You Just Can't Fix Stupid-part 1

Most of my job entails solving problems. People call me with a roof leak, and I send a roofer out to fix it. Someone has a problem with a neighbor, I send a letter to the neighbor to remind them of the rules. Landscaping request, I handle it. You get the idea. Unfortunately, sometimes I get those calls that I just have to shake my head and say "I'm sorry, I can't fix stupid." Of course, I don't actually say that, but sometimes I would like to. Here are the most recent stupid moments.

We recently sealcoated the driveways at one of the properties where I work. The sealcoaters always put up stakes and tie rope across the entrance to the driveway to let everyone know to stay off the driveway until the barricade is removed. One homeowner, apparently thought this only applied to cars. This homeowner allowed his child (about 4 years old) to repeatedly drive down the sidewalk from their door, across the driveway, make a loop or two, and then ride back down the sidewalk to the front door again. Needless to say, most homeowners would have stopped the child after the first set of tracks across the sidewalk. Not this homeowner. There are at least 6 sets of tracks across the drive and sidewalk. They are being charged for the cleanup.

Another property I work on is called a mid rise. This is a 6 story building with an elevator. Not a high rise, but not a walk up. This building has a trash chute for homeowners to dispose of their trash without having to go to the basement and track their garbage through the hallway and elevator. One bright homeowner decided to put out his cigarette and empty his trash. As he (I say he because I can't imagine a woman doing this, but we were unable to identify this genius.) was emptying the trash, he picked up the ashtray and emptied that into the trash bag. Yes, the one with the just extinguished ashes. The bag went down the chute and smoldered for a while, sat in the garbage bin in the basement, and then finally caught the trash room on fire. This set off the sprinklers for that room, shut down the trash chute and called the fire department. It happened on a weekend and I refused to pay overtime for anyone I didn't have to. We had to pay to get the sprinklers back up and running and to have the fire system re-set, (total about $1000) but I didn't have to have the trash chute repaired and opened, so I called the company on Monday and told them to get to it when they could. There was no way to identify the culprit in this situation, so all the tenants of the building got to deal with no trash chute for three days.

Finally, the last I can't fix stupid is definitely one that takes the cake (until the next time). We had a sewer backup in one of the homes. I called the plumber and had the issue corrected right away, but there was still the backup "stuff" in the utility room. The homeowner is hard of hearing, so I scheduled a cleanup while she was in my office. I asked the company if they could come out that afternoon which they were able to do, but the homeowner said no, that wouldn't work, so we set it up for the following afternoon. (I have had this happen to me, and I can't imagine living with that stench for an entire day, but that's what she wanted) So, the contractor called me just shortly after arriving to the home. Instead of using her front door, the elderly woman had gone from her garage, through the utility room, into the rest of the house several times before the cleanup. She was wearing fuzzy slippers and tracked all the "gunk" throughout the rest of the house. Now, this stuff was all over the carpet in each of the rooms and she had decided to lay down on the couch with her fuzzy slippers, so the stuff was now all over the couch, too. She was demanding the contractor clean it all because it all. The contractor asked me what he was supposed to clean. I told him to clean the original backup and let her deal with the rest. The homeowners' association would pay to clean the backup mess. Perhaps the woman's individual homeowner's insurance will pay for stupid, but the association will not. BTW, the couch was out on the curb that following trash day. I don't' know if she got a new couch from her insurance, but it was apparently not cleanable.

I Have a New Product Invention

This economy has people crabby. I just started doing spring walk throughs and as usual, I had to send out quite a few letters telling people that they need to clean up after their dog does it's business. This usually gets a few phone calls from people who don't have dogs, but other people are letting their dogs make deposits in their yard. I always get at least one person demanding to know how I know it was thier dog.

This time, though, I had a lady who was just crabby. She didn't leave her name, or even her address, so I don't know how she expected me to do anything, but I thought her approach was interesting. She told me that "unless the dog leaves a nametag on it, how do I know whose it was?" I just found that amusing. Almost as amusing as the idea was her outrage evident on the voice mail.

I shared this information with a co-worker and we decided that nametags would be a good idea. So I came up with a new product idea. Everyone who lives in a condominium association and has a pet must feed their animal a bacon or pork flavored glow in the dark treat daily. These treats would be designed specially for each address so that we would know where the "deposits" came from. Why glow in the dark? Why not. As long as we are being riddiculous, why not make them glow in the dark so when you are walking at night, you can see the "landmines" and avoid them.

Of course, then I started thinking about all the potential problems. What if we had a chihuahua who lived at 143234 W. Minneapolis Blvd? The poor thing would have digestive issues if it weren't a flexible treat. And then what about a great dane with an addres of 2 Jo st. it would get lost!

OK. Can you tell I had trouble sleeping last night? Sometimes I just wish people could listen to themselves and they would realize that they sound as riddiculous as this entire entry.

What ARE Some People Thinking?

Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking when they do things. They get mad at a neighbor and decide to pick on every little thing they do, then they are surprised when they are reported for breaking the rules. what everyone seems to forget is that they have to live next to these people. Didn't they think about that before they started acting like children?


On the other hand, some people do things that make me shake my head in amazement.

I have a homeowner who in her first conversation with me explained that several years ago, when she lived accross the street, she went to a party and met another homeowner. They were both drunk and had a one night stand. OK, people do stupid things, but telling me over the phone on our first conversation seems a bit odd.

So anyway, the first chance she gets, she sells the unit she is in and moves directly below the man with whom she had the fling. Now she wonders why he wants nothing to do with her?

She tries to be nice and according to other homeowners it comes accross as stalking type behavior, which it probably is. So now, she has a problem with a leak from this guy's unit into hers and she's upset because he won't talk to her. Really? Did she think he was going to be her best friend? We had to intervene and get things moving. The homeowner upstairs was more than happy to do whatever it took to get her to shut up and leave him alone. She, on the other hand, was prolonging everything. She wanted attention right away, but when we scheduled someone to come out to look at it, she cancelled. The guys didn't get the message, so they knocked on her door, she was there, but refused to let them in. Then she calls me upset because she wants something done NOW! And she really wonders why this guy ignores her?

So, lesson here-next time you think your life is messed up, think about this situation. It can ALWAYS be worse.

My Homeowners are Dumber Than Your Homeowners

That's the game my boss was playing today via e-mail with a colleague who also owns a property management business. My boss won this round. Yes, it was one of my homeowners.

I got a call last week from a homeowner who wanted to make a couple of landscaping requests. One was for some new landscaping in the beds in the front of her 4 unit condo and one for some sod on a dead patch in the rear of the building.

I told her what I tell all homeowners this time of year. "We will put you on the list and when we do the landscape inspection in about a month, we will check it out. Depending on how much work needs to be done throughout the property and how much money is available, we will get to as much of it as we can."

So, I suggested she send me an e-mail with a description of what she would like to see done with the front of the building so we would have an idea of the scope of the project. She offered to send pictures. I told her that was even better. So, today, I got the pictures and a reminder about her requests. Without looking at the pictures, I responded back that I would place it in the file for review at the walk through. I got a few minutes later in the day and decided to look at the pictures. This is where the boss got involved. I sent them to her for an opinion. She came running out of the office doubled over laughing.

"Is this picture right outside her unit?" She asked me. I had to look it up because I was pretty sure it wouldn't be. But yep it was. She sent us a picture of a large area of dead grass and a bunch of piles of "landmines" from her dog. And she didn't understand why the grass wouldn't grow there.

For those of you who don't do property management, when we identify that someone has damaged common area, we charge them for all the costs to repair it. This in many cases is a damaged garage door or carpet stains, but probably most often it is dog damage on the lawn. So, this woman was kind enough to report herself for damaging the lawn and I get to send her a bill for the damages. It will probably be around a $100 bill because it is a rather large spot. If she doesn't keep the sod watered, or she continues to let her dog use that area to relieve itself, she will still not have good turf and may be charged to have it done again. Also in the picture was a dog leash tied to a post which is also a violation, so now she has reported herself on two different violations. Gotta love cooperative homeowners! I bet I won't be hearing from her again any time soon, even if she does have an association responsibility request.

Cabin Fever Sets In!

It's been a wild winter already. We have exceeded our number of snowfall plows and everyone is paying for each snowfall that happens until the end of the season. It has been -18 degrees one day and +25 degrees the next. Everyone is tired of the winter and they are all crabby.

My week last week was supposed to be nice and quiet and allow me to get caught up on all the little organizational things that need to be done. Not only did I not get that done, I was struggling to keep up with all the every day things. You know it's going to be a bad day when you come in and you have 14 voice mail messages waiting for you. In this business, a voice mail generates a phone call back, a work order to create, or three other calls to track something down. Therefore, 14 voice mails is most of my morning. That was every day last week, give or take a voice mail or two. In comparison, the week before was 2 or three voice mails a day when I came in.

Most of the problems are stemming from the weather. They have an ice dam, they have no ice melt, there was a water pipe burst in a neighbor's unit, or they don't like the job the snow plows are doing. All very reasonable issues, it's just a lot when it happens all at once.

Of course, we have a lot of foreclosures in the different associations, so I sent out two different contractors and several board members to check on them to see if they are occupied or otherwise taken care of. If not, they had to be broken into and winterized. I'm sure this saved us some headaches in the long run. In the here and now, we still had a bunch of other pipes freeze. People living in their units but they had poorly insulated pipes and things froze. On top of this, the mechanical room of one of our mid rise buildings is not heated, and therefore a booster pump froze and broke leaving 35 units without water for a day.

So, everyone in the office is going crazy just trying to stay afloat. This can be good, because no one has time to pick on anyone else, but it can also be bad, because by the end of the week, we were all grumpy.

Now, if we are crabby, you know the homeowners are going to be, too. No one has any patience any more. They all want something and they all want it now. On top of that, they have nothing better to do since they are trapped inside, so they start finding things to pick on with their neighbors. Suddenly, homeowners are fed up with the same noises their neighbors have been making for months. They call to complain about something to do with landscaping because they just thought about it and want it on record. Then, in the course of our jobs, we have all sent out "nasty grams" to people reminding them of some paperwork they have forgotten to submit or to tell them they are in violation of a rule. This, as a general rule, generates phone calls from a few people. In the midst of cabin fever, it generates more, and they are all crabby. Additionally, the brains of some of our board members have frozen along with the snow, and they are asking some of the most ridiculous questions.

When you take a step back and realize that it is just cabin fever, it is somewhat comical. When I am in the middle of it, it just makes me want to pull my hair out.

OK, that's enough about life in property management. There's nothing amusing about this one, just rambling about this crazy business we are in.

The Snowplows Are Keeping Me Up!

Snow removal companies have guidelines for when they start plowing to make the event as quick and painless as possible. They will usually wait until the snow stops unless it will be a big snowfall, then they will plow the areas twice. Once half way through, and once after the snow has stopped. This, inevitably, results in plowing during the early morning hours so everyone can get out to go to work in the morning.

One morning, I was listening to my voice mail when I first got in at 8:30am. There was a message from a distraught homeowner that went something like this: "It's 12:30 in the morning and the snowplows are keeping me awake. I have a test in the morning and I have to get some sleep. I am going to call the Village because I have a right to 'peaceful enjoyment' of my home and this is a disruption!"

The next voicemail I got was from the same homeowner. "It's now 2:30 in the morning and they are still out there. I need to get my sleep and obviously, calling the management company does NO good!"

I contacted the snow plow operations director and apologized if his guys got the police called on him. He said they didn't. I went about my day and about 4pm, I sent the homeowner an e-mail asking "How did you do on your test?" I got a response the next morning thanking me and telling me the results, but no comment about the snow plows. Being winter in Chicago, it began to snow again that day, but the snowfall lasted a bit longer, so the plows didn't go out until about 4am.

The next morning, I got this voice mail from the same homeowner: "I just wanted to thank you for whatever magic you did. The snow plows came much later this time and they are soooooo much quieter!"

Top Ten Amusing Things Homeowners Say

I frequently get calls from homeowners that just make me want to laugh. This is a compilation of some comments. Management comments are in Italics.

1. I called for service on the master antenna a week ago, why isn't it fixed yet? Ma'am, it is January and there has been ice on the roof for a month.
2. Can you make my neighbors stop opening and closing their garage door?
3. Why isn't the outdoor pool open? I'm sorry Ma'am. It's storming outside right now.
4. Make the landscapers stop using their noisy equipment. I work third shift and I'm trying to sleep.
5. I have moved my car from the driveway. You can come back and plow the snow now. (three days after the last snowfall)
6. When are they going to plow my driveway? I have a meeting at 4pm. It's 9am now and the plows are out there, so I'm sure you will be able to make your meeting.
7. Call the roofer, there's water coming in through my ceiling. What floor do you live on? I live on the first floor of a three story building.
8. Send someone to break off the icicles that have formed on the gutters.
9. I saw a really big Rat! (outside my suburban home) Sir, I can call the animal control company, but the first thing they will ask me is "are you sure it's not an opossum? (dead silence. This has happened more than once and we always agree that they will wait until they see it again and if it really is a rat, they will call me back. They never do.)
10. The gutters you just installed on my building are preventing my flowers from getting water. Can you punch holes in them so they water the flowers? There is no response to this.