Some policies seem to have no purpose, but you need to follow them anyway.

Then there are times when a person in power inadvertently contradicts the policy they claim to be enforcing.

Read this story to see this example of a loophole involving a homeowner and the homeowners association (HOA).

Sorry Mirranda, I was just doing what you told me to do

Our last house was in a HOA.

Our garage had our two pickups in it but my husbands mechanic truck was too long to fit in the driveway without being over the sidewalk, which was against HOA rules so he couldn’t park it in the driveway.

He parked it in front of the RV gate that had a gravel driveway.

This solution wasn’t good enough for the gatekeeper.

We got a violation letter for parking “on the landscaping” in front of the RV gate so I called and spoke to the HOA manager, Mirranda.

She said if we wanted to park there we had to pave it. I asked her “so you’re telling me that we have to pave it?” She said yes. So, we paved it.

We get another violation letter a couple weeks later, this one accompanied by a fine, saying we needed to get permission to pave the driveway.

When I called up Miss Mirranda again, I told her that we were not responsible for paying the fine nor did we need to ask for permission because her literally telling us to pave it was giving us permission.

She tried to argue against that citing some HOA bylaws about applications and approvals and some such nonsense.

Some common sense ended the dispute.

I wasn’t having it and told her that if she wanted people to follow the rules then she shouldn’t tell people to break them.

She was ****** but ultimately dropped the whole thing because she knew she had messed up.

Let’s see what people in the comments had to say.

A lot of people shared advice. This seems like a good rule of thumb.

At least they’re doing something right. That must be so frustrating.

Gave me a chuckle. It belongs on a t-shirt.

Powerless positions of power. I find this satisfying.

Make it make sense!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.