Friday, June 24, 2005

Dumb Contractors

My neighbor's property is a rental unit. Every year he gets cited by the city to paint some portion of the house or garage. He has always made minimum effort to get the old paint off the structure and so has this problem every year.

This year he got a ticket. He has hired some local cowboy to put vinyl siding on the house and replace the garage roof. The cowboy has a crew of young guys do the work, when they show up. Whenever they get a chance they smoke pot in the garage. They have become a problem for me. The have destroyed all of my 5 year old hostas at the side of the house. The plants are completely flattened. You can see for yourself. They have also put branches and shingle in front of my garage door so that we have difficulty parking the car. This was the growing pile today. My garbage can was filled to the brim yesterday with their trash. I couldn't put my own trash in it!I don't know how these guys get work, their referral network must really suck.These guys are absolute morons!

Actually, I take that back. I underestimated them. I thought they were morons but now I know they are cretins. When I went out today to confront them and the property owner, they insulted me and one of them even mooned me! (Sorry but I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get that picture.) The property owner was polite as usual. What they don't realize is, that as the president of our neighborhood association, I will do my best to see that they don't get any more work in this neighborhood. We don't want our residents supporting their drug habit now, do we?

3 comments:

Greg said...

Wow! I've heard of bad contractors, but that is bad. My house has a small apartment building next door. I was very skeptical of buying because of that. The place is very well kept, and honestly, has more maintenance done on it than most of the house on the block. I found out recently that it is co-owned by the Charmin of the City's Preservation Commission and a contractor that does all the work on the property. The building is not that attractive from an architectural stand-point, but I feel lucky to have them as neighbors.

Jocelyn said...

The good news is your hostas will grow back-nothing kills those suckers.

Those workers sound scary and stupid- what an awful combination.
Just out of curiouity, what did you do when they mooned? laugh? look away? :)

Gary said...

When the guy mooned I asked him to do it again for a photograph. When I said that the photo would appear on a web page he declined and the others ducked into the garage so as not to be photographed. It's been a few years since I've been mooned. I guess Dayton attracts the idiot contractors. The cost of living here is so low. I should go and make a peace offering with some laxative chewing gum.....