JMC No More

I've tendered my resignation in August but only officially resign in September. That's 12 months service with an earlier 2 months kepoh-ing their monthly meeting. Seeing that I quit, clearly the negative has out weight the perks from that role.

I wouldn't rant on the monthly meetings that drag on past midnight almost every single time. After all, that's part and parcel of being JMC. It wouldn't be half bad if we actually accomplish something from these late night gatherings, most of the time it feels like pissing into a sea of piss. In fact all the time it feels like that.

The biggest problem is there is no senior manager manning the site. Everything goes to the building executive which I think is an okay person when coming to handling small matters. However when coming to managing people and service providers, that's his main weakness. He's just too soft. Though I do hope that this will not be a permanent problem as only recently a new building manager was assigned to this place.

Then again, the JMC is partially to be blamed too. The JMC micromanages every single thing. Especially when coming to purchases. This will delay essential repairs as the management can't do anything until it gets majority vote. And this is also one of the main factor driving me away from the JMC role. It wouldn't have come to this if there was no breach of trust by the past manager as accused by the current JMC. If it was true, a police report would have been made and the managing company would be replaced. Instead they retain the company, and fire the manager. As a result, many prospective managers shy away form our apartment.

And seeing how management is being 'slow' certain projects were taken up by JMC which I too participated. The project that I was involved in was gym room upgrade, after completing a tedious hand holding-maintenance-work of keeping the parking lots well lit, which mainly consist of rewiring the entire lighting system to external wire trunking as we discovered that the internal wiring had shorted out.
The gym room upgrade was actually a project of another JMC who was pressured by her non JMC kaki to undertake as they use the gym room allot. Coincidentally this JMC was not well verse with gym equipment, nor even use any gym equipment. All I need to do was compare price in their quotations and giving a little feedback saying 'I had gym membership before' and viola, now it becomes my project.
Having total control over a certain project isn't really a bad thing either. Like the gym room upgrade which is essentially purchasing new equipment to replace old ones. The original gym equipment supplied by developers are nothing more then home use flimsy exercise machines. No surprise that it broke. So the original head project JMC sourced for quotations on gym equipment while I compared it with previous recommendations from previous manager (whom was fired). The price difference was huge for similar spec. After that, there's a round of visit to supplier facility to inspect the equipment intended for purchase. Just like how government purchasing officers does it, minus the under table money, big fulfilling dinner and free spa.
So, the gym was equipped with new toys, and spent less then the approved budget. Residents are once again happy, until someone broke the 2 week old upright bike. Fucking vandals.

The next project however is what convinced me that I should leave. The terms too many chef spoils the soup holds true in this case, the resident card system which has been a pet JMC project for 2 years prior me joining the committee. It would've been forgivable if the JMCs were bickering amongst themselves about which card system to adopt. I never knew there were so many types of proximity cards and sensors existed. What has been holding back the implementation was extremely trivial. How the card should look like! O_O
And it happened way too many time. When a design is put to vote, there will be comments on how to improve it. Some want detailed particulars like unit number, some don't. Some want an encoded code (something like the nirc number) to identify unit of resident, some don't and has even voted against it. Some like pink, others don't. And there was one time that I though they have finally finalized on a design when it got majority vote, only to have it cast back into the redesign,voting endless cycle when someone says 'hey, landscape mode looks better then portrait'