That seems reasonable (and by “reasonable” I mean, “Something that everyone has to put up with because there is a smallish percentage of idiots who simply can’t comprehend that the rules apply to them, too”).
Actually, I think the kid’s name was like Renuzzo, or Denoddo, or Dinozzo or something.
They shouldn’t. It’s a stupid system. But that’s what it is. You assume the risk, assume the cost of reducing the risk, or get rid of the pool. Or change the fucked up litigation system. Whichever is easier.
I don’t really understand what the OP upset about. The liability for any injury, would hardly come back to you. Think of it as “survival of the fittest”. Any injury will cull the heard of one less dumb ass.
If the parents of a drowned child sue the homeowner’s association, who is going to pay the settlement?
I don’t know, this thread has made it apparent that if some dipshit children hurt themselves because mommy is too busy not parenting to watch her kid that the only answer will be to close the pool. That would be pretty balls for the other responsible people in the HOA who pay fees to live somewhere with the convenience of a pool.
The insurance that the HOA has for cases like this. I suppose the insurance rate will go up, but it’s not like the HOA would be paying a $100,000,000 settlement full on.
Oh, they just write it off. It’s like free money.
I see the point, but there were about a million times I swam unsupervised by adults (not alone, just not with adults) before I was sixteen. I lived part of my childhood and teenage years in a condo, and I hated all the ageist anti-kid regulations.
Each dues-paying household has a keycard and I know that they keep track of which keys get used and when. Other parents have expressed to me that they’re afraid if a kid gets seriously hurt and/or killed while unsupervised at the pool then the parent will not only sue the HOA but also any adult who was in the pool area at the time of the incident. If you used your keycard that day and they petitioned to get that information from the HOA, then theoretically you or me or whoever could be sued simply for BEING THERE. It’s a scary thought. I don’t think that would ever happen, personally, but you never know. In this litigous society, anything is possible.
It’s state law in New York. And if your pH or chlorine levels stray 1 spec off of Dept of Health guidelines, the county fines are 4 figures.
That’s a pretty silly argument. The parent that didn’t supervise their own child, which you say is a rule of the HOA, would have a hard time coming up with sufficient grounds for suing other parents that were present when an accident occured. And even if it did happen, turn it over to your homeowner’s insurance and let them deal with it.
Still a weak pitting. What next? Pitting the soda companies for making sugary drinks that make too many Americans fat?
This. I was a life guard for several years at a neighborhood swim club. If I had a dollar for every kid who was dropped off at 8:00 (we opened at 9:00)… Pools are not day cares, and life guards are not day care providers. If you’re doing it right (not just getting a tan, and checking out the high school girls, life guarding can be a pretty stressful job.
We live in a similar setup (not an HOA but a townhouse condominium corporation with a shared pool and an age restriction to be unsupervised).
I am a loudmouthed bitch and know all the kids in the neighbourhood (and a great number of their parents) so I would just first ask the kid where their mom or dad was and remind them that they had to have them here to swim (or, if I knew the kid somewhat, I would walk over to their house with them and volunteer to be their adult if I was there with my kids anyway).
If that didn’t work, I would walk to their house without them and explain the situation to the parents (just remind them of the rule, they might not have known, etc.).
If that didn’t work, I would phone the executives of the corp (or the management site) to explain that kids (unnamed) were swimming in the pool unsupervised and that I was concerned.
If that didn’t get the attention it deserved, I would rat them out by name to the corporation. They would remind them, in writing, of the rule and associate a fine with continuing to flaunt it.
But, again, I am a nosy bitch. Surprisingly, all the other parents love me because I keep their kids in line (and alive) a lot of the time (the park and pool are directly behind my house within eye and earshot).
(I also feed the neighbourhood snacks and meals and let them use the bathroom and get water out of the hose thus ensuring that they, and as a result my children, can have a good time playing outside together without needing to come in. I get a lot of housework done that way and my kids are learning all the things kids should like how to play stickball and climb trees.)
Wow.
That’s awesome.
<wonders if that is sarcasm>
I am like the neighbourhood mom. You don’t mess with me but can depend on me.
You don’t need a lifeguard (this will only encourage these sort of parents to use the pool as a day care center on an even MORe consistent basis). You need to hire a college student that is home for the summer to enforce rules (no glass containers, no unsupervised kids, shit like that).
perfect paranoia–I assure you it was not sarcasm but straight up wonder. Because I honestly cannot say I know one person who would do that these days.
damuri–no because then the college student would be too focused on scamming on their gender of choice and texting/using the phone/not paying attention, esp if they’re not getting paid (which I doubt the HOA would do seeing as they are cheap as fuck).
Also, people, I realize that we have a “porter” service that is supposed to come pick up crap and take out the trash at least 3 times a week, but that’s no excuse for leaving shirts, shorts, underwear, shoes, socks, broken toys, broken goggles, coke bottles, pizza boxes and various other assorted crap every place. :mad: Would it kill you to pick up after yourselves?
Ugh. I’d start a seperate thread for pitting the security guard our HOA has hired, but technically it’s only her third day of work.
Dear bollock-faced teenaged boys,
You DO realize the pool’s ‘shelf’ (I dunno what else to call it…it’s a half-circle platform on one side of the pool) is for sitting on and sunning yourself, not for practicing your MMA moves on one another? I asked you once to stop wrestling/roughhousing and you ignored me. More than once you nearly bashed your thick heads on the platform or the side of the pool and I bit my lip till it was like to bleed. We ended up leaving because you were making me so darned nervous. I really hope nobody got hurt with all your roughhousing. I’m betting though it will take somebody cracking a skull before you get the point when I (and other people) ask you to knock it the heck off.
Dear foulmouthed boy,
While I have no objection to foul language in general, I do have a problem with it when my son is present because he picks up language like a parrot. The last thing I want to have to do right now is explain to him WHY we can’t say certain words.
Also…I really hope that when you do get around to procreating, you and your wife aren’t stupid enough to name your kid the eff word.
Eh, at least duck droppings sink. My neighborhood’s pool had a full-blown Code Brown last year that resulted in the pool being closed for 48 hours. That, combined with a semi-humorous article regarding children’s hygiene that ran in the local paper at roughly the same time, have led me to avoid the pool.
On Sunday, the HOA board decided to have a Memorial Day party and somebody scrawled “I’m Beautiful!” in the womens restroom.
It’s not unusual, however, for the pool to be vandalized. We’ve had people rip pickets off the iron fence, vandalize the bathrooms, vandalize the chairs/tables we have set up, all kinds of stupid crap.
Getting a security guard was supposed to stop all that and while it has LESSENED since we started having a security guard part time (2-9 pm M-F, 12-9 pm Sat and Sun), it hasn’t gone away entirely. I’ve asked before why couldn’t we get a camera so we can see exactly which dipwads are doing the damage and I was told it was “too expensive”. :dubious: