I was standing behind the counter at Ridge View Fuel and Supply on what should have been an ordinary Thursday morning when Beverly Lang, the notorious HOA president of Ridge View Meadows, stormed through the door like a hurricane in designer sunglasses. She slapped her expensive leather purse on my counter hard enough to make the register beep and barked four words that would change everything: “Pump four. HOA account.”
I blinked at her, genuinely confused.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Fill my tank,” she said, enunciating each word like I was mentally deficient.
“Full tank of premium. Charge it to the Ridge View Meadows HOA account.”
I kept my voice calm and professional, the way eight years of customer service had trained me.
“Ma’am, we don’t have HOA accounts here. You’ll need to pay before I can activate the pump.”
Beverly froze.
Her perfectly manicured fingers gripped the edge of the counter as she leaned forward, her face transforming from entitled impatience to genuine outrage.
“Excuse me? Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re Beverly Lang, HOA president.
But this is a private business, and everyone pays for their gas.”
What happened next defied all logic and reason.
Beverly pulled out her phone with trembling hands and, while maintaining aggressive eye contact with me, dialed 911. Not the non-emergency line.
Actual 911. “Yes, I need police at Ridge View Fuel and Supply immediately,” she said into the phone, her voice rising to a theatrical pitch.
“There’s a man here denying essential services to HOA residents.
I want him arrested for discrimination.”
My coworker Tessa, who’d been restocking coffee supplies behind me, actually dropped an entire bag of French roast. We stood there in stunned silence as Beverly marched outside, phone still pressed to her ear, shouting loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear: “He’s refusing to serve our community! This is a violation of our rights!
I demand immediate action!”
I should have known right then that this wasn’t just about twenty-three gallons of gasoline.
This was the opening shot in a full-scale war with an HOA president who genuinely believed she owned the entire town. My name is Mark Dawson, and I’m forty-two years old.
I’d worked the morning shift at Ridge View Fuel and Supply for nearly eight years without incident. The station sat right at the boundary of Ridge View Meadows, an HOA community so strict that residents joked—only half-jokingly—about needing permits to sneeze in their own driveways.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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