I was recently at a party to celebrate the official opening of the recreation room at my apartment complex, University Villa. The party wasn’t that bad, they had lots of pizza, drinks, and a movie.

Part of the party was a prize giveaway. There were little green sheets of paper where we wrote our name and apartment number. They were all on a paper plate. The office manager of the Villa, Scott, picked out a name for the foosball table giveaway. Then was the $50 rent credit givaway. They picked a couple names, but they weren’t present. Then he picked up an entry, looked at it very briefly, then announced that the entries should be mixed up. I watched him carefully set the entry far to the side, mix up the rest, then move the entry to the edge of the pile of other entries, and pick the winning entry out of the middle of the pile. While him reading the entry was slight, it was very obvious to the careful observer that he set the particular entry aside and specifically chose not to pick it.

I waited for Scott to leave the party. I had kept my eye on the entry that he specifically set aside. I got out of my seat, grabbed the folded entry, and returned to my seat. Only then did I unfold the entry to see that it had been mine.

Why would he specifically set my prize entry aside and not pick it? I don’t think I will ever know. Perhaps Scott doesn’t like my looks, or the fact that I showed up to the party early. I think it may be however, that he doesn’t like me due to the fact that I wrote a letter to the management asking them to be more accomodating and ammend the contract during contruction periods. Or perhaps because of the fact that I took this letter to the BYU Off-campus Housing Office and described for them what was going on. If this is the case, that he specifically singled me out because I did this, then it is certainly retaliation.

Of course I could never prove it. Nor do I really care… they are free to give their prizes away to anyone they want. The fact that I didn’t get the $50 rent credit doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is the fact that I was singled out and targeted, perhaps for actions I did to protect my right and the rights of my neighbors.

Update (2005-08-01): I talked to Scott today. He assured me that he would never do such thing intentionally, and he gave me a $50 rent credit anyway to prove it. Maybe it was just a fluke that it was my name. Even though I leave my comments above (I don’t believe in deleting comments, its all archived somewhere anyway) I want to ask readers to take it under consideration that Scott told me today he didn’t do it purposefully and that he made proper amends for it.