i can do that for you, part 1
So the name should have tipped us off. We should never have put detailed, stylish apartment renovations in the hands of a contracting company called "I Can Do That For You." Even if we didn't heed the initial cheese factor of the name, the irony factor kicked in only a few weeks into the renovations and redoubled again and again until the end. In no time we were dubbing the company "I Never Said I Could Do THAT For You," "I Can't Take Criticism From You," and "I Can't Even THINK Straight." By the end it was "I'm a Friggin' Idiot Lying Trollop" and things far more foul.
Actually joking was a survival technique during this project that only helped to a point. Truth be told, the experience was emotional torture. Diane, our project manager lied to us from the start when she introduced us to two college-educated workmen, Charlie and Scott, and a licensed electrician named Nagy. She gave us references to call specifically for the three of these men, and then never brought them back into our apartment again. It was a classic bate and switch. The first day of construction in April, I met Mahesh and Zai, who I thought were a West Indian teenager and his grandfather (they turned out to be a 25 year old and his father). I presumed they were there to do only the demolition before Charlie, Scott and Nagy arrived.
But days past and Mahesh and Zai began to do the electrical and the constructing. We were promised that licensed Nagy would come back to check unlicensed Mahesh's electrical work, but that never happened. Charlie and Scott were busy with another project at first, and then the next time we asked, they were no longer working with Diane. When we expressed our concern to Diane about the entire job being handled by just these two guys, she said she thought of a work crew as two men. No apologies; no sense that we might feel otherwise. Never mind that she had introduced us to three men when she bid for the job. Never mind that we never had the chance to check references on the new guys before they started the job.
Then a couple weeks into the project even Mahesh and Zai stopped showing up daily. Or they'd be there working whenever they thought we would be in the building, then disappear soon after if they thought we weren't coming back. For three weeks in May, they abandoned our job for other jobs with drop-dead completion dates in the contracts (something we didn't know we should have had in ours). Of course Diane didn't admit to us that she'd removed the guys for other projects until much later when we pressed her on it. At the time, she simply told us she'd have a full crew in our apartment for the day and then she would take them off somewhere else. To her it wasn't a lie. We just weren't supposed to notice that what she said didn't match the actual situation. Each time we caught her lying about her work crew, she accused us of being unnecessarily suspicious.
We should have been way more suspicious. I'll explain further in the next installment.
Actually joking was a survival technique during this project that only helped to a point. Truth be told, the experience was emotional torture. Diane, our project manager lied to us from the start when she introduced us to two college-educated workmen, Charlie and Scott, and a licensed electrician named Nagy. She gave us references to call specifically for the three of these men, and then never brought them back into our apartment again. It was a classic bate and switch. The first day of construction in April, I met Mahesh and Zai, who I thought were a West Indian teenager and his grandfather (they turned out to be a 25 year old and his father). I presumed they were there to do only the demolition before Charlie, Scott and Nagy arrived.
But days past and Mahesh and Zai began to do the electrical and the constructing. We were promised that licensed Nagy would come back to check unlicensed Mahesh's electrical work, but that never happened. Charlie and Scott were busy with another project at first, and then the next time we asked, they were no longer working with Diane. When we expressed our concern to Diane about the entire job being handled by just these two guys, she said she thought of a work crew as two men. No apologies; no sense that we might feel otherwise. Never mind that she had introduced us to three men when she bid for the job. Never mind that we never had the chance to check references on the new guys before they started the job.
Then a couple weeks into the project even Mahesh and Zai stopped showing up daily. Or they'd be there working whenever they thought we would be in the building, then disappear soon after if they thought we weren't coming back. For three weeks in May, they abandoned our job for other jobs with drop-dead completion dates in the contracts (something we didn't know we should have had in ours). Of course Diane didn't admit to us that she'd removed the guys for other projects until much later when we pressed her on it. At the time, she simply told us she'd have a full crew in our apartment for the day and then she would take them off somewhere else. To her it wasn't a lie. We just weren't supposed to notice that what she said didn't match the actual situation. Each time we caught her lying about her work crew, she accused us of being unnecessarily suspicious.
We should have been way more suspicious. I'll explain further in the next installment.
4 Comments:
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Please note: comments with links to commercial sites will be removed. Within seconds of publishing today's installment I had two comments that went something like this: "Hey, wow, I really think you have a great blog! I have a blog/site with important information about insurance!" First off, who's stupid enough to leave comments like that in their blog? And secondly, I'm not. Better luck elsewhere. Now, on the other hand, real comments from real people are totally welcome!
The spam comments have been out of control, Jay. One way to avoid them is to go into your blogger comments set up and choose "word verification." That way, commenters have to manually type in an automatically generated word when they want to comment. Keeps the spammers out.
And I still stand ready to kick some contractor ass.
Every gay man needs a friend named Dorothy, especially when she's ready and able to kick contractor ass for him. I'll let you know if I need that foot of yours with the new crew.
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