Hey, Boss/Hey, Staff 

Onsite Staff’s 10 Greatest Concerns

1. You’ve never worked a day on site, so you really can’t relate to me.
2. You’ve never had to talk to residents about their loud sex, their out-of-control children, their barking dog or their bounced check.
3. You’ve never found a dead body. (For the record, a lot of us who work on site HAVE found dead bodies.)
4. You say things to me (and to my team members) that are completely irrelevant to our jobs, proving to us just how out of touch you are with site level people.
5. You can wear jeans or something very casual to work every day because your office’s dress policy is “business casual.” We cannot do that onsite, so please don’t wear your jeans to our site offices. Respect the fact that we have to dress professionally.
6. You record our phone calls, video shop us and more. Would you ever let us listen to your calls? Didn’t think so.
7. We work the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Easter Sunday and many other holidays that are “paid holidays” at the corporate office.
8. Whenever you make staff cuts or budget cuts, they seem to affect us at the site more than at the corporate office. If we work for a REIT, we have ways of checking online to see how much money you earn. We know that it’s waaay more than what we are paid. But we still see that you have cut the $30,000 person at our site, making us work harder—and we don’t get an increase even though we now have fewer people on staff to do the same job. But again, we know what you make.
9. When you come for a site inspection, you’re often either late or don’t show up at all. When you do come, typically you are on your cell phone during the entire visit. You kick us out of our offices for private meetings when we are trying to work, leaving us with no work space. And we know you only find out our names just seconds before you walk in the door so you can use them when you talk to us.
10. We know you sometimes fly in a private jet because you mention it often enough and it filters back to us. Many of us have never flown on any jet. Period.

Management’s 10 Greatest Concerns

1. Your friends are your residents. You hang out with them, drink with them, date them and more. How in the world can you possibly run a property when your residents are your friends?
2. You come to work hungover during weekend shifts. It’s obvious that you are. Why do you do that? Working on the weekend is a part of your schedule and you knew that when you took the job. Schedule your partying for your off-days, please.
3. You know your tattoos and numerous piercings are not supposed to show at work. Please keep them covered—just like we discussed during your hiring orientation. This way, you’ll stop getting written up and we’ll all be much happier.
4. Ladies: bare legs are not allowed. When we say wear hose, we mean wear hose. Just because Katie Couric does it doesn’t mean you can do it.
5. Please take your cigarette smoking breaks away—well away—from the front door of the leasing office. Remember that.
6. Please don’t text residents or prospects with work messages from your cell phone. We don’t care who suggested you do it; it’s just wrong. And it opens the door to a lot of problems. No exceptions!
7. Headquarters deciding to lift the firewall to allow Facebook for marketing and resident retention purposes does not mean you get to play Mafia Wars, Farmville and Cafe World all day long or spend your time searching for your old high school boyfriend or girlfriend. Yes, we know that a bit of abusing networking sites is going to take place by staff members, but please do it during your lunch hour, not during your paid workday.
8. Every prospective resident visiting the community must complete a guest card. No exceptions.
9. If we require photo identification from prospective residents in order to see an apartment, you MUST take a photo identification. No exceptions.
10. Improvements to software and processes are simply that; improvements. We really are trying to make your job easier.
    We are not trying to make it harder with software conversions, upgrades and experimentation with new products. We sincerely want your input, but you must also realize that change is inevitable, and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean we won’t go forward with the upgrade, new product or improvement to service.

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