I transfer apartments 6/15/2012 Fiasco is Midpen normal

After 2 years, I learn Fiasco  is Midpen normal.

I move out of Maintenance Manager Andy’s building for distance. Andy prepares my new apartment. Andy hates working on this apartment because I’m his pariah. Protocol dictates 6 days to prepare and I’m ready with all possessions in the center of my old apartment day 6.

My possessions are on ice for 3 weeks and unable to enjoy my old apartment. No updates from office.

I meet Andy for final walk thru and its bare minimum. I create 3 page punchlist. Andy takes one more week. I move in out of desperation even though incomplete.

• I have to sign its perfect and complete.
• Paint slopped everywhere, paint missing everywhere, vinyl below sink incomplete, shower requires razorblades to remove filth, no stove hood.
• Cleaning and slopped paint removal take 10 hours

• However the worst was to come.

The first night was cool, I closed all windows and awoke the next morning with a migraine headache. I don’t get migraine headaches. The smoke odor was omnipresent. It still exist today. The first month I ran purchased large fans and ran them 24/7 for one month.

Midpen finally provided Air Purifiers which you see on top the boxes. I ran them continuously but they didn’t seem to be efficacious. Closets were the worst so I  removed pantry door and the clothes closet sliding doors.

• The walls should have cleaned with TSP. I doubt Midpen knows what that is.

Insult to injury. I was charged for transfer.

First construction Experience November 21 2011

No Midpen construction oversight supervision

A new roof was put on the entire property. State wide roofing was a phenomenal extremely hard-working crew. Every man on this  10 man crew was more polite and professional than any Midpen employee. Instead of having Midpen oversee, they chose the added expense of using Giuliani Construction as a sort of project manager. I never saw a single Midpen employee even take a glance.

• This Midpen non-involvement was a precursor of failure to come.

Just like the banks during the financial crisis used rating agencies to cleanse their junk mortgages, Midpen uses a second contractor to cleanse and absolve itself of any responsibility for supervision of construction.

• This will prove to be ominous

Meeting with Evelyn Catalin 9/22/2011

Evelyn is so slick, I am blinded

Manager Maria, property manager Tong Vo (a  unctuous Uriah Heep yes-man), Evelyn and myself meet. My agenda included Andy, Draconian rules etc. During the meeting I told Evelyn that I had visited over 10 Midpen properties and one of their Managers had said the following: “they, the Manager, would never live in a Midpen facility because of the Draconian rules. This unstated manager was actually Maria.

Evelyn replied,” I sure would like to speak to that manager.” The implication which I received and which I am sure Maria received was Midpen managers are not allowed to express their own opinions. They are only allowed to express corporate talking points. This is authoritarian chilling.

I did not know it at the time, but from here on out Maria and I were not ever simpatico again. She crossed the line so quickly it was hard to recognize her as the same person. She withdrew, gained a lot of weight and became just like Andy.  She became a Manager you could not trust, who targeted residents who dissented, until the entire community rose up in unison demanding and receiving her removal.

But I had been blinded, and for a moment placated and appeased but not knowing. I emailed the head of Property Management and complimented Evelyn and said we had a productive meeting. After the meeting, absolutely no changes were made in Andy’s behavior and Breaking Bad changes in Maria’s behavior.

I cross the crazy line

I ride my bicycle from Mountain View to Midpen corporate headquarters in Foster City.

I was feeling crazy after getting nowhere with Andy, Fountains Maintenance Manager, but mostly in disbelief about my loss of freedom and liberty. I was and still live in a George Orwell novel repleat with employees acting like Graham Greene bumbling spies. I waited in the office lobby for one or two hours waiting to talk to someone.

• I observed a trance like slowness of the people as they came up and down the stairs and as they left the inner office to go across the lobby to the bathrooms it was almost as if they were so bored they decided to go to the bathroom for something to do even though they had no need.

Finally I meet for a few seconds with Regional Manager Evelyn Catalan. She begins lecturing me on how there is a process at Midpen and I can’t just circumvent that process.

• Elon Musk in a Wired interview” The problem is that at a lot of companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.”

Those of you smarter than me know how this will turn out.

Major league asshole

The significant event

Please note a most important thought to this entire blog.

• Midpen is comprised of all decent people. Any time I label anyone I am speaking of their values and not the person. Generally, Corruption of values.

“In 2000, during a Labor Day event, then-candidate George W. Bush made an offhand remark to his running mate, Dick Cheney, that New York Times reporter Adam Clymer was a “major league asshole.”

Maintenance Andy shows himself uncomfortable in his own skin, spends just a few seconds showing me the apartment, and races out. I don’t see Andy for two weeks. The next time I see Andy I asked how you doing? I already figured out he is a bare minimum worker. Andy answers and tells me how heavy his work load is and how hard he’s working. This same refrain is expressed by every Midpen employee you meet while they are simultaneously doing bare minimum.

Andy and I lock horns.

• Andy was first and foremost A police and punish. All Midpen employees are taught to be the eyes and the ears of the company. Always vigilant.

Over the course of my first three years and Andy’s last three years, I complained no less than 20 times. Most of the time Andy would retaliate with some new made up parking rule or enhanced harrassment of me. Midpen individual properties have their own invisible unpublished (Kangaro0 Court) rules they make up as is their want.

• Another refrain of this blog is it’s so bizarre you can’t make this shit up.

When Maria was first manager at the Fountains, Andy towed her car. Andy over the course of 3 years ticketed at least 50 cars. Except for Midpen employees, we don’t have a parking problem here. In the last two years since Andy left, there have been no cars ticketed because there is not a problem.

Andy was a angry man with a clenched fist expression constantly on his face,

never smiled, the common areas of the property were always very dirty, was extremely bare minimum lazy. For years he would walk by our Russian Jewish residents and Asian residents, never acknowledging them never looking at them with always a mean expression on his face. Most kept their heads down when passing Andy. Maria kept assuring me that they were dealing with Andy implying he would soon be gone, Only a matter of time.

• Residents did not turn in work orders because they did not want Andy in their home. I personally repaired plumbing for Tamara and Alexandr at Fountains 828.
• At MidPen you can be a Major league asshole and retire at 65 in fashionable Los Banos.
• But the real bottom line is Midpen employees have complete impunity.

They are self directed, unsupervised, they are always the biggest rule breakers on the property. UNTOUCHABLE

Resident complaints and requests are taken with a smile, a big greeting and totally disregarded. How could this possibly be so? Maria told me.

• “When you come to us and want something, we can’t really do it because if we did, someone else would want something and then where would be be.”

You can’t make this shit up.

Midpen inmates eventually realize they are Sisyphus

 

Dickens taught me the Inmate metaphor.

Andy forced us all to live breath and feel like an inmate and this sickness is dictated by  Midpen protocol. They are OCD rules, regulations and procedures. I’m  just following orders sir.

• Midpen corruption of values via protocol have no humanity.
• Protocol one size fits all based rules that an old white man (John Stewart) made 30 years ago means that a manager can’t make a decision on what is right or wrong.
• Rules are important, but human beings are messy, and a manager needs to be able to use discretion to make exceptions that  are win win for all.   These are paraphrased words from Lazlo Bock, VP People Operations at Google.

I lease apartment and compliment Manager 7/28/2010

I meet Manager Maria at the Midpen SR Fountains apartments, 2005 San Ramon Avenue Mountain View California. Maria is a breath of fresh air compared to “who are you can’t you see I’m busy.” I email the corporate home office commending Maria. Maria discovers  compliment and we become simpatico. Andy, Maintenance manager introduces me to my new apartment. I consider this unusual because it breaks the continuity between the person who leased my apartment and my entry. Thus begins my journey in learning this nonprofit makes up its own property management principals which has nothing to do with the tried-and-true principles of for profit property management.

I AM UNTOUCHABLE

I run headfirst into the A word but it so befuddles me I don’t recognize it.

In early 2010, I visit Midpen Housing, Ginzton Terrace, 375 Oak Tree Dr. Mountain View CA. I asked the manager if they have any vacant units. The manager without looking up replies “who are you, can’t you see I’m busy”. I turn around and leave knowing I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a precursor to the significant event. This is also an attitude I later fine pervades the entire company.

I AM UNTOUCHABLE and answer only to myself.

 

I am born

This is a story about Dystopian Midpen Housing but first my brief bio.

 David Copperfield, first chapter begins “I am born.”

I was born on a farm in the seismic area of Iowa known as the Des Moines lobe. I often use the fault line metaphor having spent many years living on the San Andreas fault in Stinson Beach. I am a Guitar wannabe and my imaginary rock and roll group is called Thomas Dowa and the San Andrea fault line review.  My mother was Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong all the men are good looking and all the children who are not dysfunctional are above average. My father was a World War II Prisoner Of War, his fighter plane shot down in Nazi Germany.  Iowa/Mom is Bible Belt conservative, they vote TV (fox news) it was very racist where I grew up and our country still is, good schools (albeit my grammar is pathetic), hard work ethic.

A Defining moment on my journey was a graduate school paper I wrote entitled Prejudice and the personality prone to propagate it. Another seminal moment for me was 10 Million downloads in 10 weeks where I became a Geek WannaBe.

Since I live in Silicon Valley where failure is embraced, it is not necessarily a bad word unless left unmeasured &/or no learning in the process.

I have spent most of my life egocentric with both feet or at least one foot in the sandbox. Meditation specifically Mindfulness Base Stress Reduction has taught me to become more sociocentric.

I love the San Francisco Bay area, the freest most beautiful place in the US.

Lastly the internet has provided me a plethora of heroes, thought leaders, authors, peak performers who have taught and guided me on my journey. I mention One hero @photomatt allows me to write this blog.