or
"I'd call him a douchebag, but he'd probably misspell it."
Lord knows I have a tendency toward the dramatic, particularly when it comes to telling stories, on my blog or otherwise. Drama makes for better storytelling. Bear that in mind, but also note that in this story, I am not the dramatic one. No, this time, I left the drama queens to themselves.
As you may or may not know, I screwed myself into becoming a member of the Titanic Mill Residence Committee. That was, admittedly, totally my bad, and I should have known better than to open my mouth. In my defense, I was trying to find a way to weasel out of being a member of TMRC, but no one else opened their mouths (smart people) so that's where I screwed up. OK, that drama, that's totally me, but it's also just ancillary to the main story.
Since the elections at the July meeting, the TMRC has consisted of a Chair, a Vice-Chair, a Secretary, and a Vice-Secretary, along with four general members. The Chair is well-meaning, if brusque, generally set in his ways, and not really open to change, but he will give you the shirt off his back and make you feel like you've done him a favour. That said, he is difficult to get along with. The Vice-Chair claims that she's got years of PR experience, but just because you work with people doesn't mean you can relate with them or get along with them. She's incredibly irritating and pushy, she tries to dominate conversations, and very much has her own agenda for the TMRC, one that, while not necessarily bad, should not be the primary focus of the TMRC. As a point of reference, TMRC was created to ensure that stuff in the building works properly. At their insistence, the position of Caretaker was created, so the communal areas now get cleaned. Because there are so many problems with building maintenance (like there isn't any), the committee works to make sure things like that happen. The Vice-Chair, however, wants TMRC to be a social and community building group, and thinks that we waste too much time on trying keep the building from falling down around our ears, when we could have a garden party instead. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but frankly, not much.
Right there is where our biggest personality clash lies. The Chair and Vice-Chair hate each other. The Secretary (an awesome woman, who seems to be very good at her job, and is very genuine and nice) and the Vice-Secretary (an older gentleman who has a wicked sense of humor, and absolutely no interest in social activities) are both walking the middle line, though the Vice-Secretary tends to side with the Chair more vocally, while the Secretary works with all parties (but teds to side with the Chair, just more democratically).
Complicating the hatred the Chair and VC feel for each other is a committee member, who seems to think that the VC shits gold. That's fine, but instead of just two people sniping at each other every meeting, now three people are. And the third person is also sending passive-aggressive emails to the Chair, complaining about how the Chair treats the VC. While there is some room for valid complaints, that's not the way to handle it. Neither is everyone yelling at each other, like what happened at the last meeting.
Where I come in to all of this starts in the September meeting. The passive-aggressive member and the VC wanted to write a Resident Handbook. Essentially, this would be a guide providing basic information on how stuff in the apartments and the building works--where the rubbish and recycling bins are, how the fresh air and extraction systems work, what to do about TV and internet, etc. Making a pretty good guess that it would never happen, I volunteered to edit and compile all the information, if other people wrote it. And I was right: it never happened.
Until this month. Passive-aggressive committee member wrote a handbook. He then gave copies to at least some of the committee, myself included, to look over and return to him ASAP. It probably isn't the worst written thing I've ever read, but it's damn close. I don't think he spell-checked it (he does however, have auto-correct turned on in Word, which is creating a load of other problems), he copy/pasted stuff from Wikipedia into the document without citing it (not technically illegal, but immoral and lazy), he doesn't have any consistency in any type of formatting, and his grasp of English grammar, capitalization, and punctuation is worse than a Japanese law student (I know, because I edited a paper from a Japanese law student while I was at Leicester. English wasn't her native language, but you wouldn't know it to read her paper.). I'm pretty certain this guy's native language is English, but his writing implies that it is not. In fact, that was the first thing Adam asked when he started to read it.
So I now have a copy to look over, offer suggestions, and return. It's 12 pages long, and I've only gotten through the first four pages. The cover page alone has about 10 edits on it, and it's only three sentences long. What makes this worse is that I'm only copy-editing, not looking at the content, unless it's so glaringly wrong I can't let it slide (there a bunch of those, too). I understand that everyone makes mistakes, but there are the occasionally mistakes and the combination of just bad writing and laziness in self-editing. Even as a rough draft I could never produce anything so bad, and I would certainly look it over before sending it out to others to edit--that's just common courtesy.
So now I'm stuck with editing it. I was approached today by the Chair (on behalf of himself, the Secretary, and the VS) to see if I was editing it. I said yes, and got an exclamation of relief in reply. All three of them think it's absolutely awful as well. We also all figure that passive-aggressive committee member and the VC will think we're ganging up on them, but the fact of the matter is, it sucks. It's really, really bad. Luckily, I'll finish my edit in the next day or so (I can only work on it for so long--I'm not getting paid, and it makes my brain bleed if I stare at it too long), keep a copy for myself, give a copy back to passive-aggressive committee member, and pass another copy on to the Chair, so he can make copies and hand out my edits to the other committee members. And then I will fly back to the states, and let them all fight it out. I'm happy to communicate by email, but I think passive-aggressive committee member will be so upset that I've trashed his work (I'm being nice, mind you, but I'm doing an editor's job), that he'll either send me passive-aggressive emails, or his just ignore me and/or my edits.
Wish I had a red pen. I need to buy one. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with some unedited excerpts of what I have to deal with (all italics, bolding, and such are what I was presented with, not my additions). Points to anyone who can point out everything wrong. Yes, some of it's subjective, but still...
Internal re - cycle cooker hoods, although fitted with stainless steel fats filter; which can be washed in hot soapy water; all cooker hoods should also have a carbon filter fitted to prevent excess grease from collecting around the motor; which could lead to a fire starting.
The windows in the building are cleaned by a company named Sparkling glass. The windows will be cleaned periodically. Those apartments which have Balconies do not give access to the workmen, so they will not clean Balcony windows, as they pose risk to the work men. Separate arrangements with sparkling glass can be make to clean balcony windows, however this will at a charge to you.
