Sunday 10 February 2013

Toughest Job in the Military


Have any of you ever seen the TV show called ‘Dirty Jobs’? The show features a guy who tries his hand at some of the most disgusting jobs you can think of from Sewer Inspector and Road Kill Cleaner to Turkey Inseminator and Alligator Egg Collector. While all of these jobs are pretty feral, (Turkey Inseminator??? Really???) there is another job out there which I think would be more insane than all of these combined. And that is a Property Manager at DHA.

Sure, they don’t have to inseminate animals and come into contact with faeces but they do have to deal with a sometimes dangerous and always unpredictable species – the army wife.

I’m constantly surprised by the amount of army wives who lack the ability to think for themselves when they have a minor problem. I’m sure you’ll all know someone like this. They are the type to call the DHA Maintenance Line over something like a broken cupboard door handle and then get upset when told it’s not an urgent issue. This same person would then accuse you of attacking them if you kindly suggested they fix said handle with a spot of super glue.

But by far the Property Manager’s toughest foe is the army wife with a sense of entitlement. I would just love to be able to listen in on the conversations between them. I’d love to know how they responded to a wife when she complained that their house wasn't suitable because the main bedroom was too far away from the other bedrooms. Or how the Property Manager managed to hold back her laughter when the same wife told them that they wanted to move because their sloping backyard was a hazard to their toddler.

I know this is opening a huge can of worms but when did people start becoming so ungrateful for the housing we have access to and start demanding that everything be up to their own high standards. So the bathroom of the place you've just moved into has a shower with a curtain rather than a glass door. So what! Can you not get just as clean in a shower without a glass door?  What’s that? DHA gave you a house with lino instead of tiles? How will you ever survive? And heaven forbid that your backyard has a slope and your toddler might fall over. Guess what lady? Toddlers are going to fall over on flat ground too. (In fact, toddlers are pretty much going to fall down anywhere. They are just like tiny, little drunk people :-p)

I’m guessing that because we haven’t seen the news headline ‘property manager shoots whingeing army wife’ that they are (somewhat) successfully getting on with their job, despite having to deal with nut jobs. So I think it would make an awesome ‘Dirty Jobs’ episode:-P

Til next time,
C.