condobuildingbabysitter

[condobuildingbabysitter]

I cater to the whines and whims of a Condominium Association Board of Directors. Some scene setting if, by some stroke of luck, you've never had to know about condominium association management:

Think of the stereotypical Karen filled HOA, creating a small hell for homeowners all across America. A suburban swath of uniformity, policing of inane details, and the most insufferable people in charge. Now, I want you to put that in a 120+ year old building of over 200 units in a major city. The "Lords and Ladies" of this crumbling heap are a Board of Directors, elected volunteers, who make all the major decisions on behalf of every resident. The building is severely underfunded, every day something breaks, no one has a sense of priorities, and one (1) person has to juggle the management of everything onsite for a flat salary for 40 hrs a week (that you literally cannot accomplish the job without working when you get home and on weekends).

So let's break down the players:

Property Manager: me, less than 90 days on the job

Regional Director: boss, who hasn't trained me on the most basic tasks of the job, jokes about how little time they teach me things, and gets visibly upset when I don't know what I haven't learned

Board of Directors: personalities ranging from casually racist finance bro, anally retentive stay at home mommy, "I can do it myself for cheaper" idiots, and people whose main goal is to miss the point.

Residents: now these can really vary. You have folks who probably couldn't afford a single family home, investors looking to charge 3x in rent what a mortgage would cost, people who use a condo in the city seasonally, affluent and elite but fairly young people new to property ownership, and really anything in between, including of course renters.

Now put these people in fun and interesting scenarios like:

"Hey, there is a leak coming from my ceiling. What are you going to do?" Which, of course, isn't an easy answer when you live in condo hell. Is there a roof above you, or another unit? Could be a dishwasher leaking or a pipe belonging to the condo Association. So you have to dispatch someone to investigate. Oh no, but it's Saturday! Too bad, you're calling and coordinating that visit, and the access to the unit. Alright, so it turned out to be a building pipe, but the repair estimate is pricey. Well, the Board of Directors wants you to get prices from 2 other vendors to compare. That took 2 weeks to do, and then they have to decide on one of the estimates, and that's another week. And now the resident has had leaking in their unit for 3 weeks and has bombarded you non stop all while you must play the shield to the Board and their inability to focus on this instead of picking a new color for the lobby paint. They chose an estimate, hooray! But they are broke so you get the work done and now the vendor hounds you for months to pay the bill. The resident isn't happy with how they left the ceiling (new drywall and primer) and is threatening to sue.

This scenario, a million different ways, hundreds of times a year. This new job is a particularly scream-inducing position, but a lot of it is just "normal" in this field. So come along as I tell you about the frequently maddening happenings in your average condo building in a major city.