I live next to a football pitch for a local team. They don't take care of their ground, their fence fell down, they replaced it with fence you see on building sites, but left big wooden fence panels with large rusty nails sticking out of it. This would be fine if it was on their land, but it's not it's in our communal car park. We've been asking them to move it for over 8 months, we've spoken to the council about it too.
Last weekend one of our dogs ran across said fence and punctured one of her tendons. It's cost around £300 in vets bills, but thankfully she seems to be recovering well.
You'll notice I've not posted about anxiety in a while, the reason for this is that I'm managing fairly well. Avoiding confrontation is something I've been able to stop doing. My wife and I went over to talk to the "board" of said football club, all three of them. I'll refer to them as Forgettable, Anorak with 'tache and Heart Attack. Forgettable stayed fairly quiet throughout the exchange. The chairman Anorak with 'tache refused to look at my wife in the eyes, as they've fobbed her off for ages with promises of moving the fence and never done anything about it. My wife also gives them a hard time about people goign to the football using our car park. They really don't like her. Heart Attack is named as such as he informed us that he's just come back after recovering from a heart attack. All he seemed to do was stare at his phone when we were talking to him, trying to ignore us and chipping in weak and unhelpful remarks. I love my wife, when she knows she's in the right, she'll take on anyone. I've generally included my small part in this exchange.
The following excuses were made for not moving the fence.
We've no been able to, we need more than two of us. I've just come back from having a heart attack.
Bollocks I can lift a panel fine, they'd just need to flip it over back onto their land. When mentioned that can you not get help from your players to lift it they're here a couple days a week. There was reaction along the lines that this was an unfathomable solution and that they players wouldn't help.
I'm not sure why Anorak with 'tache thought it was relevant to
They never answered our question of "To some she might be just a dog, but school kids go past all the time, what if it had been one of them who got injured."
Heart Attack asked my wife what she wanted, she said an apology. Replying in an insincere manner that he was sorry and never once looking up from his phone.
At this point, I decided a bit of confrontation wouldn't go amiss...
Me: Can you please look at me when you're talking to me? It's really disrespectful to keep playing with your phone while we're having this conversation.
Heart Attack: Ah'm listening tae ye.
Me: It doesn't look like it, it looks like you're more interested in your phone and that is really disrespectful.
That for a lot of people won't seem like much, but for me that's a massive leap forward. The look on his face was priceless, like a teenager who's cornflakes had been shat on.
My wife then informed them they'd be getting the vet's bill and threatened them with the small claims court. Anorak with 'tache said it would be like getting blood out of a stone.
We wandered off after that, but here's the wee survivor in her The Cone of Shame(tm).
