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Monday, December 7, 2009

Death By Remodeling...a True Story - pt. II


“Come right back home! I caught one of them going through my jewelry drawer!”
“What? I mean, WHAT?!?!?! Are you effen kidding me?”
Four days in the working, my wall was starting to shape up, we even got over the problem that after they built it with small windows, looking like jail cell openings I made them cut them larger to double the size. It’s a whole new story, but where the hell should I begin, after I already told you they had the arrogance to go through our drawers!
One thing at a time:

The windows. So, the nice hard-working (wink-wink) Mexicans, built the frame of the wall and put up the drywall around it in about three days. ( A job that ONE knowledgeable good worker should be able to do in a day, but between sodas and sandwiches, hanging out on the lawn in front of my house and going for “more materials”, it took them three) That’s why, it broke my heart to see how after ever the project was shaping up, there was barely any light coming into the room and it was depressing. Chills went down my spine. I gave them the everything looks great look, but inside of me something was screaming that I’m really disappointed that I didn’t think of making those windows much, much bigger. So I went and told Alex and she agreed. F*#K! Guys, stop the work! Let me call your boss and ask him something! I’m thinking…I’ll pay another $1000 if I have to, just so I don’t hate myself for the years to come for not giving my kid enough light in his room!




And there it was. Four hours later and a bunch of negotiating later I had my bigger window openings and the wall was back to the middle of nowhere! A ton of work still lying ahead.


In the meantime, me, and my family still stuck in the little room downstairs, breathing dust and not daring to leave the house because of those stupid Bulgarian fears!
Sooo…
Imagine: you’re lying in that little room, and if you’re alkA, you’re obviously Facebooking. You’re leaning on the back of the kitchen cabinet and a vibration of one of its drawers being open goes through your body. Your mind starts racing. Is it possible that Stoyan and Sami got back, since they left for the store 15 minutes ago? You yell, Honey, is that you? And there is no answer. You jump up and open the door. A fat Mexican standing three feet away from the drawer doesn’t know where to go. He, of course, denies everything.
So, I got the call, we came back home and I kicked all the workers out, after hearing the stupid excuse that his pants got caught on the handle. (Inside myself I was really hoping that it was just that childish curiosity where you’re like a moron, who goes I wonder what they keep in that drawer kind of thing.) Alex checked and at first glance didn’t notice anything missing. So, after emptying their pockets I kicked them out. I spoke to their boss “the contractor”.
The deal was the following: they come back, he supervises him, we don’t pay the upcharge for the expanded windows, we get 10% off the original price, they need to finish the work in 2 days and…as Alex did find one ring was missing, they pay back for the ring, oh, aaaaand, because those IDIOTS scratched my floor by cutting drywall with a sharpie right on it, they need to fix my floors too!
Deal or no deal?
Deal!
The anger and frustration grew immensely inside of me when I actually realized that they HAD stolen a ring. It had fake diamonds. If they were real, they would have cost $50 000, but then again, in a case like that, we’d probably be living in a mention where we wouldn’t need to build an extra room for our kid. Knowing that someone would touch and take your things makes you sick! That’s how I felt when they stole my bike and my skateboard when I was a kid. It’s disgusting! And you know what hurts me even more? That we gave JOBS to those people, we gave them a chance to earnestly make some money! What a disgrace!
All of this really makes me think about morality and honor, and justice. I am a justice freak! I need things to be fair, or I BURN inside! If I were to be truthfully just with those workers, I would be going the American way right now and would be suing them not for theft, but for moral damage!
Damn, Alex is right that I’m too nice!


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