Bad manners.

Over the past few days, I have been confronted to a wave of bad manners on the job site. Until now, there was never any concern about people acting like dickheads rudely. Everyone works in harmony, is friendly to one another, in fact, when I get to the house, I know that it is going to be pleasant. The trades are always very nice and respectful and it has become more of a team work than anything else. Well... until now. 

First on my list: the central vac guy who apparently is miserable and complains about everything all the time. I had never met him until a couple of days ago. I showed up at the house and there was a truck parked in the lane way. (Because of the neighbours-from-hell, we have instructed the trades NOT TO PARK on the driveway. They are all aware that there is a potential lawsuit hanging above our heads and they usually never park on the driveway unless they have to unload their trucks to bring material in. Anyhow, everyone seems to understand the parking rules expect for central vac guy who has been parking in the danger zone over and over again. He obviously doesn't give a shit). At any rate, I wasn't sure whose truck it was so I asked our heating contractor and he told me it belonged to the central vac dude. There are so many trades in the house right now that I wasn't sure who he meant so I asked him if he could go tell the dude to move his truck since the neighbour was about to complain. Looks like Mr Central Vac got really uptight about the whole thing and started to get very agitated. I didn't see any of this but I saw someone come back up the stairs fuming and talking under his breath. He wouldn't even make eye contact he was so pissed off. I realized I had just met Mr Central vac guy. When I witness such bad behaviour, what do I want to do? Tell the trade to 1- get lost and 2-get the fuck out of the house. Seriously... it is not like the guy works here for free, he is getting paid to do this job and he has to understand and be respectful to the ONE rule we are trying to enforce. That whole scene really pissed me off and I told the builder about it. Builder's answer was:

" Sorry about the vacuum guy. Believe me I will stick a hose up his ass and see if the system works".


I like my builder a lot.


Second on my list: the window guys. The window company is called "Manners windows" (O_o), referring to I guess an outstanding level of customer service (???). Well, first of all, their level of service with regards to scheduling and how to stick to a schedule is very poor. As a matter of fact, they cancelled an entire week of window installation because of ONE snow day. Needless to say it was very irritating given the fact that we are relying on the window installation to continue with the work inside the house. Anyhow, they finally showed up again. The crew doing the work is so SO unfriendly, I am shocked. They barely say hello and if they do, they mumble it through their teeth. You'd need a super powerful hearing aid to hear it. I mean, I don't expect any of the trades to throw themselves at my neck and hug me when I arrive, I am not delusional, but how hard is it to say hi? C'mon, that's called Manners and it should have been taught to anyone from a very young age. And when you work for a company called "Manners windows", shouldn't you try a little harder? I guess they just picked the name without fully understanding what it meant or what the implications of such a name were. They forgot their "manners" on the way to our house.
I told the builder about those guys and here's what he said:


"I have to drop off the front door hardware at Bad Manners then I will go and "speak" to the vacuum guy". 


I like my builder even more. 

Actions speak louder than words...

A month ago, our super nice builder told us that it was time to start laying the bricks at the house. He had quotes from 3 different masons:

- the first guy had a stroke so we couldn't hire him

- the second guy only worked on week-ends

- the third guy was at the same price point as the second one and was available.

We told him that we didn't care and that he could pick whoever he wanted, since they all came in at the same price.

So the third guy was hired to do the job. We met briefly with him before he started and he was sort of bragging and saying that he was going to do an amazing job. Okay, great, that's fine with me. I love when someone does an amazing job.... OBVIOUSLY! We don't pay someone to do a shit job.. well, at least, not willingly. 

The bricks we have picked are a little tricky to install. First of all, the weather needs to be warmer, by that I mean not below 0 degrees Celsius. In other words, it is not recommended to lay the bricks when it is freezing. Also, because the mortar needs to dry before you lay more bricks, you can only do about 500 bricks at a time. If you do more than that, it starts to cause problems. It doesn't dry properly, it moves around. It can easily turn into a disaster. At any rate, masons usually charge a bit a lot more when they work with these bricks because of the labour that's involved. This mason was no exception. His crew started on a Wednesday and was working under the tarp where heat was provided, to keep the bricks at a decent temperature. We couldn't really see what was happening because of that big plastic cover that was hiding the entire operation. On the Saturday, we noticed that they were almost done the entire facade and we thought it was going a little too fast so we stepped under the plastic sheet to inspect the work...

                                  O_O

                                   *_*

Bloody Hell!!! Complete fucking disaster!!! As in WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT MESS?

At first, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was sort of like looking at a Franck Gehry's building, you know with the wavy facade and the weird angles. I mean, that looks great when it is meant to be that way, there is no question about it. But really, in our case, that's not the style we are going for. As well, the bricks were all sliding down to one side on the house and the corners were all over the place, nothing was straight. Talk about an amazing job... Amazingly shitty, that's for sure. 

At this point, we realized we needed to STOP them from going any further. It looked like they had never done this sort of work before... Total amateurs.

We called our builder who sent one of his brick experts to take a look and the expert said "yeah, this is shit and needs to be taken down and redone". Great, that's just great.

The builder reacted right away. Pretty awesome. He fired the mason and hired the second guy, who is an expert with these bricks and has already started the job. Obviously, he is going very slowly and he seems to know what he is doing. It looks pretty good so far. He was actually the person who took down the bricks and he said that the work was done so badly, he had never seen such thing... wow... he also told us that we would have had to probably redo the whole facade 10 years from now. 

Do as I say, not as I do.

Apparently I was caught opening my big mouth yesterday. I arrived at the house to meet the electrician and I noticed that the neighbor-from-hell had parked her car in the driveway, therefore blocking it, which is something that her and her husband have asked us not to do. How ironic given the fact that a couple of hours prior, we received an email from them which was basically a very very VERY long list of all the BAD things we had done over the past few weeks. One of the complaints was that the workers always block the lane way (which is not accurate) and the other complaint was that one of the workers slashed one of their tires out of spite... O_0! Hello, someone's little paranoid.

I find it utterly interesting that while they are complaining about the fact that our workers block the lane way, they do exactly the same thing. Do as I say not as I do! Because we knew that at some point they would start harassing us again, we have been documenting (by taking photos) every case of  lane way blocking by them over the past few weeks. So when we got the email yesterday, we answered back very briefly with an attachment containing numerous photos of their car parked in the lane way. When I got to the house and saw that once again, they were happily parked where nobody is supposed to park, I took a picture and sent it to my other half who forwarded right away to them asking "Is this your car parked in the lane way again?". I guess it came as a very bad surprise to them that we had been photo documenting their parking habits. That's something they were not expecting which makes them look like total hypocrites. At any rate, I was outside with the electrician when #2 came out and rushed to her car gesticulating and screaming. I am guessing that she got a call from her husband saying "What is happening? They have all these photos of you parked in the driveway, now I look like a fool". She then proceeds to come out of the car, approaches me and the conversation sort of goes like this:


- Her: "I am parking in the lane way because I can't turn around like I used to. That's your fault." (Little history on this: they used to turn around by driving onto our property, in our backyard, which they can't do right now because the workers are parked in our back yard, leaving no room for them to turn around.)
- Me: "Really? Well, why don't you back up then, like everybody else?"
- Her: "Well, I have always turned around for years, I am not going to start backing up."
- Me: "Oh well, you better start practicing because we are planning on putting a fence up and you definitely won't be able to turn around anymore after that."
- Her, getting very agitated: "A fence? You never said you were going to put a fence up."
- Me, getting really annoyed :"NEWSFLASH: we have little kids and we don't want them to go run onto the street, hence the fence, know what I am saying bitch?"


At this point, the conversation was getting pretty intense. The electrician was also witnessing and I could tell he was feeling a little uncomfortable. 


- Her: "Well, I can't believe this... blah blah blah..."
- Me, raising my voice at this point: "You and your husband should get a life, you are both crazy and should seek the help of a psychiatrist. I heard that you were accusing our workers of slashing your tire with a knife. That's absurd."
- Her: "Don't raise your voice."
- Me: "Don't raise my voice??? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? You and your husband have been harassing us for months and you are asking me to not raise my voice."
- Her :"Well, I have only talked to you once in the past and... and..."
- Me: "And this is the last time you talk to me. Don't talk to me ever again and leave me alone from now on".


Now she is furiously walking to the other side of the street and calls her husband: " I just spoke to X (me) and she opened her big mouth".

 .......................................................................

!!!!!!!!! (*_*) !!!!!!!!!

I opened my big mouth? What is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to just stand there and not say anything? At this point I just added "oh boy, you really can't do anything without your husband, can you?"


I think I kind of crossed the line right there because she said something (some threats of some sort), turned around and left. Good fucking riddance!


Lesson learned from this story: NONE! Getting into an argument is ALWAYS a bad idea, especially when you are a non-confrontational person like me. You usually don't learn much from a confrontation, I don't think. However, if you try me over and over and over again, I am not going to lay low and shut my mouth. I have kept my mouth shut till this point but yesterday, I had to say something. I am not a punching ball and there is a point where anyone has to stand for themselves and push back. At least I didn't use any swear words during this altercation (although it would have been very tempting to tell that foolish witch to just F*CK OFF) but I can't guarantee I won't use swear words next time if she starts talking to me again.