Dramatic Shakeup

I’m not talking about what happened in the White House on Friday. I’m talking about what happened in the Residents/Management meeting I missed on Thursday.

I made it down to the Community Room yesterday to gather intel as to what I'd missed.

Discussed were upcoming patio repairs, repaving of the driveway, and impeaching next door neighbor from her position as President of the Residents’ Volunteer Activity Committee (RVAC).

The issue with next door neighbor was, of course, not something that was on the agenda, to be discussed in an open forum, but members of the RVAC had finally had enough of her and used that meeting as an opportunity to petition the Community Manager to remove neighbor from office.

Complaints are:

·       She never attends events

·       Is always late for RVAC meetings, up to 45 minutes

·       disorganized

·       rude

·       imperialistic

·       doesn’t do anything

·       lazy

In neighbor’s defense, it’s not that she’s lazy (and I did express this), it’s that she’s accustomed to being large and in charge, with servants and employees. Life circumstances have placed her here, with us regular folks, but she doesn’t know how to interact with regular folks in any way other way than as her minions.

“Well, she just better get over that”, I was told.

Which is true, but the problem is … she can’t. She’s not a woman who can bend and flex, work with others on equal footing.

“I’m a very cultured woman” is how neighbor describes herself, which is true and far different than simply being lazy.

She’s a perfectly nice woman, if you keep a neighborly wall up, which is what I do; but I can see how she'd be impossible to work with.

My question at the debriefing was “Was she present when all this was discussed?”

“No, and that’s the problem. She’s never present.”

“So how is she getting word of impeachment?”

“The Community Manager is going to talk to her.”

Awkward.

Neighbor is going to be hurt, and even though she came to live here because daughter-in-law kicked her out with the parting words, “You’re the laziest woman I’ve ever met”, neighbor is not going to understand or self-reflect on why people perceive her thusly and how she might change that perception.

She may go over the top, as she did in a dispute with the Activity Director, where neighbor was heard yelling at Activity Director through closed doors.

She’d just this past Wednesday asked me for pointers on next month’s exercise class, as to  movements for our less mobile residents. I’d given her one of my DVD’s.

Looks like that exercise class will not come to fruition, Future activities may also now be in jeopardy.