Eat What You Want Day

Never heard of this day before, but sounds like a good idea to me so, I’m in.

I’ll be indulging in Chicken Pad Kee Mau (pan fried wide noodles with chili, sweet basil leaves, broccoli and bean sprouts) from Thai Place. One order gets me though lunch, dinner, lunch the next day, so I won’t have to cook again until Friday.

After learning Friday’s Potluck is Brunch, if the coast looks clear insofar as termites, it's decided I will be attending with my contribution of bacon wrapped tater tots.

There have been no termites last few days … that’s a good thing. Not trusting it, however, I remain on termite watch – never leaving the unit for long periods of time, constantly checking the patio and bedroom to make sure they’re not swarming.

Had I known I was going to be on termite watch this long, I’d have invested in a Wi-Fi video camera and downloaded the app that lets you see your home on your phone. They're on-sale right now, so I may do so anyway.

After Nurse Ratched three times advised of appointments with termite control, and no one showing up, I get an email stating she’s set up an appointment for tomorrow to “inspect and create a plan of attack”.

I’ll believe termite control actually showing up when I see them, and the appointment “to inspect” sounds like more stalling and futzing around.

Tomorrow, Thursday, will be Day 59 of this nonsense. Are we ever going to get around to actually doing something, other than trade emails, talk about it, inspect it?

Up until now, I personally have had no direct contact with Nurse Ratched. I saw early on what she was about when she came to the complex all gangbusters – pompous, arrogant, rude, unfriendly, pushing residents and staff around, causing what was once a waiting list of seniors clamoring to get in to become vacancies up the wazoo. Consequently, I made a point not to give her an opportunity to treat me with as much disdain as she treated others. If I had a maintenance request, I’d go through one of the other girls in the office and our excellent long-time maintenance man got it done.

Nurse Ratched just didn’t exist in my world.

When she and I passed each other in the office pathways and on the property, she’d look down her nose at me. I’d pretend she wasn’t there.

In fact, other than that one time, in November of 2015, when she was being fake in front of her kleptomaniac boss from Corporate, she’d never even spoken to me in the four years she’d been managing the property.

Another good thing

Now that there’s just Nurse Ratched and the latest Assistant Manager, there’s no way around direct contact; plus, she’s set up a system which gives her complete control, requires everything filter through her.

So, this adventure with termites is actually the first time I’ve dealt with her first-hand, and it’s given me an opportunity to focus on, study and observe close up how she operates.

I find it’s not that she “won’t do anything about anything”, as residents constantly complain. It’s that she doesn’t know HOW.

She can and does put on a great game face, and is a master at fast talking, back tracking, talking in circles, to where, if you're gullible, she sounds knowledgeable, but behind that smoke screen is a dense and completely clueless woman.

A lot of what I’ve seen in the past now makes sense. For instance, the way she’d made the previous office staff do her job for her.

She didn’t know HOW, so she’d bully the rotating others – the girls assigned to leasing duties only, into doing her job as well. Sometimes we’d overhear complaints, yelling even, that "I have my own job to do, I'm overloaded" and they needed her to do her own job; “rotating others” because one-by-one the girls became fed up and quit.

The only reason Nurse Ratched is not dumping everything on this latest Assistant Manager is because this one comes across as useless for anything other than leasing. She always has a frightened deer-in-the-headlights look about her, and is so afraid of displeasing Nurse Ratched that all anyone can get out of her is that she'll ask Nurse Ratched about it.

In a quest for complete domination and control, Nurse Ratched forced out our long-time knowledgeable maintenance man – who could have told her Day 1 how to handle this termite problem. In his place, she brought in -- promoted to Maintenance Supervisor even, the fool who didn’t know the difference between termites and wasps. He was so bad at the job that he actually frustrated her incompetent behind to where she one day exclaimed to a complaining resident, “Where do I get these maintenance men!” and promptly got rid of him. Now we have a young cutie, who is pretty to look at, but seems totally lost and dependent on Nurse Ratched to tell him when to jump and how high.

Now that the termite situation has brought Nurse Ratched from being invisible and outside, to visible and inside my world, I can see the lies, the threats, the control tactics she’s visited on staff and residents is because she’s scared of being found out. Living a lie, she’s trying to hide the fact she doesn’t know HOW to deal with day-to-day management of this complex.

That doesn't excuse the lies, incompetence, abuse of authority but having spent my career in Corporate America, it's not like I've not seen it before. Sometimes these miscreants are found out and shipped off, mostly they're not and go on destroying lives and careers.

Nurse Ratched herself is well-aware she's a fraud, actually seems proud of being able to get away with it, telling one resident who'd challenged her, "I always win."

She's been careful to be polite with me, maybe because her instincts tell her I'm not some feeble old person she can push around or stall forever. However, if and when this termite thing is resolved, I fully plan to go back to her being invisible, not existing in my world.