Do you live in a condo building that has a pool or a hot tub?
I used to and I barely used it because too many other people exhibited weird behaviour – like dudes wearing bathing suits in which all their bits hung out and people who refused to shower before getting in.
Yuck.
But that’s nothing compared to the problem Terry faces in his Burnaby condo tower, where a fight over smoking rules has wafted its way all the way to the amenities areas.
Terry says his strata council is either too afraid of the smokers in the building, or too lazy, to enforce the no smoking rules.
“And the smokers know this so they flout the rules as much as possible,” he said. “So I’ve been using the gym in the building before and there is someone who lights up a smoke because I’ve been vocal about the rules. They just laugh at me. Now, people are smoking joints in the hot tub and drinking a glass of wine. The whole place stinks. And, yet again, they just laugh about it because they know they won’t be punished for it. I’m just fed up.”
Terry now says lawyers have been called as he looks to get some action.
This isn’t the only problem building.
Teddy lives in a different condo tower in which smoking is banned, but where smokers “just laugh at that notion.”
“People openly smoke in the elevators, the lobby and the hallways because our strata is a bunch of cowards who are too scared of their own shadows to confront anyone,” said Teddy. “And one strata members is also a smoker who bullies the rest of them. The more we file complaints, the more smokers go out of their way to flout the rules. They think it’s a big joke because the strata refuses to do anything about it. I told them, ‘Better lawyer up, Bud’ because I have had it.”
I basically get two types of reader complaints about stratas and rental buildings. The leadership either takes rules to extremes or they don’t do anything at all to enforce rules.
The No. 1 rules complaint based on reader complaints is about smoking, which is being outlawed in more and more places. Now many buildings and governments are adding vaping restrictions to the mix.
While B.C. has the lowest smoking rate in Canada, at 14.2 per cent, there are still approximately 550,000 British Columbians who smoke, though an estimated 70 per cent of them want to quit, according the B.C. Ministry of Health.
To access the smoking cessation program, call HealthLink B.C., at 811.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
