Volmarias posted:

Gosh, they sure did get bit with that $10k price it's hovering around.

Residency Evil posted:

Jesus, taking this thread as a reminder to never ever ever buy a home under an HOA.

Sundae posted:

Also, look for minorities. The more of them, the better too.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

"I'm looking at HOA communities because I want to live in a safe neighborhood."

Edit: Not an HOA, but when I lived in DC I had people tell me that they thought Mount Pleasant (Average income: $134k, 41% have a Master's Degree or higher, lower than average crime, 26% hispanic, and 21% black) was "sketchy" and "not a safe neighborhood" because there were so many signs in Spanish.

Lots of people also said Georgetown was the best neighborhood because "there's no metro stops and hardly any bus stops" there.

Volmarias posted:

Gosh, they sure did get bit with that $10k price it's hovering around.

Griefor posted:

The average person who bought in at $1k or after will have lost money in the end. There's no value being added so the only money coming out is money being put in by others.

FateFree posted:

You boys just wait for bubble number five!

Sundae posted:

Read the HOA rules, then walk around the neighborhood and chat with people before buying into one. Look for obvious violations where people straight up don't give a poo poo and nobody calls them out on it. The more of these, the better (within reason; look out for things indicating you'd be living with utter assholes, of course). Decorations that don't adhere to the rules, garbage cans out too late in the day, garage doors open showing off a garage-built bar/TV room, cars being worked on, etc etc. Other good examples are if you know there's a breed restriction or pet quantity limit and you see people openly flaunting it. Chat with people out and about and see what their views on the HOA are. Also, look for minorities. The more of them, the better too. Sure, Karen and Ken aren't exclusively a white thing, but you have better odds with fewer white people.

No guarantees of course, but that's at least going to give you an idea. If you see nothing out of line in the neighborhood and everyone following all the rules, or (even worse) violation notifications on people's doors, run for the hills.

Motronic posted:

None of this tells you how the HOA will conduct itself at any point in the future, and you have little (1/<number of units>) chance of doing anything about that.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

General Probe posted:

This person is a psychopath and should 100% be prevented from gaining any additional power in any organization.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

She's already the comptroller, which is the highest position you can be in the Accounting/Auditing department.

Photex posted:

Has anyone called her a oval office and poo poo on her desk recently?

Moneyball posted:

I don't think that word is appreciated around here

Phanatic posted:

And the bit about having to justify periods of network inactivity is hilariously dumb. If I'm sitting there doing work I'm not lighting up the network, because I'm doing work.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Not exactly directly BWM, but our comptroller is one of those people that is absolutely furious at the idea that someone, somewhere, is getting more than they "deserve" at any moment.

She is also somewhat of a bootlicker/penny-pincher who spends every quarterly meeting offering up strict benefit cuts that even the management doesn't want to do. Most of these are insanely small or insanely rare instances that don't save any meaningful amount of money in the long-run (like monitoring the reams of paper and number of paper clips taken from the supply closet by each individual person) and she gets no personal reward or benefit from these changes.

She sent a follow-up email asking us to change the name of the "week on/week off" schedule because people are WORKING from home and aren't "OFF" during their off week.



She is in charge of budgetary and spending matters; not administration or management. But, she is obsessed with making sure that every bit of "value" is being used properly by management or else we are "losing money" on it.

Krispy Wafer posted:

I think the first line item are people who are volunteering to not come into the office, but who are not working from home. So they have to use one day from their months of accumulated PTO that they acquired with the long con of getting 3 earned freeloading months of income when they retire.

Lockback posted:

I have been turned to the dark side in that I prefer "use it or lose it" PTO. If you let people cash out sick time, it gives incentive to come into the office sick and spread vileness (especially where WFH is not feasible/allowed). Similar with vacation time, it really promotes burn out. I think the best answer is to give generous amounts of PTO but hold people to use it and not stash it. If you leave the company you should get paid out but the "I've been saving up my sick time for 5 years" people are the same people spreading crap every flu season.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Part of it is on managers to encourage people to use their days.

quote:

I got a phone call from my boss over the weekend apologising!

Apparently the email was sent to all zoom users mail group within the company and it was supposed to go to only a couple of people who got very drunk and abusive - sexist and racist during a Friday afternoon drinks session. Some body parts were also waved about!

Apparently zoom meetings are not recorded but the manager where the people were being rude started to record his meeting!

I asked him if he was drinking and he says he was. I need to find out where the rumours that they were drinking apple juice cane from.

This afternoon access to works systems have been restored and there is an email form HR confirming that the original email was sent to the whole group in error and confirming that social team building alcoholic drinks are acceptable but to be wary of those in the workforce that don’t drink for health, religious or other reasons and to ensure all are included.

Don’t know what to think really and expect that this Fridays meeting will be a little on the subdued side!

quote:

Actually, the sale was a fiasco, or, more precisely, one part of an ongoing fiasco. All of the items came from a now-defunct company, Aristophil, which starting in 2002 built one of the largest collections of rare books, autographs and manuscripts in history — some 136,000 pieces in all.

...

Six years ago, the French authorities shut down Aristophil and arrested Mr. Lhéritier, charging him with fraud and accusing him of orchestrating what amounts to a highbrow Ponzi scheme. As he bought all those rare manuscripts and letters, he had them appraised, divided their putative value into shares and sold them as if they were stock in a corporation. Those shares were bought by 18,000 people, many of them elderly and of modest means, who collectively invested about $1 billion.

...

The authorities seized the entire collection and hired a company to catalog and auction off all 136,000 pieces, a process that will take years and hundreds of sales, just like the one in November. The hope is to return as much money as possible to investors, which, based on the more than two dozen auctions already held, will amount to perhaps 10 cents on the dollar.

The problem has nothing to do with quality. Everything in the collection is authentic, and a large part of it is highly coveted. But the authorities say that with the help of pliant experts, Mr. Lhéritier grossly inflated the value of pieces before he sold shares in them. A set of Einstein documents he bought from Christie’s in 2002 for $560,000, for instance, was divided into hundreds of shares and sold at a valuation of $13 million.

Lockback posted:

Followup on the Zoom drinking thing. Still sounds super made up to me.

Lockback posted:

This seems likely made up, and what I know about UK employment law it will absolutely fail on the part of the manager, but I still found it hilarious.

Team Sacked for drinking in office hours

England

We all work from home due to CV19

Every week since lockdown our manager in a very large company (10k employees) has invited us for a Friday afternoon beer on Zoom.

We all get a cold beer from the fridge and have a chat about the week’s events.

The meetings start at 1600 and finishes at 1700 - office hours.

After this weeks meeting we all got an email from HR saying our manager had video of us drinking in office hours over several weeks and that we are being dismissed immediately for gross misconduct without notice.

One of my colleagues says when my manager poured himself a wine it was grape juice.

Our contracts do state that drinking on duty is a sackable offence!

We were clearly set up!

Is this legal?

All of us have been working for over 5 years and the company usually pays enhanced redundancy but will not pay anything now, not even notice pay!

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Worked a job once where the manager in charge of the support contract brought on someone who ... well, it wasn't really clear what his role was. Eventually it came out his main responsibility was watching Skype and noting when people went idle/active.

I installed an application that moved my mouse that day.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Not exactly directly BWM, but our comptroller is one of those people that is absolutely furious at the idea that someone, somewhere, is getting more than they "deserve" at any moment.

She is also somewhat of a bootlicker/penny-pincher who spends every quarterly meeting offering up strict benefit cuts that even the management doesn't want to do. Most of these are insanely small or insanely rare instances that don't save any meaningful amount of money in the long-run (like monitoring the reams of paper and number of paper clips taken from the supply closet by each individual person) and she gets no personal reward or benefit from these changes.

She sent a follow-up email asking us to change the name of the "week on/week off" schedule because people are WORKING from home and aren't "OFF" during their off week.



She is in charge of budgetary and spending matters; not administration or management. But, she is obsessed with making sure that every bit of "value" is being used properly by management or else we are "losing money" on it.

Dik Hz posted:

Also that part about office supplies is insane. The time it takes someone to track down the key, unlock the cabinet, fill out the log form, and return the key is way more valuable than an extra pack of staples.