Blatent disrespect to an officer? This it insane!

My only advice is to rent a thicker skin.

It's hard, but you have to remember to keep it from getting personal.

I was delivering a set of Arch Approval to a guy who was putting up a fence without approval.

I COULD have issued him a stop-work notice, but I figured I would "be nice" and just have him fill the form out there and we'd call it even.

The purpose of the forms are not to deny people, but to ensure they are building within specs so they don't have to waste money TAKING IT DOWN AND REBUILDING IT if it's wrong.

He got pissed because it was HIS property GD, it, and he could do whatever the BLEEP he wanted with it whenever he BLEEPING wanted to. . . .

Then he reached around, grabbed a rake and threw it at me like a spear, order me to get my who** a** off his property. . . .

Nice.

I told him I would leave the forms and if he did not get them back to me by the end of the day, he would be issued a formal stop-work from our attorney.

It was all I could do to hold my calm.

Namecalling. Yup it's bad. Throwing rakes? yup, that's bad too, but we just need to shake it off and maintain our professionalism.

You might even say, if you are ever in conversation with him again, that you intend to keep this professional and not personal.

If he cannot respect you, then perhaps he can respect the attorney he will have to be dealing with from that point on.

Oh, and your girlfriend's dues will be going up to pay for it. . . . (not really, but you know. . . )

He should have been told to submit the bid to the board, not to you.

and he should have told you that the board should notify him if he's committing a violation, not you.

Looks like HOA business was being discussed inappropriately.
IMHO.

I usually agree with Michele but not on this one. I see no reason to go on a person's property to confront them. This is something that needs to be put in writing by your PM or whoever. And to say you will get an attorney is ridiculous. First, it will certainly get the owner's back up and second, does your association have the will and money to seek the help of an attorney when it could have been handled much more diplomatically?

Well, I wasn't suggesting she go onto the property. Or at least, I didn't mean to! I was under the impression this was a past-tense sort of thing that she was describing.

I had only related my particular creepy incident, I was not so much "on the property," as I was speaking with the owner and his wife.

He was in his yard, I was on the sidewalk. I was attempting to do him a favor. I did not realize that he had never had any intention of filling out the forms. We (the other board members and I) just thought he overlooked doing it.

The secretary printed out the docs and one of the other board members asked me to drop them off to him.

It just sort of went wonky from there!

Normally, as in 9.99 times out of 10, we send documents and notifications by mail.

This was a fluke, and, again, just was trying to do him a favor.

As they say, "no good deed goes unpunished."

Yup, because we could have issued the stop-work order instead of the forms.

We were trying to give him a break so he wouldn't have to stop work or tear down his fence.

I didn't give him the ultimatum until he threw a rake at me and threatened me.

I began the conversation pleasant enough.

Told him I see he's building a fence.

"Yeah? What of it?"

"Well, we do not have an Arch Approval form on file for this, so I brought one by for you. You can just fill it out and drop it in the mail. We'll be able to give you a conditional approval. We just need to make sure you're keeping the fence in spec first."

"Like what?"

"Well, it's not much, since it's a privacy fence, the finished side will need to face out and the posts need to be at least 24 inches deep. Oh, and it will need a gate in the back. But we will need to have a formal approval form on file, so if you could fill this out and get it back to us. . . we just want to help avoid any potential problems down the road."

"Who the he** do you think you are? This is my GD property and I can do whatever I GD feel like on it! Get your BLEEP who** a** of my BLEEPING property!"

Then the rake is hurled.

It was at that point I got a little testy with him.

"Sir, I'm not on your property, but you live in a deed restricted community with governing documents that run with the land. Technically you were not to even begin construction on the fence until AFTER the approval is finalized. If you want to be difficult, then I will expect the documents by the end of the day or our attorney will issue a stop-work order. Oh, and if you ever throw another tool at me, I will consider it a personal assault."

Okay, I did get testy, but I kept my composure.

Like I said, normally every document gets sent through the mail. But this guy has lived in the association from before most of us ever lived there. He always seemed like a nice enough guy and the board wanted to give him a break and decided to hand-deliver the forms so that he wouldn't get too far along on the fence (he was building it himself) in case it were not to spec and he would have to remove all his work.

Naturally we don't EVER make exceptions any more. This happened probably about 3 or 4 years ago, if not longer.

I was just using it to illustrate that sometimes you just have to thicken up your skin.

Sometimes you may have to duck. . . ;D

WOW, I am impressed. I bit my tongue not responding earlier when I read the OP. By the second sentence I could see there was a negative bias by the OP'er...at least the way I read it from the perspective of a HO rather than a Board member. What I didn't say has been said by others who can see why the HO might have gotten their back up.

Oh, Michele...DUCK! Glad you didn't get hurt though.

Good job, Ellen!

Yes, I know.

You never know what will set someone off.

We learned, fortunately, without any permanent regrets!

We do everything the exact same way, now.

Welcome to the world of the HOA. My very first year on the baord we had issues with an elderly woman who rented here, nice lady but her grandaughter and her 4 kids were causing issues. IN a 900 sq foot condo there were 3 adults, 4 kids and one on the way! Not that alone was the issue, but the grandaughter who was expecting took it upon herself to verbally attack our landscaper, house keepers and even me.. I was in the elevator once and she essentially accused me of being racist and enforcing the rules only her be because of her backround. Bad thing.... she verbally insulted me, threatend me and the very racially diverse board we had decided to take legal charge.

My experience?" I would NEVER... ever ever.. attempt to enforce rules alone, let the board as whole do it. It makes you look like the lone cop. Let a letter go out on behalf of the whole board. It's not safe in todays world to just verbally tell someone they are breaking the rules, its not safe and I wouldn't recommend it.

Let the board take care of it with a violation letter and let it move forth, don't speak to the person again. He obviously has no class and is verbally abusive. You have NO idea what he is capable of doing.