Every day I live with the Friday Threat. This is the threat that ruins the day, because it means that when Friday comes around I cannot continue doing what I do and have to make a huge change in my life.
The threat is quite small on Sunday because I’m confident the neighbours aren’t going to come down and ruin my life. Monday, you’d think is far away from Friday and so wouldn’t be too affected – but when Monday comes there’s only four nights including Monday that I can live my own life before I have to stop everything and make those changes. Tuesday the Friday Threat is stronger again, Wednesday it’s quite strong because there’s ONE more night only that I can live the way I pay for. Thursday is horrible because the next day is the day I have to make the changes.
Every single Friday this is what I do: I pack the van in preparation for staying the weekend in the rest area off the highway about 15ks away.
Then I do one of two things. Before 6.30PM I drive out of the place I pay rent for and stay in a carpark until at least 9.30PM. Then after that time I do a driveby past the place I pay rent for and if the neighbours are down I keep going and stay in a rest area off the highway, if I can get a spot there, which I usually can except around holiday time at that late hour. If I’m too tired to do the driveby after 9.30PM I drive straight to the rest area, usually about 4PM because I am sure of a spot, cook dinner and sleep in the rest area off the highway, and do a driveby the next morning, Saturday, to see if the neighbours are down. If they’re down, I go back to the rest area for the weekend.
The place I pay money for is in a park and the owners have employed their son as the ‘manager’. At some stage the kid would have known he would take over the operation of the park. It’s not a big park, by the way. So what did the kid do to respect the responsibility he would soon possess, and to respect the tenants and residents when he got the power to determine their lives? He knew he was going to get the job, so…what did he do?
NOTHING, I bet.
By the look of him he just arrogantly thought he could do it easily.
The father, I suspect, made the decision to employ the kid.
Furthermore, by the look of his actions I would bet confidently that the kid has
a) No managerial qualifications;
b) No experience in managing anything;
c) no aptitude for it;
d) No knowledge: no knowledge of even kindergarten-level managerial principles and no knowledge of the law.
So when the neighbours, who are under contract, come down and turn the place into an industrial zone of noise: an air conditioner that I am certain is illegal, and boom boom boom noises nonstop from 7.30AM to 8.30PM, either noise makes the kennel, sorry, garden shed without the garden, sorry, ‘cabin’, unliveable, the clueless kid sides with them 100% and 100% against me.
The neighbours cause the problem, but the kid decides I am the problem for bringing up the noise.
Authorities – four of them – know about this, the father and the kid, and are furious. They want me to haul both of them in front of a magistrate.
It’s obvious that the kid was “going to learn on the job” by the looks of it. However, that means that the residents and tenants are guinea pigs. It’s almost criminal, I think.
And so I’ve had enough.
Here’s the latest photos of my Friday in the rest area because of the ever-present threat:
So why can’t I just wait in the kennel, sorry, the garden shed without a garden, sorry, the ‘cabin’, on a Friday and if the neighbours come down I can leave then? More comfortable, right?
Two reasons why that’s unworkable.
The first is that cars are pouring into the area as people come for the weekend to holiday: I hear every one of these. And cars come into the park. So you end up sitting there alert to every noise, like a sitting duck. You can’t relax at all – because every single one of those car noises could be the car that forces you out of the place you’re paying rent for and into the rest area off the highway.
The second reason is more insane, but true. I asked the neighbour, this question: “How long are you down for?” one time. Then I asked it again about five months later.
That’s a question that would be asked forty thousand times here over Christmas (one of the times I asked the neighbour). The two most common questions everyone here asks of each other are: “What did you do for Christmas?” and “How long are you down for?” (meaning how long are you on holidays before you have to go back). 40,000 times asked (i’m guessing, it could be a lot more) and all perfectly normal.
Not for the neighbour. He reacted to me perfectly calm, and then apparently he complained like it was the worst thing to ever happen to him. That’s a complaint to the kid ‘manager’, of course. The neighbour plays the kid like a fiddle.
So the kid ‘manager’ turns up on the doorstep on a Sunday – he always does it in a Sunday, which I guess is illegal: no real estate agent can do so – and reads me the riot act. Like a little power-crazed dictator, I thought. Utterly unreasonable and off the charts ignorant.
Never once did the kid ‘manager’ ask my version of events – a kindergarten level managerial principle: get all versions of events and apply the law before making a decision – so he’d swallowed whatever the neighbour furiously told him hook, line, sinker and fishing boat.
For my innocuous, perfectly reasonable, perfectly normal, utterly common question of “How long are you down for?” the kid ‘manager’ threatened me with eviction if I do it again.
Get that. Just get that.
Due to that level of malicious ignorance, as it affects me directly, I feel I can’t do anything that would set off the neighbour and I’d be therefore homeless. There’s no way I can even risk talking to the neighbour, not even to say hello.
I can’t risk bumping into him, or seeing him, or his wife, going to my car (because these kennels are so close together).
So I avoid the neighbour completely and at all costs.
As the authorities have advised me. These people all involved should be hauled in front of a magistrate.