There really should be some kind of test for people who want to be owners or tenants in a strata development. Just hook them up to a lie detector machine and ask them if they think they are the most important people on the planet … or if it’s OK to break rules until someone forces them to stop … or if “tolerance” means their neighbours putting up with their lifestyle rather than them adapting to everyone else’s.
Any “yes” answer would result a ban from apartment living or aversion therapy in the backpacker hostel of their choice.
It’s not the end of the world but bad behaviour can be irritating. Take my own building: a couple of people put their paper and glass recycling in the same plastic bag which they then dump in one or other of the adjacent separate bins. Why? Are they stupid, lazy or merely trying to sabotage the whole recycling concept?
In the gym, there’s one woman who turns the early morning TV up to 11 … so she can hear it over her i-Pod. Another used to take weights to her apartment because “I’ve never seen anyone else using them.”
Some of the people supposed to help us get on with each other aren’t that bright either. There was the three-year-long saga of the illegal storage cage in a car space – in which a Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator deemed its neighbour had no right to open his car door.
In a recent case, I’m told, an adjudicator declined to issue a second fine against a persistent by-law breaker because it would have been “double jeopardy”.
No wonder a strata manager told a reader (erroneously) that there was nothing you could do about neighbours who break by-laws.
After a follow-up column about exactly what you can do, a reader complained I hadn’t suggested talking things through first.
And it’s true. A little bit of “get along” goes a long way in apartments. Meanwhile, anyone know where I can a second-hand lie detector?