after he or she does it, because really, you live in an area where there are other people, and good god, that’s just gross. If you want your dog to shit everywhere and not have to clean it up, then buy a fucking house.
And, this should go without saying, but you can’t have your dog off-leash at the condominium. Even if you’re just taking him to your car, because then he sees the five-year-old across the street with an ice cream cone and barrels over there to knock the kid over and steal the cone, and then I have to deal with the kid’s mom who will be screaming bloody murder. And she will find a Board Member to yell at, and they generally don’t like that. And then I’ll have to tell you to get rid of the dog, and listen to you cry cry cry. And I will be sad, because I like dogs. I just don’t like stupid people.
In a condominium, you can’t play your stereo at volume “10”. You share a wall with someone else, and they probably don’t want to listen to Top Gun at midnight every night because you can’t get a date. If you do crank it up, and you get a mean letter from me telling you to turn it down, turn it the hell down or I’ll have to send you a fine, and then you won’t want to pay it because you’re already late on your stupid CRX payments because you bought a giant stereo for that, too, and you know the damn thing will get repossessed. If you want to crank up your stereo, move to a fucking house and soundproof your basement.
In a condominium, you can’t park wherever you want, either. If you’re in an apartment, you get your assigned or titled stall, and that is the only place you can park. Even if you get two roommates who each have a car or two. And they can’t park in Visitor parking either. If they’re staying there more than two nights a week, they’re not “visitors” any more, they pretty much live there. Buy or rent another parking stall, or better yet, buy a fucking trailer in the trailer park. Park on the front lawn like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys and fight with the trailer park supervisor. Yes, you. All of you. If you live at a townhouse complex, you probably have a garage (you’ll have to clean all your junk out of it so you can fit in your car) or at least a driveway, and that’s all you get. Your visitors have to either park in Visitor Parking or out on the street. I’m fairly sure that walking the 50 feet to your front door will NOT kill them. And if you park on the roadway that is clearly marked “FIRE LANE”, I will have to get your car towed, and then I will have to listen to you yell at me for 45 minutes because you were then late to your brother’s dentist appointment or something. And no, since the sign clearly said “violators will be towed”, we will not pay for your impound or towing fee.
In a condominium, if you break stuff that isn’t yours, and we know you did it, we’ll make you pay for it. Even if you are the builder or the builder’s contractor. For instance, I have a property in a rural village that is currently being developed by a jackass. Seriously, a big jackass. He wanted us to move the perimeter fence, which we did not want to move because it would be expensive. We talked about it, and agreed that if he wanted to move it, he would have to move it at his cost and adhere to the Village’s land-use by-laws, which state that at a stop sign, the fence has to be moved in 7.5M at each corner at the stop sign. Fine. However, this guy just plowed down the fence, and now I have to get it put back up (if I can find a fencing crew that will withstand the death threats this guy utters), the Condo will pay for it and charge all the costs back to the units the builder owns. And the builder also hired a lawyer who tells me he doesn’t think his client will have to pay for it, when his client essentially destroyed the real property of this Condo Corporation. I can’t make it any clearer than that, folks – you break it, you pay for it.
If you want to do something to the outside of your condo, like add in a flower garden, or put up wooden shutters on your windows, or put in garden gnomes, even if you think it will look really really nice and cute or kitschy, you have to ask for permission from the Condo Board first. If you do things without asking, we will have to make you change it back or take them away. If you do not comply, we can do it and then make you pay for it. All you need to do is write us a nice letter saying what you want to do, and then five or seven other people who live there and represent EVERYONE at the property (some of whom do not like garden gnomes) will decide if you can do it. Usually, we are alright with your flower gardens. And if the policy is “no satellite dishes”, then it’s NO SATELLITE DISHES. If you sneak up at midnight and put one on, I will just have to have it taken down and make you pay for it. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes. I sympathize, I really do. If you want the unhindered ability to garden and put up stuff on your dwelling, again, and I cannot stress this enough, buy a fucking house.
In a condominium, you have to pay “extra” for Condo Fees. Technically, we call them “Condominium Contributions”, and you contribute to the management of your condominium. You pay for your insurance in those fees in case someone sets fire to your building and it burns down to the ground. You pay for the landscaping so someone will come with a lawnmower to cut the grass and weed your yard once a week. You pay for the snow removal so someone will come and shovel your sidewalks (and no, they will not come on demand, they have a schedule and if you want to go to work early, you’ll have to walk on the snow to get to your car). You pay for all the paper that I have to send out to you because you don’t read the By-Laws. You pay for the guys who come and fix your roof when it’s leaking at 1a. You pay for all the other stuff that has to get fixed around the place over the next 25 years. And you pay for me, so I am here to listen to you call and cry about how someone else’s dog pooped on your lawn, and it could not have been your precious rottweiler who has been seen out off-leash only three times this month so far, so why should you be fined? If you do not pay your fees, I will place a caveat against your unit, and you will owe even more money since a lawyer has to do this, and they are way more expensive than I am. If you do not pay your fees, I will repossess your place. I will foreclose on your mortgage for the sake of $1,000. I am not kidding. It’s too bad that you spent all your money on a trip to Cancun for your little sister’s graduation, and then lost your job because you took too much time off. If you want to do stuff like that, rent an apartment or move back in with your parents.
Anyway, the sheer volume and intensity of the stupidity I have to deal with is clearly getting to me. Really, this job should be a LOT easier. Move in to a condo, read the by-laws, abide by them, and we’ll get along just fine. Then I can write letters to the Board Members, talk on the phone with contractors, drive around and look at my nice properties. That should be about it. There should be no stupidity.
I do not understand why people do not do the right thing. Register your vehicle. Pick up your dog shit. Keep your cats inside. Don’t park in the fire lanes. Keep the volume on your stereo down. Pay your condo fees. PLEASE. Living in a condominium is like living with your parents. There are lots of rules. And if you want to live there, you really have to abide by the rules, or you’ll be punished. It sucks. Condominiums are not for everyone.
That’s the bad part of my job. Dealing with the stupidity. The good part about my job is that the hours are flexible and I really am only accountable to my Boards, and sort of my boss, Dave, who is a pretty good boss as far as they go. He’s a little tight with the days off, but he’s pretty good about me not being here much in the afternoons since I still have to accomplish the same volume of work during less time in the office. I do get to drive around and look at my condos (when I have time, now that I have more of the stupid people to deal with). I enjoy resolving problems. I like approving the pets and talking to the people who were smart enough to ask permission. I like getting repair projects done. I don’t even mind meeting with the Boards in the evenings.
It’s the stupidity I mind.
I work in Property Management. I manage condominiums, which is probably the lowest rung of property management. There are other properties you can manage, like rentals (which arguably is potentially worse than condominium management) (which they call “Residential Management” to distance themselves from the stink of slum-lord association), commercial properties, industrial properties and Office properties. Office properties are technically commercial properties, but still, when you’re managing a portfolio of office buildings, you get a little more respect because it’s probably a bit harder than the other stuff. Higher population density with more complex systems (HVAC, elevators, that sort of thing). And within all those categories is inter-mixing, so you can have a commercial condo, which would be a building built with a bunch of units that are owned individually by the owners with some common areas that a condo manager would manage. I even have several such buildings in my condo portfolio.
Anyway, lots of properties. All the properties out there that are not single-family dwellings (houses) need to be managed by someone because if you just leave it to the owners, they’ll all slit each others’ throats and the world would be messy with all that blood. Then I’d have to get a job in hazardous medical waste cleaning or something in order to make money. As it stands now, condominiums being what they are, I manage them as best I can. The main problem with this job is that they are lived-in by people who have no idea what they are living in (being condominiums). When someone buys a condominium, they are most likely buying it because it’s cheaper than a house or they have an aversion to shoveling snow. Other than that, they treat these dwellings JUST like a house and expect to live in them just as though they were living in a house, which is not the case.
See, in a condominium, you have close neighbors. You share walls (in most cases) and common areas. You have rules to abide by, called By-Laws. And all condominiums in Alberta are governed by the Condominium Act. Your By-Laws can’t contravene the Act, but they can support and specify. Basically, the By-Laws that affect the owners are called the “Owner responsibilities” or are headed by a nice sentence that says “An Owner SHALL NOT:” and then it lists what you can’t do. If people would just fucking learn to read, and read these By-Laws, my job would be a lot simpler. But people cannot read, or choose not to read, and are stupid and mean.
For instance, in a condominium, if you want to have a pet, you have to get Board approval first. FIRST, before you go to the pound and pick out the cutest little puppy that will grow into the world’s largest dog with big feet and a severe inability to distinguish between good jumping up and BAD jumping up (like onto Board Members). If you get a puppy without approval, then the Board has to be mean and tell me to be mean and tell you to get rid of it because you live in a fucking condominium, for Christ’s sake, and you can’t reasonably have a dog that big without a yard. And no, the common area out back of your unit is not your yard, it is shared by all the other people who live there, some of whom are afraid of dogs. Yes, even in this day and age, there are still some people who are afraid of dogs, or who just plain don’t like them.
Also, you have to pick up all the dog poop your dog poops IMMEDIATELY after he or she does it, because really, you live in an area where there are other people, and good god, that’s just gross. If you want your dog to shit everywhere and not have to clean it up, then buy a fucking house.
And, this should go without saying, but you can’t have your dog off-leash at the condominium. Even if you’re just taking him to your car, because then he sees the five-year-old across the street with an ice cream cone and barrels over there to knock the kid over and steal the cone, and then I have to deal with the kid’s mom who will be screaming bloody murder. And she will find a Board Member to yell at, and they generally don’t like that. And then I’ll have to tell you to get rid of the dog, and listen to you cry cry cry. And I will be sad, because I like dogs. I just don’t like stupid people.
In a condominium, you can’t play your stereo at volume “10”. You share a wall with someone else, and they probably don’t want to listen to Top Gun at midnight every night because you can’t get a date. If you do crank it up, and you get a mean letter from me telling you to turn it down, turn it the hell down or I’ll have to send you a fine, and then you won’t want to pay it because you’re already late on your stupid CRX payments because you bought a giant stereo for that, too, and you know the damn thing will get repossessed. If you want to crank up your stereo, move to a fucking house and soundproof your basement.
In a condominium, you can’t park wherever you want, either. If you’re in an apartment, you get your assigned or titled stall, and that is the only place you can park. Even if you get two roommates who each have a car or two. And they can’t park in Visitor parking either. If they’re staying there more than two nights a week, they’re not “visitors” any more, they pretty much live there. Buy or rent another parking stall, or better yet, buy a fucking trailer in the trailer park. Park on the front lawn like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys and fight with the trailer park supervisor. Yes, you. All of you. If you live at a townhouse complex, you probably have a garage (you’ll have to clean all your junk out of it so you can fit in your car) or at least a driveway, and that’s all you get. Your visitors have to either park in Visitor Parking or out on the street. I’m fairly sure that walking the 50 feet to your front door will NOT kill them. And if you park on the roadway that is clearly marked “FIRE LANE”, I will have to get your car towed, and then I will have to listen to you yell at me for 45 minutes because you were then late to your brother’s dentist appointment or something. And no, since the sign clearly said “violators will be towed”, we will not pay for your impound or towing fee.
In a condominium, if you break stuff that isn’t yours, and we know you did it, we’ll make you pay for it. Even if you are the builder or the builder’s contractor. For instance, I have a property in a rural village that is currently being developed by a jackass. Seriously, a big jackass. He wanted us to move the perimeter fence, which we did not want to move because it would be expensive. We talked about it, and agreed that if he wanted to move it, he would have to move it at his cost and adhere to the Village’s land-use by-laws, which state that at a stop sign, the fence has to be moved in 7.5M at each corner at the stop sign. Fine. However, this guy just plowed down the fence, and now I have to get it put back up (if I can find a fencing crew that will withstand the death threats this guy utters), the Condo will pay for it and charge all the costs back to the units the builder owns. And the builder also hired a lawyer who tells me he doesn’t think his client will have to pay for it, when his client essentially destroyed the real property of this Condo Corporation. I can’t make it any clearer than that, folks – you break it, you pay for it.
If you want to do something to the outside of your condo, like add in a flower garden, or put up wooden shutters on your windows, or put in garden gnomes, even if you think it will look really really nice and cute or kitschy, you have to ask for permission from the Condo Board first. If you do things without asking, we will have to make you change it back or take them away. If you do not comply, we can do it and then make you pay for it. All you need to do is write us a nice letter saying what you want to do, and then five or seven other people who live there and represent EVERYONE at the property (some of whom do not like garden gnomes) will decide if you can do it. Usually, we are alright with your flower gardens. And if the policy is “no satellite dishes”, then it’s NO SATELLITE DISHES. If you sneak up at midnight and put one on, I will just have to have it taken down and make you pay for it. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes. I sympathize, I really do. If you want the unhindered ability to garden and put up stuff on your dwelling, again, and I cannot stress this enough, buy a fucking house.
In a condominium, you have to pay “extra” for Condo Fees. Technically, we call them “Condominium Contributions”, and you contribute to the management of your condominium. You pay for your insurance in those fees in case someone sets fire to your building and it burns down to the ground. You pay for the landscaping so someone will come with a lawnmower to cut the grass and weed your yard once a week. You pay for the snow removal so someone will come and shovel your sidewalks (and no, they will not come on demand, they have a schedule and if you want to go to work early, you’ll have to walk on the snow to get to your car). You pay for all the paper that I have to send out to you because you don’t read the By-Laws. You pay for the guys who come and fix your roof when it’s leaking at 1a. You pay for all the other stuff that has to get fixed around the place over the next 25 years. And you pay for me, so I am here to listen to you call and cry about how someone else’s dog pooped on your lawn, and it could not have been your precious rottweiler who has been seen out off-leash only three times this month so far, so why should you be fined? If you do not pay your fees, I will place a caveat against your unit, and you will owe even more money since a lawyer has to do this, and they are way more expensive than I am. If you do not pay your fees, I will repossess your place. I will foreclose on your mortgage for the sake of $1,000. I am not kidding. It’s too bad that you spent all your money on a trip to Cancun for your little sister’s graduation, and then lost your job because you took too much time off. If you want to do stuff like that, rent an apartment or move back in with your parents.
Anyway, the sheer volume and intensity of the stupidity I have to deal with is clearly getting to me. Really, this job should be a LOT easier. Move in to a condo, read the by-laws, abide by them, and we’ll get along just fine. Then I can write letters to the Board Members, talk on the phone with contractors, drive around and look at my nice properties. That should be about it. There should be no stupidity.
I do not understand why people do not do the right thing. Register your vehicle. Pick up your dog shit. Keep your cats inside. Don’t park in the fire lanes. Keep the volume on your stereo down. Pay your condo fees. PLEASE. Living in a condominium is like living with your parents. There are lots of rules. And if you want to live there, you really have to abide by the rules, or you’ll be punished. It sucks. Condominiums are not for everyone.
That’s the bad part of my job. Dealing with the stupidity. The good part about my job is that the hours are flexible and I really am only accountable to my Boards, and sort of my boss, Dave, who is a pretty good boss as far as they go. He’s a little tight with the days off, but he’s pretty good about me not being here much in the afternoons since I still have to accomplish the same volume of work during less time in the office. I do get to drive around and look at my condos (when I have time, now that I have more of the stupid people to deal with). I enjoy resolving problems. I like approving the pets and talking to the people who were smart enough to ask permission. I like getting repair projects done. I don’t even mind meeting with the Boards in the evenings.
It’s the stupidity I mind.
