“I knew they were going to sell the place when I saw a posse
of black suited men walking around,” my mom tells me. “Then someone painted the outside of the
building, and I knew for sure someone was buying it.”
A new corporation, Atria, recently purchased the Senior
Living community in Scottsdale where my mom has lived for the past year. They immediately
changed the name of the place, from Sierra Pointe, to Atria Sierra Pointe, and
in the month they have assumed management, the new owners have made several other
changes.
Right away, they sent a letter to residents stating that
they would honor everyone’s lease, and they would not be raising prices. But no one seems to trust this.
The new company changed the tablecloths in the dining room
from white to black. “Stupid decision,” my mom opines, “The black tablecloths
show all the schmootz.”
They fired several of the service staff, and hired
replacements. They rearranged the coffee and pastry set up in the front lobby.
They moved a clock in the dining room and my mom’s tablemate no longer can
figure out what time it is. She doesn’t
like where they moved the clock, and can’t easily see it from her table.
“The inmates are a buzz,” my mom reports. “It is all anyone talks
about.”
The chef has left (was let go?), and the food staff has all
turned over. Complaining about the food
is a full-time activity at Sierra Pointe.
My mom’s dinner companions can’t seem to find anything on the menu that
they like. They ask to be served
half-orders, but they get too much food. The food is overcooked, undercooked,
too spicy, not spicy enough. “I’m the only one who likes the food,” my mom
says. “I can always find something to eat.
If I don’t like the specials, I can order a piece of salmon or a filet. No one is starving here.”
They took away the candy dish at the lobby reception desk,
but after my mom’s friend complained bitterly (she liked to take a handful of
the candies and hand them out to her friends at dinner), they put the candy
dish back.
They have notified the residents that they are going to
monitor the air-conditioning usage in the units, and in common areas turn the
air-conditioning down a few degrees. My mom’s bridge buddies are so angry
they are going to draft a petition to the management demanding no temperature
changes. “Has anyone actually noticed that the rooms are too warm?” I ask my
mom, who brings a sweater with her when she ventures out and about the building
because she often is too cold. “Not
yet,” she reports.
Change is not easy for most people. We do not like being
surprised by changes. We want to know
about an impending change in advance and understand the rationale behind why a
change is going to be made. Change can represent a loss of control. We need a comfort level with the change
makers and and ideally would like to be involved in the change process. Change can threaten our self-esteem. We may have to step out of our comfort zone
and do something new and different. Most of us are creatures of habit.
There is tons written about how
to manage change. Yet so few
organizations get it right. I am pleased
that my mom is responding to her situation with a calm skepticism. She has adopted a wait and see attitude. “Some changes will be good; others not so
good,” she says. “If I don’t like things here, I can always come to California
and live,” she says. And that would be
another big change for her. One that I
look forward to.
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