Julie: But back then a manager could take the master
keys home at night, it was normal. That doesn’t
happen today.
Foy: Even as a leasing agent you could because you
could get paged for lockouts at night.
Chris: When did it start to change?
Terry: As soon as everyone figured out – “holy crap,
everyone has access to everyone’s apartment” - that’s
not good. People actually started thinking about
liability.
Dennis: Especially the insurance companies. They
helped force the changes.
Foy: And thefts. Once the thefts started to increase,
key control become an important issue.
Sharon: I remember so clearly the day we got our
first fax machine.
Susan: Me too. That was huge. It was scary because it
was so new and unfamiliar.
Sharon: Fax machines, and the copier! Before that we
used typewriters with NCR and carbon paper. Ledger
cards that you wrote on in pencil. So different from
today’s technology and the software we have available.
Chris: Before fax machines and the common use
of computers and email… how did communities
communicate with the management company?
Julie: We had couriers and they would come around
every property every day to pick up whatever you had
to send to the corporate office.
Susan: I didn’t even have a courier; I took paperwork
and deposits to the corporate office myself. I was the
only one that was allowed to handle the money and
take documents to corporate.
Julie: You had to use the courier if you had to send
anything -- There was no email, no fax, none of that.
Sharon: Before computers, everything was on paper.
Dennis: You typically would post notes on doors.
Susan: I had a typewriter when I started. You typed
leases on carbon paper. It took a lot more time. If you
made a mistake you had to start over! No white out
yet even!
Dennis: But now that time is consumed with doing
reports on a computer…
Sharon: A big difference is back then there wasn’t
formal training.
Terry: There really wasn’t any training at all for a very
long time.
Sharon: Absolutely no classroom training.
At least I can tell you they didn’t provide training in
Greenville, SC.
Dennis: I think the first classes that the Apartment
Association had offered were way back in the late
60’s. It slowly became known that you could take
some training classes at AAMD.
Chris: What other concepts beyond technology have been
game changers in a manager’s day-to-day?
Foy: Golf carts. We didn’t have golf carts back then. We
simply walked the properties, no matter how big!
Julie: What comes to my mind, is in the 80’s when
all of a sudden we had leasing personnel in danger
of being assaulted and we had to change security
procedures to protect them. We started keeping the
drivers license at the desk during a tour and we also
incorporated ways to show apartments, so someone
couldn’t get behind you.
Terry: Don’t let them get between you and the door.
Sharon: Last names went off of our employee
nametags. The nametags only have the first name.
Susan: We had to wear uniforms as office staff. They
were issued to us and we had to wear them every day.
I had to coordinate between all the properties with
the same management company whether we were
going to wear pants or skirt. All of us in the office had
to wear the same thing each day. So, all office staff sat
down once a month and wrote down each day when
we would wear pants and when we would wear skirts.
Our blouses, vest, jacket and scarfs always matched.
Sharon: The other big changes were fair housing
related. It used to be you could pretty much choose
exactly who you wanted to live at your community. If
you looked at a person and thought, “I don’t want to
live next to that person”, you could simply would not
approve the application.
Julie: Yes, and it used to be there were specific areas
of a community that would evolve --
I remember the family section was over here, and the
singles were over there.
www.aamdhq.org
JANUARY 2018 • TRENDS | 35