I’ve been living in a community for about 5 years, and one of the issues that keeps coming up is the stupid dolly.

There were originally 2 dollies for our building, and they were purchased by the lessor to help people move in. They weren’t particularly fancy or robust, just regular dollies that might move a refrigerator, stove, or a stack of sedated children. It’s pretty clear that when they were purchased they were purchased for that sort of purpose.

Reasonable people made good use of them, but others decided that they were to be used for everything, from groceries (which they suck at) to bags of concrete. Contractors for individuals started using them as well, and lo! They started breaking.

My thought, as silly as it is, is that these were temporary dollies for moving in, not to be used by everyone for every stupid little things. If you have groceries to move, there are better things available at stores and online to move them than a dolly. I have my own dolly for moving heavy stuff, should I need to, and a collapsible box trolly (like a cart) for groceries. With all appendages still attached, I can tell you this did not cost me an arm or a leg.

Problems that arise with the dollies include, but are not limited to, finding them because people don’t always return them immediately, noisy wheels, being dirty (!) from the contractors and being broken because some adults don’t understand basic physics and so don’t know how to use them properly for larger loads.

We have bigger issues. The lessor still hasn’t painted the buildings, which in the lease they were supposed to do last year. People aren’t paying their maintenance fees, the floors in the corridors have the wrong tiles so they are porous and hold onto oil and dirt as if their very existence depended on it… but the WhatsApp chat is alive with the sounds of people jabbering about dollies.

The most recent chapter in this ongoing saga is that they repaired the one surviving dolly, using smaller wheels than originally so it has a slight tilt, and with the wheels it can likely only carry about 120 lbs – which should make people question whether it’s still a dolly. Why we keep repairing them is beyond me, but there are a vocal few who whine enough about it, so this is their circus and bread for some members of the Board.

As a former member of the Board, I was against replacing them since people need their own so that they can be responsible for their own stuff instead of being subject to the idiots other people who abuse the dollies. It takes one person to muck it up for everyone else. This, however, never stuck with the Board, so they keep attempting to fix stupid.

This last iteration included, since it was shared on the chat, that the remaining dolly couldn’t take as much weight (120 lbs expected), and should be used with care – but the people who have been abusing the common dolly are still the same ones using it. As responsible adults have gotten their own ways of dealing with groceries and miscellanea, the pool of people using the dolly has become a pool of an increasing concentration of people who treat them poorly.

In my mind, this is stupid. Using maintenance fees to humor idiots does not seem to be of good community value. Yet, they are being pandered to because… squeaky wheels get fixed.

That’s society.

So someone just posted on the chat that a sign should be made. Because one more sign will stop people from being stupid, apparently.

Unbelievable.