Why Are HOA's So Crazy?

My mom lives in a condominium complex.  It is a lovely neighborhood and she owns a very nice condo.  But the people are fucking crazy.  I am at her place a lot, she lives within 10 minutes of me, and I visit her often.  The exposure to crazy is a little too much for me sometimes. 

For ten years, after retiring from her life-long career, she worked in the condo office.  At the end of which I kind of talked her into quitting.  I couldn't take hearing the abuse heaped on her anymore. 

There are a lot of crazy people here, but one of the worst would actually go to the office and scream in my mother's face.  One day I sat in that office all day long, a result of crazy-eyes threatening to come back there.  After that, she was banned from the office.

That's right, there's a resident so abusive she was banned from the office of her own condominium.  And rightfully so.  Trust me, the day I had to go sit there, I was praying she would come in.  I wonder if she did, but saw me there through the windows?  Who knows. 

Anyway, the residents have a private Facebook group.  That's how I found out about the one guy who was beside himself when the board decided to decorate the community lamp posts with cornstalks one fall.  This nutball was seriously worried that "terrorists could hide behind them."

Reader, there are no terrorists in Holbrook. 

But let's say there were, okay?  Sure, there are terrorists living in a condominium in Holbrook.  Now, there actually could be, but this guy wasn't talking about domestic terrorists like The Proud Boys or some shit.  Who aren't here either, to my knowledge, but I do admit the possibility.  He was talking about foreign terrorists who might be looking to "behead" him.

So, like, Muslim terrorists are staking out suburban condominiums looking for people to behead.  And they so cleverly catch their victims unawares by hiding behind cornstalks taped to lamp posts.  

Sure!

Imagine living in that dude's head?  Anyway, I have been perusing the private Facebook page this week.

Ole crazy-eyes, the lady who was threatening my mother when she used to work in the office, and is still banned from entering, has been on a tear.

It seems the landscapers have run amiss of little miss can't be sane.

"I love paying close to $500 a month for hoa fees to have the landscapers make a godddamn mess in my patio.....and refuse to clean it!"

Now, I do have a filthy mouth here, but I wouldn't go onto my community Facebook page and write the word "goddamn". But she's trash. Worse, she's racist:

"yup me don't speak English and walk away!"

Such trash. It's interesting because, it's amazing how differently you can experience other human beings depending on what you put out there. It was very recently that my mom had a knee replacement, and fell in the parking lot. I was with her and almost had a heart attack. She wasn't at the point where she could put direct-weight on her knee, so I was trying to get her up, when one of the landscapers ran over and asked if I needed help. I said that I did, then one of his coworkers ran over, and they lifted my mom up.

Oh, and also I smile at people.  I don't snarl at them and start yelling "speak english dummy!"

Crazy-eyes is always on that page ranting, raving, and threatening to sue the condominium.  Last month someone hit her son's car and the cameras didn't catch it, so that was days of screaming and yelling, and calling her attorney.  Supposedly.  I don't really believe she has an attorney, but okay.

Another post from another one of my mom's lovely neighbors, complained about internet service in the community, and boy did that spiral. 

Somehow it all ended up being the fault of the maintenance team.  Who don't work for Optimum, but you know, closest target and all.

After about 35 ranting responses from the other lunatics, it got twisted into this:

"We went from 5 maintenance guys last year to 2 guys now ( and 1 is 79 yrs old) so I'm sure we're not getting our money's worth there either."

Okay, so, there were never 5 maintenance workers.  That's a lie.  But one of them is 79 years old.  And he knows where every pipe in every unit and building is.  The new guys don't.  If he leaves, some of these morons will need to shut off their water valves, which are in different places all throughout the complex, some units inside, some outside, and no one will be able to find the valve.

He is training the new, younger men, but he has decades of institutional knowledge that cannot be easily replaced.  So they should be thankful he stays on.  Instead, they want an accounting of what he is doing, and are looking for a forced retirement.

"you might be right with (name redacted by me), but it’s also a business we pay for a certain standard. And if someone becomes to old to perform their duties they need to retire. The solution isn’t to keep paying the individual their regular pay and higher additional people to help. If he can’t perform his tasks then he should get paid less if he doesn’t want to retire."

No one has ever said this man cannot perform his duties, she is just assuming this.   He can perform them, and he does.

"definitely not! Maybe those who want to keep paying people for poor quality/additional employees bc of their feels towards them can pay more in their HOA fees so that those who want quality/efficiency and not getting can pay less."

Again, he is not a poor quality employee.  He is more valuable to the community than anyone else because all of the previous maintenance team retired.  And it is the new, young men they hired to replace that team, who all quit, or got fired after not showing up for work too often.  

They really have no idea what will happen the day he does retire.  They are too stupid to understand these things.  But what I really think the issue is, you have some mid-management aholes talking here.  So used to bullying their underlings in the office, and justifying their salaries by standing over some entry-level worker and demanding accountings of their every minute, that it is now their entire personality.  Like, that's all that they are.  

And what has happened  to this type during Covid?  Well, they've had no one to bully and belittle right?  I  mean, mid-management has largely become obsolete, and maybe they are looking to spread a little of that misery to everyone else.

A little power corrupts, doesn't it?  Maybe a lot of power corrupts, it does to some people, but just a little power, well, that can really reveal an asshole can't it?  They revel in the crumbs of meaningless power they hold.  It is who they are.

I'm thankful for my mom's direct neighbors.  Most are really good people and they look out for her, which I love and appreciate.  There are a couple of assholes down her way, one of them is a board member, so you can do that math, but most of the real aholes are down on the other side of the complex.  Crazy-eyes lives on the other side, which I'm thankful for.  Although if she was near my mother we likely would have come to blows by now.

Then she would have had her imaginary attorney on my ass.