Eye of the Beholder

This morning felt like earthquake weather — hot, muggy, humid.

Not feeling motivated, I came thisclose to calling off on working out in the Pain Cave.

But I didn’t.

I pushed through, was glad I did, and now have the next two days when, hopefully, I won’t have to go into the outside world.

The trolley dolly arrived on Wednesday, so this morning, before it got unbearably hot, I was easy peasy able to roll the old microwave down the stairs and into the dumpster.

Returning to my unit from the dumpster, I bent down to take a photo of another rather large new rock addition at the far end of the pathway.

As I stood up, I spotted Assistant Maintenance Guy (AMG) walking down the pathway, towards me.

"It’s getting out of control”, said he (probably repeating what he's heard Community Manager say).

"But it’s all so pretty”, replied I.

"J___ (Complex Manager) told us to pick ‘em up, because there’s been complaints”.

So, now I know why some of the rocks disappeared.

As for AMG saying there’d been complaints, my response was “You’re kidding …. What’s to complain about?”

"You know how it is. You see what you want to see, and one person, I’m not going to say what nationality he is, took offense to the rock painted RUN”.

Inasmuch as AMG was hesitate to say a nationality, I’m assuming his hesitancy is because the complainer is Black.

“You see what you want to see”.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

I took one of the RUN rocks and placed in with my rock collection, because I associated it with the 5Ks I participate in. This other individual is associating it with racism, as in Run, Get Out, Leave.

Oh, well. Takes all kinds to make a Universe.

I asked AMG, “When you pick them up, what do you do with them? Do you throw them in the trash”.

He couldn’t look me in the eye as he mumbled an undiscernible reply, so I’m assuming that’s a big 10-4. So, I requested that, in future, if rocks were picked up, he not toss them, but give to me.

Doubt that will happen but, if it does, I’ll just relocate them. Once the weather cools down, and the University reopens to us walkers, I’ll leave the rocks he gives me, IF he gives them to me, at various locations on campus. Also, when in-person 5Ks restart, I can drop them off along the trails.

Complex Manager is turning into a douche bag. I don’t have a problem with him specifically — he's nowhere near as awful as that mean Nurse Ratched we were stuck with for a while, but one does have to ride his arse in order to get things done. Like, recently, I noticed water on the kitchen counter, realized it appeared to be leaking from the base of the faucet, sent Manager an email to have maintenance come take a look at it.

Received no reply or response.

A second and third email elicited no reply or response.

A day or so after the condo disaster in Miami, I sent Manager a fourth email asking if he was “going to wait until something bad happened, like in Miami”. That the leak wasn’t likely to take the building down, but it might end up in overflowing over the counter to damage kitchen tile, flow over into the carpet area, maybe even leak down into the unit below.

Now none of that was in danger of happening, I was just being extra, making a mountain out of a molehill, because I wanted to scare him into thinking he could be held responsible for a disaster. I even hinted at his being held responsible saying, that “If anything bad happens as a result of the leak, I’ve got proof I tried to get help”.

Head Maintenance Guy showed right up after that, put in a new washer something or other and said that morning was the first he’d been advised of a request for service.

So, like I said … one has to ride Manager’s arse to get him to take care of things, turn in a work order.

That got my mind to wondering … just exactly what is it that Manager does? Why do we even need him?

Checking yelp, to see if there have been any updates on this property, I find his name has been specifically mentioned in an unflattering light … “I still have not heard a phone call from the human resources about the manager J___!! I can't believe they allow this manager to be this cruel that it sickens me to think of how he treats the elderly! Get a shirt that labels manager or a name tag since you’re going to allow this animal to work here he thinks he owns the place.”

When the reviewer talks about “Human Resources”, she’s referring to Corporate. She’s been contacting Corporate about Manager.

Corporate doesn’t care. Not unless and until he does something like Nurse Ratched did — stole money orders submitted as rent payments.

It may be Manager is non-responsive because he wants us to sign up for “Rent Café” — this thing that he, and Corporate, have been pushing for us to buy into.

The premise of Rent Café is that, "for our convenience", a third party, for a minimum charge, takes control.

This third party will pay our monthly rent, drawing the funds directly from our bank accounts and, also "for our convenience", we can submit work orders through this third party.

I’m not giving a third party access to my banking information and, if it’s this difficult to get a maintenance request through Manager, what guarantee is there that going through a third party would be easier.

Rent Café sounds like a highway to taking advantage of the elderly — access to their financials and personal information by some unknown third party, so no … not this elder.

And with some of the seniors actually signing up for that, again I ask, “What does Manager do … What do we need him for?”

So all set for two days inside, in the midst of typing this post, along about 1:00, up pops a Plot Twist … the power went out.

No Wi-Fi, no A/C.

Fortunately, it came back on, along about 5:30, because it’s too hot for this nonsense.

Hopefully, remainder of the weekend is smooth sailing.