Be Careful What You Ask For

Especially if what you’re asking is someone’s opinion.

Management posted another Activity Packet to our doors yesterday. Included in the packet was a sheet asking, “How Are We Doing? Want to leave your feedback. Here’s how! Go to YELP.COM …. Choose star rating and leave review … Thank you for your FEEDBACK, it is greatly appreciated.”

My immediate thought was hot damn! this is going to be good.

Are they serious? Do they really not know they’ve put themselves squarely on the railroad tracks and the train is coming?

I right away went to Yelp to see if there were any reviews and whatdoyaknow. Someone had immediately, that very day, posted a review.

“Although it's a beautiful place, you don't get to "live" here. You can only have 3 plants on your patios. You can't hang bird feeders or wind chimes, anything that may need to be attached to the railing on the patios. There is no designated smoking area. You have to walk out to the sidewalk and stand by the road, a busy street and I don't find it safe with the fast cars, accidents in front of the entrance or the homeless/drug addicted people badgering us for a smoke. The wash rooms almost never have all of the machines working at once. We are responsible to call for maintenance (the number on the machines). Most of the time when I need to do laundry, someone has filled up all of the working machines and then I have to wait all day. If you want a visit from someone or a delivery, good luck getting them inside the complex. Half the time the call box out front is broken. If they do manage to get in, there is approximately 12 visitor parking spaces for the over 200 apartments. All of this has been a problem before and during this Covid-19 problem. We are just expected to sit in the apartment and watch TV. We can't grow tomatoes or other veggies, enjoy the birds, relax with a hot cup of coffee and a smoke on our patio, no simple pleasures are allowed. We just exist.”

She didn’t lie, and pretty much summed up how the majority of the old folks feel … just allowed to exist.

Lucky for this management group, few residents will post a review. But only because 1) many aren’t even going to read the packet posted to their door 2) many do not have access to a computer and 3) some are not computer literate — like the resident who long ago told me her daughter tried to teach her, but she was too afraid of the computer to learn. Also, for those who would like to post a review, but have no computer, the computer they go to in the Game Room is not accessible during this lockdown. All lucky for management because, otherwise, even though this management group is not the worst, they’d find themselves soundly trashed on Yelp.

Be careful what you ask for.

This reminds me of a kid who was courting me in the workplace. He delivered the mail to the floor I worked on, would stop by my desk, chat me up, try to impress me.

I was never interested, but not because he was young. It was because he was young AND immature. But I was nice, didn’t run him off, just listened to what he had to say.

Then came the day when I guess he figured he’d won me over. Looking for validation, that I was into him, he asked, “What do you think of me?”

Foolish me. I thought he wanted to know what I saw. Which was something to the effect, “You’re the kind of person that is all show, no substance. You don’t do nice things for people unless it’s in front of others, so those others can see and be impressed.”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE TALKING TO ME LIKE THIS!!!”

I must have hit the nail on the head, touched an area he thought was hidden, because he forgot he’d asked me “What do you think of me” and I was merely giving him what he’d asked for — my opinion. 

However, I learned from his reaction. Thereafter, when anyone asked me what I thought of them — and for some strange reason a few others have, I say, “Do you really want me to answer that?” After which, there is a brief period of silence as the individual considers, sees something in my eyes, then says, “No. Never mind”.

As for the mail kid … wanting to show me a thing or two — which demonstrated just how immature he was, he began vigorously pursuing another girl on the same floor. I was unaware of it at the time, wouldn’t have cared had I known, but his immature mind thought it would be a way of getting back at me. At any rate, the girl he was pursuing did not like him, found him to be too aggressive and, when he wouldn’t stop asking her out, she filed a complaint. Never saw or heard anything about him again after that.

Can’t wait to see how management is going to handle this Yelp review. They can’t call in their lawyers and demand the resident remove the review, because they asked for it. Their only option is to come up with a face-saving response or ignore and hope no one else reads the packet, gains access to a computer and posts a review.

If I were management, I would have posted a “How are we doing” survey, so they could control the narrative. I myself would be happy to get some things off my chest in survey form, but don’t feel my smoke detector issue is Yelp review worthy. But good on management that I woke up this morning and found the driveway gate had already been repaired.