Ronald’s attorney tried to negotiate. He asked if Ronald could redesign the balcony to avoid the encroachment. But my attorney said the court order was for removal, and any future construction would need to go through proper channels, including HOA approval and county permits, neither of which Ronald currently had. The 30-day clock started and Ronald did nothing for the first 3 weeks. I think part of him still believed he could find some way out. Maybe he thought I would get tired and settle.
Maybe he thought the HOA would change its mind. I don’t know what was going through his head. On day 25, my attorney sent his attorney a reminder that failure to comply with a court order would result in contempt proceedings. On day 27, a construction crew showed up at Ronald’s house. I was working from home that day and I heard the trucks early in the morning and looked out the window. Three guys with tools climbing up to the balcony.
They started taking it apart. It took two full days. The decking came off first, then the railing, then the structural beams. The support post on my property was the last thing to go. They had to dig out the concrete footing with a small excavator. And when they pulled it out, there was this hole in my yard about 2 ft wide and a foot and a half deep. The crew filled it with dirt and then tamped it down.
When the last beam came off the side of Ronald’s house, there was this ugly rectangular scar on the siding where the balcony had been attached. Bold holes, discolored wood flashing that no longer covered anything. It looked terrible. Ronald was going to need to resite that whole section of his house. I was sitting on my patio when the foreman came over. He asked if I wanted them to do anything about the hole in my yard. Maybe resought the area.
I told him that was between his client and me. He shrucked and went back to cleaning up the total cost of the demolition. as I learn I learned through the court filings was somewhere around $14,000 that was just a removal. The legal fees were about $8,000 plus the HO’s legal fees which I heard were similar at in the county fines the cost of building the balcony in the first place and the repairs he now needed to do on his own house where the balcony had been attached before.
He was looking at close to $50,000 or $60,000 total for a balcony he got to enjoy for about 6 months. The aftermath was quieter than I expected. Ronald and his wife don’t talk to me anymore, which honestly is fine. They put their house on the market about 2 months after the balcony came down. It sold quickly because it’s a nice house in a good neighborhood, but I heard the sale price was a bit below what they were hoping for because the property now had a disclosed legal dispute in its history.
And the next one is a malicious compliance story which is titled working hours. So, I once had a job where I did network support for a corporation in a city that supported a manufacturing plant in another state. That plant started operations at 7 every morning and the software and data connections had to be up and running when the plant started or they couldn’t do their business. So then I made it my job to make sure I was there at 7 every morning.
Because of this, I would leave around 400 p.m. in the afternoon. One day, somebody had some network problem at 4:30 and I was not there to answer questions. I’m not talking about problems at the plant. I’m talking about one person in the office had trouble with their terminal. The next day I was given a lecture that I had to stay until 5 every day. I tried to point out the reason for the early arrival and departure, but the manager, of course, couldn’t understand this logic.
She wanted me there until 5:00 because her friend had issues getting her terminal to work at 4:30 one day. So, maybe you can guess what happened next. I started working 8 to 5:00. It was not 2 weeks before there was a problem at the planned communications at 7:00 a.m. I got the call around 7:00 and all I could do was say, “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I just got out of bed, so it’s going to be about an hour.” And well, let me tell you, not a single person ever said anything about me leaving at 4 again.
And yeah, guys, thanks for listening.
