What are some of your funniest HOA situations?

I was just remembering some of my funniest HOA experiences. I am sure others have them as well. Those moments of "gee how did I get here???". It's time for a good laugh after all this legal talk. Here's part of my list:

1. We had a neighbor that often walked around his house naked with the shades up!
2. My pool care lady showed up at my door soaking wet during Fourth of July weekend. The pump for the pool had "blown up". I had to find a pool store open on the fourth of july with the part I needed. Then I had to go and find replacement bolts using the shredded ones. Ironically, the NEXT year on the same weekend the SAME thing happened again!!!
3. Someone put dog doo-doo in the pool! Instead of taking it out, they came and got me to do it. I had to remove the pool and shut down the pool for 24 hours to shock it. 2 weeks later, someone did it again!
4. I told a contractor that we would be able to start a retaining wall project in about 2 - 3 weeks. I woke up a few days later to the sound of digging. Turns out one of the workers decided to move the job up without contacting me first. By the time I arrived to the site, they had dug a 4 foot hole 25 feet long and had covered the entire driveway with a pile of sand and rock. The homeowner was at work and didn't know about the job. Boy were they mad when they got home to park! The hardest part is they spoke mostly spanish! Thank God for my high-school spanish classes!!!
5. I got a letter of complaint from a neighbor who had caught one of the landscapers taking a leak in her yard! I had to read the letter out loud at the meeting. The neighbor called for the firing of the lawncare!
6. Many of the neighbors were upset because someone had planted "plastic" flowers in their front yard. The flowers were now old and mildewy and looked terrible. I had to write them a nice letter requesting they remove the plastic flowers.
7. I had rented out my property. My tenant stopped paying rent and I was in the process of kicking him out. I came over to review the condition of my home only to find a baby Emu living in the backyard!!! Turns out, lawncare hadn't touced the backyard in months due to it living there! No one told me! Baby Emu's aren't nice!
8. I had a neighbor with one of those "Help I can't get up alarms". I was on their contact list. One day the police came over to ask to help get them in. I was panicked when the lady didn't answer and I couldn't find the key. The police officer had his foot in the air to break down the door, when the lady showed up in a car. She had been out to eat and sat on it. Me and the cop looked really stupid but the door stayed intact.
9. Everyone kept complaining about dog doo being in an empty common area by the pool. It smelled bad. So I decided to put down dog repellant and a small wire fence posting I had put it down. Great idea! However, I started getting calls that the repellant was causing sinus troubles for the nearby owners and making them sick! Go figure!
10. September 11th. Yes that very day! I had a house that had people from the middle east in it. (Yemeneze to be exact). That morning they were packing and moving FAST! They even had taken the tags off a truck and put it in a moving truck. Very suspicious considering they had Florida license plates from the SAME county as the hi-jackers!!! Needless to say, the FBI appeared shortly there after with a swat team! Everything checked out okay in the end.

So what did you think of my first 10? I am sure you can top them if not, enjoy the fact this didn't happen to you!!! Your HOA may not be as bad as you thought it was!

MelissaP, I certainly do feel sorry for you! You sound like you're the association "dumping post". Don't you have people (i.e. employees, maintenance people; property managers or a management company) to delegate all these issues to? Our board members also get approached with a lot of problems, yet unless they need emergency attention, they're turned over to the proper people. But you do have some interesting stories here!

Hi Melissa:

The funniest letter I ever wrote involved a community of single-family homes on a hillside; there was a young guy who rented several rooms to friends, one of whom had "romantic encounters" with his girlfriend, early in the afternoon during the summer months, with the windows open, next door to one of our board members who had young children...

JPM

Funny?

When I agreed to be nominated, little did I know that I would become the unpaid handyman for the Association.

I noticed that one of the irrigation sprinkler heads near the entrance was not spraying where it should be, it was just running a large stream of water down the street. One of the other board members noticed it also and contacted me.

Since nobody seemed to know anything about the irrigation system, who installed it, who serviced it, etc. and nobody had the owner's manual, I got the manufacturer's name and found the manual online and downloaded and printed it.

Armed with the manual, a couple shovels, and a board to cover any hole I might make, I drove to the entrance, and parked my pickup truck on the grass several feet past the controller and the broken head. I opened the tailgate, got the manual out and figured out how to run the sprinkler one zone at a time so I could isolate the zone and work on the broken head.

I set the manual down on the tailgate, went to the controller and set the system to run through each zone one minute at a time. Zone one - not the zone. Zone two - not the zone and so on. Finally, zone 13 comes on and that's the one with the defective head so I go over to it to see what the problem is. After one minute, zone 13 shuts off and zone 14 starts up. Have you guessed it yet? Shoots water directly onto the tailgate and into the bed of my truck, soaking the owner's manual and everything else in the back of the truck!

In retrospect, that's funny. It wasn't at the time.

The pool story reminded me of what happend just a few weeks before my election to President. At the time I was new to the community and was the Vice-President. I was secretly "involved" with the President at the time. (Not for reasons he thought). I was invited to a party the landscaping guy was throwing at the pool. On the way to the party, I met up with the President. He told me "Whatever you do, don't embarass yourself. Your running for president".

The party was going along okay. There were a few residents there and lots of "Hunch Punch". I had just gotten a glass when I walked by a guy. I remarked to him that no one was in the pool. He quickly responded that he would get in the pool but only naked. This other girl said "I dare you". The next thing I know, this guy takes off his clothes to his underwear and jumps into the pool!!! Me and the girl laughed at him. About 10 minutes later, he was STILL in the pool. The ONLY one. I walked by the pool to get to a chair. When the guy decides it's time someone joins him. He jumps up and pulls me into the pool with him!!!

I am NOW in the pool with a guy wearing JUST his underwear. He's got his arm around me and won't let go. Then just when things can't get worst, they do... Someone yells out that he should take his underwear off! The next thing I see is his underwear flying through the air into the crowd!!! By this time, I am doing my best to get away from this guy. He won't let me go. No one would help me because they are laughing so hard and think this guy is crazy. Finally, I convince him to let me go. As I get out of the pool, he follows behind me. This time 2 - 3 people bring out cameras!!! I am fully dressed soaking wet and trying to put my hand up to block his nudity in the pics! (Not much nudity to see if you get my drift). His name was JR/junior.

Needless to say... 2 weeks before my election I now have pictures of me coming out of a pool with a naked guy I don't even know. He did ask me out though! (No. I didn't accept the offer.) The famous last words of the president were ringing in my head. "Whatever you do, don't embarass yourself". The good news is I did win the election by a landslide. I was offered to view the pictures if I wanted to see them. I declined...

I meant to say YOUR issue with me is NOT my issue with me... Darn table writing!!!

Homeowner complained that someone had smeared dog feces on the playground equipment. Former Board President said that it wasn't dog feces, it was chocolate and he knew it was chocolate because he "took the time to smell it". Visions of the pool cleaning incident from Caddyshack danced through our heads.