In today’s combination of political correctness and virtue signaling , clubs can easily make policy decisions based on one complaint that do more to appease the complainer than address the real problems.
I live in a downtown Chicago condo six months of the year. It’s a big building with a doorman and pretty good security. Last winter, a homeless man took shelter in one of our side entrances. He couldn’t get into the main lobby, but took refuge from a cold winter night in our vestibule.
When this was learned by our owners there was a hue and cry to improve our security, and in essence make it harder to get in our building. But what it really did was make it harder for our unit owners to get in the building.
Over time, cooler heads prevailed, the complicated security procedures were reversed, and this incident (the first of its kind in the 58-year history of the building) was recognized for what it was—an incident, not a problem that needed a comprehensive solution.
What does this have to do with the club industry? Everything! A condo association is like a club, with members coming together communally, to experience and enjoy the activities the club provides. In today’s combination of political correctness and virtue signaling, clubs can easily make decisions about club policy based on one complaint that do more to appease the complainer than address the real problems of the club.
It won’t be long before clubs ban plastic straws. This is an example of virtue signaling at its most ridiculous. There are claims that a Rhode Island-sized glop of plastic is floating in the Pacific Ocean, and by banning plastic straws we somehow will start to ameliorate the problem. Never mind that there are no pictures of this mass glop of plastic, or that the United States doesn’t contribute any of the material if in fact there is such a thing. But it makes us feel better by “doing something.” Those who want to ban plastic straws have little or no idea how plastic is made, where it comes from (mostly as a natural gas byproduct that would be burned off at the well otherwise, thus adding to global warming), or what else we do with it.
I know of another example of an incident being viewed as a problem. A few years ago, a club employee turned over a golf cart while joyriding after hours. This led to the manager’s decision to lower the speed governor in terms of overall “safety.” The fact that no golfer had ever turned over a golf cart in the history of the club was irrelevant—“something had to be done.” This inconvenienced the entire membership and added nothing to the safety of the course. The cart was overturned by immaturity and carelessness on the part of the employee, not the members. This was an incident, not a problem to be solved, yet that was the way it was viewed and addressed.
My point is this: Let’s not overreact to everything, and let our common sense rule our decisions about issues that have to be addressed. If it is an incident, treat it as such. If it’s a problem, treat it as such. But don’t treat them the same way.