I have been managing the apartment maintenance and funds for the past one year in the building where I live. Its not a big building. There are eight apartments and most are occupied by working couples except a few.
All the residents are duty bound and pay their maintenance by the first week promptly. There is this one couple who have their own problems and often find it difficult to pay their maintenance. Earlier it used to get delayed till almost the end of the month before they paid up.
Slowly and slowly they started slipping and now they have accrued up to three months of dues. Even at that point I used to dutifully request them to pay up the maintenance at least in parts to help them catch up their big backlog.
By this time all the other apartment owners had to be intimated that we are short of funds by three apartment months due to this resident and all owners were pressuring me to get stricter with this resident.
However, I could not see reason how it would help if we ended up antagonizing this resident and continue to be pleasant with this resident till date. My patience bore a little result last month and they paid up a part of accrued maintenance dues for two months together.
However they are again slipping by two months and I dont see any end in sight. While I'm going to continue my strategy of patience, I wonder whether my patience is perceived as a sign of weakness and will being stricter help? hmmm...?
This was in Oct 2009.
Now: Feb 2010. The said resident has paid up all their dues by themselves even as their dues crept up to a relatively high five thousand! This happened as I was slowly resigning to the amount creeping higher! What a miracle! I'm humbled and I feel bad that I even had a shade of doubt of their willingness to catch up. Once again, the world has reaffirmed that appealing to the good person in everyone definitely begets only goodwill. I'm glad that I was patient.
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