Brian by Starlight

Poolside Obnoxiousness at the Adriatic

Friday, July 6th, 2007 — 5:34pm (PDT)

While visiting my new and nearby friend Kristen Ivey for a swim late this afternoon, I was accosted by a very rude woman—French, I think, from her accent and her verb and subject transpositions—before either Kristen or I had so much as dipped a toe into the swimming pool at her apartment complex. The woman demanded to know who I was and what I was doing, although it was perfectly obvious both what I was doing and that she had seen what I was doing. She insisted that I had taken an action that was forbidden to everyone who was not a manager or a maintenance person, that for me to take this action was highly unusual, and that I had "taken too much liberty" in doing so.

What was my great infraction? To skim the debris—the leaves and such—from the top of the swimming pool with the net (also known as a "leaf skimmer") that was conveniently stored beside the pool, apparently for that very purpose. How dare I?!

Of course, I saw no sign indicating that the net was for use by management or maintenance personnel only, but if it is the job of such people to keep that swimming pool clean, they obviously weren't doing their job or I would not have seen a need to skim things off myself. What the management personnel were doing, it seems—because the rude woman came forth from the apartment marked as that of the manager—was rudely and needlessly harassing a tenant and her guest for the guest doing a good deed that I have never before in my entire life seen forbidden to tenants or their guests.

After being harrassed, Kristen and I lost our desires to swim and I no longer even felt like remaining in close proximity to the obnoxious woman who had accosted us, so I changed from my swimming trunks into my regular clothes and walked home.