The Director of Center Communities, the facility in which I reside, is a woman by the name of Rhonda. I've been dealing with Rhonda for a little over a year, beginning about eight months after she was hired for the position. Each issue I've brought to her (not that I've brought her much, as I could see early on who she was) has been handled the same way; she expresses faux sympathy and hands me off to one of her subordinates who does virtually nothing. As I mentioned in a previous post, both she and one of those subordinates encouraged me repeatedly to call the police, because they simply cannot be bothered to do their jobs.

Dealing with Rhonda over the noise issues and trying to wrest another apartment from her has been an ongoing odyssey of posturing, obstruction, deception and psychological games, and has been destructive to my health. After six months, I couldn't deal with her any longer, so my closest friend took over and began to advocate on my behalf. He's retired, but he used to employ Teamsters, and he has found Rhonda to be utterly intractable and impossible to deal with.

After months of our running around in circles with her, Rhonda finally offered me an acceptable apartment. I requested certain modifications, and she had the Director of Maintenance and myself perform weeks of research and legwork, implying that at least some of it would be done. She sat on the information for a week, then emailed me to tell me, "We're doing nothing", and presented herself as a saint merely for giving me the apartment (to which I am legally entitled) and performing the same renovations they perform in every other apartment in this 44 year-old building as people die or move out.

I was on the phone this afternoon in a conference call with Rhonda and my friend. Rhonda threw up roadblock after roadblock, refusing to make the slightest modification or to allow us to do so. Talking to her is impossible to begin with; she pretends to listen until it's her turn to speak, then she tells you, essentially, that she is right, you are wrong and its going to be done her way. Arguing with her is equally futile; she merely repeats the same things over and over like a robot, and seems to think she's somehow communicating. The tragic irony is that she presents herself as a listener, communicator and problem solver - and she is not even remotely any of these things.

As the argument progressed, I was getting pretty hot and was raising my voice. At one point, she said, "I'm trying to help you", which was a baldfaced lie because our "relationship" has become purely a pissing contest. I said, "Yeah? Then why don't you deal with any of the noise issues I've brought you over the past year, instead of telling me to call the police?" I then started to say, "And by the way, the police are appalled that you're telling residents to call them instead of dealing with these issues in-house" (which is true), but I only got as far as "The police are appalled... ", at which point she interrupted me and said, icily and in an accusatory tone, "I WISH you wouldn't call the police."

Well, I lost it. I shouted at her, "YOU told me repeatedly to call them! Jill [the Director of Community Life, the subordinate to whom Rhonda handed me off months ago] told me on at least two occasions, 'I support your decision. I ENCOURAGE you to call the police. We think of the police as our partners!'" I then said to my friend, "This is the reason I wanted to go directly to Lou Woolf [the CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife] six months ago. This woman has been full of bullshit from day one. She is a world class phony." Rhonda then got her hackles up because I was calling her out, and said, "If you're going to talk that way... ." I hung up on her.

My friend called me about ten minutes later and told me, "I worked on her from the moment you got off the phone, but she wouldn't budge." I said, "I suppose she didn't admit any wrongdoing in telling me to call the police, then behaving as though I were at fault for doing so." He replied, "Hey, she isn't going to change who she is." No, she isn't.

I'm turning the entire thing over to an attorney, and he can go to Hebrew SeniorLife's upper management. It's time they were forced to confront the horrendous mistake they made in hiring Rhonda. She's in way over her head; she has terrible administrative and personal skills and Hebrew SeniorLife has violated the trust of the residents of these buildings and their families by placing her in this position of authority.