It's almost over !!!! YEAH!

As most of you probably know my business, managing condominium and homeowners associations, is at it's peak of insanity from springbreak (oh those cute little co-ed's with bathing suits with less material than one of my socks!), then comes the 2.4 child summer vacation families (where are the sleeping pills when you really need them!), and then the "Dinks" ("Double Income,No Kids"). Then in another two or three weeks the little rug rats all go back to school, the boss reminds all you slackers out there that summer is over and it's time to get back to work for the company, AND the realization hits that you have no more vacation time this year, Christmas is on the way, and there are weeks of shopping ahead!
And here in our little patch of paradise we all breath easier. Once again we've extracted all your "disposable cash", unloaded all of our cheap tee shirts on you, fed you all to the tune of about $4,000,000 in sales for my favorite Pub again this year, and are ready to begin repairing and replacing all that you've ruined, broken, trashed, or otherwise "heavily used" on your vacation.
Cinderella is dead (Long live the evil step father,...me!) "Yes m'am, I understand you loved that watch, and I understand you didn't mean to drop it down the crack between the elevator and the eighteenth floor you are on at two am, which by the way is the time my bedside clock says it is,..(sigh),..but I am not going to call a maintenance man, wake him up from a good night's sleep, as you did to me, to go and retrieve your watch tonight. this does not constitute an EMERGENCY, which is what this line is for! Sit there all night, oops, excuse me the rest of the early morning, and the maintenance folks will be in about 7 o'clock,..have a nice night!" CLICK
Or maybe the (Oh shit it's 12 midnight!) ring,...ring "Uh hello emergency line, can I help you?"
"Yes, I'm sitting here in the car at Regatta way with five kids and I can't find my resort, can you give me directions?"
"You want I should just pick a resort and give you directions, or was there one you had made reservations for and are at least seven hours late for "check-in"?"
"OH<>>>it"s the seascape resort<>>>does that help?"
"yes m"am< ..., NOW what's around you?"
"Well I'm in the parking lot of a clock shop,.."
"Excellant we only have one of them in town, I know exactly where you are. So just ease out of the lot and turn right m'am, onto the highway.
"Are you sure it's right?"
"M'am, you are on a divided highway. If you turn left you WILL meet an ugly old Semi bearing down on you at 65 miles per hour, and you will just be a blot on the hiway! Am I clear? Turn right,...please."
"Well I'm not really sure but,..."
"M'am, allow me a stupid question here. Did I call you and offer directions to confuse the shit out of you and your five rug rats at midnight,...or was it you that called me becasue you had no idea where you were?"
"Well, I guess I called you,....but."
"M'am,...there are no "buts" allowed, if you don't let me give you the directions, and follow them quietly, and without attempting or second guessing me,..well let me say this,...when the sun comes up and you look around you, there will not be a 'clock shop', or white sand beaches and azure water gently lapping on them. What you will see is the deep, dark, dank middle of the biggest, most mequito infested, alligators galore swamp that in you're wildest dreams you could not even imagine! Think Burt Reynolds,...Deliverance,...then imagine worse! Are we clear?"
"ok,..(resigned sigh)"
"Good now go up the road to the first traffic light and then continue through it another mile and a half. You will see a HUGE sign that says "Welcome to Seascape, Enter here." Turn and enter,...you are there.
"Are you sure?"
"Or not,....so what you gotta ask yourself is,....do you feel lucky? Goodnight m'am." CLICK
And the there is "operator 10" with the fire alarm monitoring company at 1:45 am ("on a school night" I love that term Lucy :) )every night this week he's called to tell me the alarm panel is having a "temporary communications failure". Now with 235 units and an eighteen story hi-rise and the heightof the tourist season, well that is one that could demand my attention. So I drag my sorry ass out of my warm bed,stagger out to the dining room table where the MOD "Manager On Duty" book lays open (5" looseleaf binder with more outof date information than last months Sunday paper!) I fumble for my glasses, put the finger in the middle of the lense and put them on and start flipping through looking for the Austere Arms Hi-rise data sheet. After thirty or forty pages looking through a greasy fingerprint lense I find it. "Hmmm!" Where the hell is the number of the fire alarm equipment company! Got it,...dialing, waiting,...waiting,...waiting,..."Uh yeah,...All night fire alarm Company, what?"
"Yes sir I got a call from the monitoring company about a Temporary communications failure at Austere Arms in Destin."
"Yeah,...I saw it too, about twenty minutes ago."
" Well I thought I'd call incase the system is down or there really is a fire or something."
"Oh, yeah. Well it automatically reset three minutes later and everythings fine,...bye"
Not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times this week within three minutes of 1:45 A.M. this has happened! Operator 18 and I have become "buddies" He calls, we chat a bit he pauses after about five minutes and then says, "Looks like it reset, sorry to bother you,...get some sleep. Goodnight."

And so goes life ion the tourist lane. I could write on forever, trust me, these are but a "sound byte" of property management during the summer.
The good news is I get to dump the MOD phone, bag, book and all that shit off on another manager in 1 hour and I'm off the hook until September.
"Thank you for calling and remember, call me after 10 at night with your problems and I'll hunt you down like a dog and you'll wish it was "deliverance",....trust me on that.

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