Back in May we asked a bloke to come over and quote a price for laying the garden paths around the house.
This man, who I'll call Mr Can-Do, was very friendly. All over us like a rash, truth be told. Nothing was too much trouble, he could do everything from go to whoa.
The price he quoted for the job was amazing, almost too good to be true. We accepted straight away and, yes, he could start some time in June and, yes, he'd put the quote in writing and leave it in our mailbox the next time he drove past.
He never did give us that written quotation, even though we asked him twice, but this didn't bother us too much because, for some reason, a lot of tradesmen down here won't.
Besides, Mr Can-Do was a nice bloke, wasn't he? Friendly. Trustworthy.
As it turned out, Mr Can-Do didn't start in June. We were also having the house rendered and he agreed with our renderer that it would be better to lay the paths after the rendering was finished. Just ring when you're ready for me to start, he said. What a guy.
So, once the rendering was done - brilliantly, I might add, by a lovely bloke called David Cook - I rang Mr Can-Do and left a message on his phone.
When he didn't ring back after a few days, my husband called again.
And what my husband got this time was a very different bloke. A bloke who was rude and surly and whose conversation consisted of words like "nah" and "dunno" and "maybe".
Now, we're not idiots. After that phone conversation, even Blind Freddy could see that Mr Can-Do had lots of other work and didn't want to lay our garden paths any more. But we decided not to worry about it until after the weekend because, well, sometimes you just get sick of this shit and need to stick your head in the sand for a while.
Then, lo and behold, on Saturday, in the middle of the footy, there was a knock on the door and there he was, in the flesh. He thought he'd better have a look round, he said, before he started the job.
He was friendly again, talking in words of more than two syllables but, unfortunately, he'd morphed into Mr Can't-Do.
There was a lot more work than he'd originally thought when he gave the quote, he said. Before he could start we'd have to do all sorts of things: dig up and redistribute the clay and have compacting sand delivered and put it on the paths and compact it and remove a section of fence and dig up heaps of plants so the barrow could get through because he wasn't having his blokes pushing barrows uphill.
Now, my husband works five days a week, so on Monday he rang Mr Can't-Do and asked if we could pay extra to have some of his labourers do this unforeseen prep work.
"Nah, can't help ya, too busy."
Did he know of anyone else we could pay, then?
"Nah."
It was like dealing with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Then, lo and behold, we got a call Monday afternoon saying his two labourers would be coming over the next morning - as in, yesterday morning.
So I arranged for the sand to be dumped in the driveway by 9am and dug up the plants and put them in pots and got money out of the bank to pay these two blokes direct.
My husband got up at six yesterday morning to finish things off and the two labourers turned up at quarter past eight.
My husband showed them what we wanted done, then headed off to work, and the two labourers drove off to pick up their tools.
And they never came back.
I waited and waited and waited. The sand was delivered. I waited some more.
In the end, because I had to go out, I rang Mr Can't-Do at 10am to see what was going on. This was the conversation.
Me: Hi, it's Michele. Your two blokes left to pick up their tools at 8.30 and haven't come back. I have to go out and I was wondering what was happening.
Him: Dunno.
Me: Do you know if they picked up their stuff.
Him: Yeah, they got it.
Me: Well, they haven't come back here. Do you have a mobile number for them?
Him: Yeah, hang on. (Pause 10 seconds). Look, I'll have to ring you back.
Me: OK. My number's...
Him (interrupting): Listen, I'm on the road. I don't need this. I'm too busy for this.
Me: Yeah, well, we're all busy. It's not just you.
Him (shouting): Don't you get uppity with me.
Me: I'm not, I'm upset they haven't come back. You'd be upset too if you were treated like this.
Him (shouting louder): Shut up. Just shut up and listen.
Me (shouting back): What? Don't you...
Him (screaming over the top of me): I don't have to put up with this. You can shove the job. I don't need your money.
And then he hung up.
When my husband found out, he phoned this prick and said things to him that could never be printed here.
And that's what Mr Can't-Do wanted all along because now he'll be able to tell whoever's interested what nasty, difficult people we are. He'll be able to justify not doing the job for us.
But only to himself. Everyone I've told about this (everyone I can think of, basically) thinks he's an arsehole who didn't have the balls to say, "Look, I agreed to do this job when I had no other work but now I've got lots and I'm pulling out."
Which is why this post is headed "Up the garden path (2)". If you look at the post below you might see some similarities.
Footnote: we now know that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And if you've got this far, congratulations and a big thank you for bearing with me. I really needed to get it off my chest.
