Lone Ranger EC member causing trouble.

Sorry guys this is probably just another rant.

We have a guy on our EC who every now and then decides to elbow out everyone else and take on management of a particular maintenance issue. You’d generally think “that’s great I can get some help” but this guys approach is to arrange for some handy man to come out and do a bodge job in a glorious example of penny pinching.

The last one was a broken water seal in a shower recess of the unit above him. He had them come out and put a vent in the false ceiling in his bathroom to dry it out and stop mould growing. When things escalated as they do, he starts complaining that it was everyone else’s fault that it wasn’t done properly. I have to get involved and arrange for all the proper works and it ends up costing us more (due to increased damage) which as far as i’m aware still isn’t fully repaired because once the shower recess was repaired he went back to trying to self manage the repair of the damage. He got abusive when we tried to manage that repair. 3 years in his court, 4 weeks in mine.

This time we have two 5m high trees that need cutting down due to roots damaging a wall. The stumps and a third previously cut off stump from another tree against the same wall need to be removed to allow for repair of the wall and because the owners who tend the gardens are always complaining about stumps left in garden beds (Fair enough they’re putting in the effort they should get what they want).

His action to the strata Managers “require a tree cut down . How do you want to handle this, your trademan can contact me to discuss?” (sic)

I try and add pertinent information to the issue like the damage to the wall (which will need to be put on the application to council) and that the stumps will need to be removed to allow repair to the wall and get a snide email from him and a claim that the trees don’t need council approval because they’re not Australian natives (in our council ANY tree over 3m requires a permit)

So quotes turn up and they don’t even cover the work needed. From what I understand he had contacted the strata managers and told them that they shouldn’t apply for council permission which they were all set to do. He’s told them to send the tradesmen to him as a site contact.

So now I need to step in again to prevent thousands in fines from council and to ensure that the jobs gets done properly. Naturally this guy is highly offended and even knowing all the facts about what needs to be done and why he still refuses to act reasonably. All in the interests of penny pinching.

Of course it’s not isolated to those incidents. Any email from this guy usually results in the strata managers contacting me asking what the hell he’s talking about because his emails always lack context or pertinent information. Typically he’s asking for progress on something he’s trying to self manage where the ball is in his court and he’s done nothing or he’s asking about works that he knows are already completed like a broken window which you can see from outside and which he already received confirmation of it by email months prior. Something he could check in his own emails.

So it invariably consumes an hour or more of my time trying to sort out if a window has been broken again and needs repair or to clean up a mess where the strata managers have presumed that was the case and already made a booking to send someone out.

Thanks for the ear 🙂