Handling Aggressive Residents Professionally
The following topic is about how to interact with people that all of a sudden, tenants that all sudden become escalate with their behavior and begin to get aggressive against you as a maintenance technician. Like always remember maintenance technicians. We must act as professionals. We need to make sure that we do not engage.
Something that can escalate when it comes to something that can escalate with a tenant. Sometimes tenants, like all of us, may have a difficult day on difficult time at the same time. That doesn't justify them having a behavior or aggressiveness against us. But always try to be a professional in your rehab and try to diffuse any type of situation of that nature.
Let's, for example, say that you're going into a property, you go start doing, you're gonna be doing a repair, you get the permission to enter to the unit, and when you get there you're doing the work. And let's say for example a tenant shows up. And it starts talking and disturbing you and asking you how to do things in a certain way.
And then because you're doing things the way you're supposed to, instructed to do the work the way you were directed to do so this person starts cussing at you. Does talking you bad getting aggressive even to a point where perhaps they're trying to physically attack you. And in those cases, what did you do?
Your first reaction is sometimes that you're surprised at what's happening. It actually has happened. It happened to me. So that's why I'm sharing this with you. We cannot engage. We cannot get at the same levels because emotionally at that time, this person may be extremely aggressive, different mental state at that point, looking for a way to vent and maybe get physical depending on what type of behavior this person gets used to.
And at the same time, you may be. Not knowing what the action's gonna be. And there we have. So when it comes to a situation like that, if you need to be able to diffuse the situation, reframe some things back, calling them back and insulting them in any way possible, contact your supervisor or onsite manager, hopefully so they can come in and help you diffuse the situation or simply step out of the.
Of the situation, step and go report this to you. Your superiors, your supervisor, and they make sure that they address this appropriately and try not to engage. Try not to do anything of that nature because ultimately we must act professionals. Of course, the main be as scenarios where this person physically attacks you and that you need to step back further, go faster if you need to call the local authorities, police or anything.
Do so and follow the proper protocol, and if necessary, do a police report and have something there because there may be a possibility where you may have to do a restraining order if this tenant continues to have this pattern against you. Remember, act professional. There's always a limit, but to go to the proper channels, how to do that, don't you ever physically engage with somebody on that matter because unfortunately sometimes they can come and come back to you and harm you.
Legally and with legal remedies. So you have to be extremely careful with that. Do not engage, once again, do not engage in any type of behavior that where the tenant is insulting you. If there's witnesses, this is somebody that you can use in the future, but to never get into a confrontation with them because it's never gonna end that good.
It's already a bad situation. But if you continue with the same pattern, you're gonna make it worse. And at the end, you may get into some type of legal trouble. So remember, stick to your work, be a professional. And if you find a situation where people are beginning to be aggressive and all that, simply step back, diffuse situation.
The situation, go back and report this to your supervisor. I hope this helps you and it helps you to make sure that you don't engage in situations that it can escalate and make a situation even worse. Until next time.
