This is so suburbia. I live up a “street” where eight houses reside. This “street” is really an elaborate driveway because all of the houses are addressed to the “main” street, 55th Ave. You can see what I’m talking about on the map below. So all eight houses’ mailboxes used to sit on a mailbox stand off of 55th Ave. Last year some hit-and-run douchebag completely demolished the mailboxes. Yay!
Someone kindly took bungee cords and strapped all of the mailboxes to a saw horse and moved the mailbox-unit on to our “driveway” so that they were out of the flow of heavy traffic. I think it was the post office that did this, but not sure. This was definitely a better setup, even with ghetto rig bungee cords and a saw horse. The previous setup was just begging to be pwned by a drunk driver.
The mailboxes were now safer and happier. Then one day I was arriving home from a run and I saw my neighbor building a new mailbox stand. The mailboxes were just selected for Extreme Makeover Home Edition. The new unit was made of fine cedar wood and each mailbox had a mounted plasma screen TV. Okay okay, so no TV’s in the mailboxes, but the new unit is a freaking nice mailbox stand. “Weird”, I thought, but I didn’t think too much of it until one day his high-school age son asked if I was going to contribute to help pay for it. Contribute?
I don’t know…a part of me wants to be selfless and wants to bless these people for their work and be like, “you know what?, it doesn’t matter that I wasn’t consulted, here’s $110 for your work”. The other part of me is expecting a major “WTF?” to be in order. I wasn’t asked and it addition to this, I am one of three owners, so I either need finance the other owners, or pay $36.66. How does a mailbox stand cost $880 anyway? I just wasn’t asked, just expected to pay. Not cool. Not cool at all and it bothers me. Those mailboxes have a nicer roof than the leaky roof on my house.
This is sad indeed… what happened to neighbors that actually cared about each other and watched out for one another and actually talked to each other? Has this become the way we deal with one another anymore… what happened to community not to mention manners???
I understand it needed fixing and bless the soul for doing it… but come on please… “Open thy mouth” and communicate… really how hard is it? Better roof wow… now that is saying something of your house or of the material the gentleman who built this out of…
It’s saying a lot about the material and my house!
I’ve thought of this a lot too…wanting to get to know my neighbors, be more bold, just start communicating. I haven’t helped this problem, but have only contributed with my negligence. It’s much easier to sit back and blog about it than spend effort to get to know these people. It’s looking like I might be living in this house much longer and this will be one of my goals.
If someone chooses to take on a project and front the expense of said project on his own without the consultation and approval of others, then how can he expect others to help pay for the bill? Frankly he can’t. If it’s a group expense it should be a group decision.
And sending his HS son over to do his ‘I’m a lame-o’ work? Lame-o.
The first year I was working at the Big G, someone on the team decided, on their own, to get all of the managers (maybe five then at the time in our group?) gifts for Manager’s Day. At TIFFANYS. Let’s just say that this fellow learned a valuable lesson about asking and retrieving funds before the gift was purchased.
Under the common law, you may have a tenancy in common over the stand on which the mailboxes are built. Co-tenants do not have to reimburse one another for expenses undertaken unilaterally. The majority of jurisdictions may require reimbursement for “essential” expenses, for which this most likely does not qualify.
Furthermore, once those mailboxes are built as such, they become the property of the U.S. Government.
Your neighbor loses. Sorry. Next case.
A classic O.Shane response!
Pay the money and spray paint yours gold.
This makes me LOL.