No Good Deeds Go Unpunished

Miss Crappy Pants Strikes Again


I received some terrible news yesterday.

Our current condo board and management company elected to terminate the employment of our 60 year old landscaper and friend--Ozzy.

They elected to tell him on Monday that Tuesday (yesterday) would be his last day.

After serving the owners on a five day per week basis for over SEVENTEED YEARS, they gave him only one day notice and no severance pay.

I think that the situation TOALLY SUCKS.

How can you let someone work for you for that long and not at least give him two weeks notice?

After all, they weren’t firing him for his behavior or performance, but rather apparently as a cost cutting measure.

I know that the elected board is within their rights to make unpopular decisions, but let me tell you a little secret…

The truth is that many if not most of our elderly residents have enjoyed using Ozzy like their personal slave valet for the duration of his service out here, and people on previous boards knew it and looked the other way in public because they were the parties guilty of taking greatest advantage of Ozzy’s good nature and willingness to help.

You see, Ozzy took care of this property like it was his own, and he treated our elderly residents like they were his own parents.

Ozzy would drive our neighbors to the store and pharmacy, on company time, because they asked them to do it. The former board members did it. If the person was too sick to come outside, Ozzy would run errands to get medicine or whatever and most of them never did anything but say thanks--and that was all Ozzy expected.

I just did a calculation in my head and, over the past 31 months we’ve had no less that FIVE full time residents pass away, and SEVEN have either moved into assisted living or built bigger houses and moved outside of our 48 unit property.

That’s a 25% reduction in full time resident Seniors, and almost all of these departures served on the Board of directors at one time or the other.

But now, with the remaining beneficiaries seniors reduced down to two or three, they’ve decided that Ozzy is too expensive--he’s expendable.

Now I guess that we can look forward to having a hoard of Illegal Aliens descend on the property once every week or two, while Ozzy’s prospects to finding another similar position are rather grim at his age.

Ozzy taught me a great deal about the location of hidden things like water service valves, sprinkler controls, and other service related items that no one else knows. The standard situation was for a contractor to show up on the property and the first thing they had to do was ask Ozzy where things were.

In Ozzy’s defense, I’ll be damned if I tell anybody anything unless it affects OUR condo.

Good luck Ozzy, we’re gonna miss you…

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