Volunteer

I had a very odd conversation on Monday. I’m the Secretary of our neighborhood association’s board of trustees, and people occasionally call me to ask a question or make a suggestion or complain about something. Of the complaints, about 40 percent are reasonable and/or actionable, and about 60 percent are not. 

This last call falls into neither category. A woman called me at 3:30 PM, and I asked if I could call her back. She said that she would not and could not possibly provide a name or number and that email was also completely out of the question. “Well, I’m still at work and I can’t talk right now. So I’ll need at least a number to call you back,” I said. The woman said that she was disabled and needed an answer to a few questions, and I told her that I would be happy to help but that I can’t do association work when I’m at my job and that absent a phone number, I’d have no way to reach her. She sighed and asked me when I might be available to talk. I told her any time after 5:30, and I braced myself for that phone to ring at 5:31. 

That phone rang at 5:31. She summed up our earlier brief conversation, and said that she was blind but that her “assistant” (in scare quotes for a reason) had noticed that her neighbor had a very tall, very oddly constructed fence. She wanted information about the neighborhood covenants to see if the fence was too high. 

Neighborhood covenants are a sticky little wicket, given that some of the early HOA covenants from the 1940s and beyond restricted communities by race. Our covenants, however, are the more garden-variety type that govern things like accessory dwellings and sheds and driveways and of course, fence height. Those covenants exist but we do not enforce them. Our Board is all-volunteer, and it exists primarily to maintain our shared property - the pool and parking lot and tennis courts and basketball court. 

We went back and forth on this point. She felt very strongly that we should take a very active role in enforcing aesthetic standards, and I told her that as volunteers we had neither the time nor the inclination to police our neighbors’ properties, and that our county has enforcement mechanisms that she can make use of. As per our name, I pointed out, we are a recreational association, not a homeowners’ association. 

She was not nice, and I got less and less nice as this very unpleasant conversation dragged on. I finally told her that I’d said all I could say and that I was going to end the call, and that if she wanted another Board member to call her, I’d make sure that happened but that she’d have to give me a name and number. 

That’s when she saw fit to tell me that she was actually the interpreter for the actual homeowner she’d been pretending to be. I should probably have picked this up on my own because at one point in the conversation, she said “I’m reading the newsletter right now and it clearly states that you are the homeowner’s association for the neighborhood.” As a blind person, she would not have been able to read from our little community newsletter, which is not offered in Braille. 

She claimed that not only did she not have to disclose her status as an OPI (on the phone interpreter, which I learned is the term) but that she was obliged not to do so. This isn’t true. I looked it up. Not only is an OPI obliged to disclose her status to her interlocutor, she is also obliged to say exactly and only what the person she is interpreting for says. Not only was she not interpreting verbatim (because a blind person is not reading aloud from any newsletter), I suspected that she wasn’t even in the same room with the blind woman. I think this woman might very well be an assistant or interpreter or whatever for a neighborhood resident, but I also think that this call was nothing more than an opportunity for a person who wanted to pick a fight about fences and other nonsense. 

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Did you think this was all there is to this story? Oh no, I’m just getting started. Part 2 begins with the retired head of the association who is also a retired Congressional Budget Office lawyer. He likes to remain very very involved, and we are generally all very deferential to him because he’s done a great deal for the community. He also has a huge ego and a rather thin skin. 

Just to be respectful, I emailed him to ask if my interpretation of the law regarding OPIs was correct. Bear in mind that this email was clear and detailed, outlining the entire situation. This man, who for years has labored under the impression that I’m one of the dimmest bulbs in our community chandelier, responded that I should just ask the woman to email him and that he’d help her with her questions. 

I know that this man thinks I’m an idiot, and I’ve never cared enough about his opinion to disabuse him of this notion. But he didn’t even bother to read my email, because if he had he’d have known that A. the woman refuses to communicate via email and that B. she also refused to provide a name or any contact information of any sort, making it quite impossible for me to follow up with her and ask her to email our elder statesman. 

Do you think that this man was chastened in any way by my pointing out his obvious failure to read my email? Well let’s see. Here is his second response, verbatim: 

It is best that she emails me. We are away, will be back before July 4th.  I also can chat with her at that time. Can you get her name, address and phone number, email?  Tell her that she needs to communicate with me?  That you have said all you can?

This is a man who has consistently over a period of 15 years or so let me know in ways that I’m sure he believes are subtle but which absolutely are not subtle, that he thinks that I’m not very bright, and that I should just let the grownups handle things. And I have never pretended to be a mastermind, not for a moment - however, I do possess basic reading comprehension skills, and the most basic of reading comprehension skills would be all that’s necessary to understand why both of his responses to me, but especially that second response, are the work of an idiot. 

Smug in the knowledge that one of us is indeed an idiot, and that the one is not me, I responded as follows: 

I did tell her that I've said all that I can. And as I mentioned, she absolutely refuses to provide a name or contact information. We went back and forth on this point. She called from a private number so I don't even have the number saved in my phone. And as I also mentioned, she will not communicate via email. If she calls me again, I can give her your phone number with your permission. I'll see if someone else can answer my question about rules for interpreters because I'm still curious. 

His response was curt: 

Yes, she can call me. Here’s my number. 

And that’s how I knew that I’d finally gotten through, because whatever else this man is, he’s never rude; in fact, he disguises his contempt for morons like me with exaggerated and verbose courtesy. This man loves to use his words, spoken or written. The very brevity of this response proves that I have done what literally no one else in this community has ever done in the last 40 years: I left him speechless, so to speak. I’d just as soon not have wasted my time on any of this, but I’ll be riding the high of shutting this person up for the next few days. Pro tip, genius: Read the email before you respond.