Clichés exist because there's usually more than a little truth behind them. Take, for instance, "You get what you pay for."
I'm talking, of course, about our new fence.
We desperately needed to replace the one we had. Odds were it wouldn't make it through another winter. And with new gaps appearing almost weekly, it wasn't safe to leave the dogs outside unsupervised. We wren't looking for anything extravagant, but living on a corner lot with about 75 feet of exposed fence, we didn't want anything that looked too cheap.
We'd scoped out the neighborhood for examples of what might work, and we found a house around the corner that had a simple plank fence with a trimmed 2 x 6 cap which made it look quite finished. We decided that was what we wanted.
We had several legitimate fence companies come out and give us an estimate, but all of them ran between $3000 and $5000. That was way beyond our means, so the whole fence project was put on the back burner.
And then, out of nowhere, there was Rodrigo.
I'm not sure how the boyfriend found him, maybe a business card stuck in the front door. That seems to be how we find all our help. In hindsight, I think I can safely say that's not the best way to go. At any rate, Rodrigo offered to build us our fence for $1500.
I first met Rodrigo last week. Around 9am last Thursday, the boyfriend called me from work...
"Hey - Rodrigo is going to be there shortly and can you take him around the corner and show him the fence that we like?"
Um... OK. Sure. Who the fuck is Rodrigo?
Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door. Rodrigo.
I introduced myself and said "You must be Rodrigo."
"Jes".
"I'm supposed to show you the fence that we like..."
"Jes".
No offense intended, but I saw the lack of English as a possible problem. But it proved I was wrong. Once we got to the other house he turned into Chatty Cathy - "Oh Jes, we can do this fence, it's really quite easy, let me take some notes so we can match it exactly..." And on and on and on.
"Well, OK then" I said. "I'll just leave you to it." I left.
Monday morning the boyfriend was rushing to get ready for work, a little earlier than usual. I asked why and he said "Rodrigo is supposed to be here around 6am". Rodrigo didn't show and the boyfriend had to leave. "Can you just take care of it when he does show up?" the boyfriend asked. I said "sure". I probably should have asked what I was taking care of. I thought perhaps Rodrigo was coming by to get measurements.
By 6:20 the dogs looked like they were ready to burst, nervously pacing back and forth by the front door. And there was still no sign of Rodrigo. I scrawled a note for the door, explaining I was walking the dogs and would be back in 10 minutes. The dogs and I headed out for a quick walk around the block.
We'd only been gone for about 5 minutes when I heard horrible pounding off in the distance, hammering and the snapping of wood. Who were the assholes who had a crew working at 6:30 in the morning?
Turns out, the assholes were us.
As I rounded the corner to our house, there was Rodrigo with a crew of about four, happily taking sledge hammers to our existing fence. I couldn't imagine that was going over well with the neighbors.
I put the dogs in and went out to talk to Rodrigo. He was really quite animated and seemed genuinely excited to be building our fence. Even as the old fence came down, he had surveyor's strings already staked out for the new one, which we were pushing out about three feet. He really seemed to have everything well in hand and I went inside feeling confident about the whole situation.
Occasionally I'd go out to check on the progress. They seemed to be working extremely quickly and before you knew it they had post holes dug and were preparing to pour concrete footers for the 4x4 posts which were neatly stacked nearby.
Around 1pm I noticed all the commotion outside seemed to have stopped. I went outside and saw that everyone was gone. Vanished. Quitting time was apparently one o'clock. All of the fence posts were up and sunk into concrete.
Now, Rodrigo isn't blind, but you could be forgiven for thinking that once you saw his work.
All of the fence posts were crooked. Tower of Pisa crooked. And set in concrete.
That seemed to me to be a problem. It would seem to me that at the bare minimum, when building a fence, you'd want something that was, you know, vertical.
I complained to the boyfriend when he got home and was surprised to discover he was washing his hands of it. I was now project manager and I had to deal with it.
The next morning I was waiting for Rodrigo when he arrived. "Before you do anything we need to talk about the posts" I said. "They're all crooked."
"On no they're not, Dave. They're all perfectly straight" he said.
I'm not sure which pissed me off more - that he was bald faced lying to me, or that he was now calling me "Dave".
I grabbed an extension cord that was laying nearby. I held it against the top of the post with my forefinger and let the plug dangle near the ground, a good three or four inches from the base of the post.
"Oh, no Dave, the post is straight. That cord is just crooked."
This was absurd. One of his crew walked by with a level. Seemed a bit late in the game to be breaking that out. I grabbed it and held it against the side of the post and watched the bubble slowly drift all the way over to the right.
"Oh, THAT" Rodrigo said. "Ok, now I see, I can see how you would think it might be crooked. Don't worry Dave, we'll make it right."
I stormed back inside and got on with my day. I had a couple of deadlines and didn't have time for this shit. About an hour later I went out to see what their magical solution was and discovered they had simply ignored me and had started framing the fence over the crooked posts and were already hammering up planks.
"What about the posts!" I yelled.
"Dave, Dave... those posts were set in concrete. There wasn't anything we could do. You're not going to see them anyhow, they'll be covered with planks."
Well, true. You aren't going to see them from the OUTSIDE. The neighbors won't see them. We, however will be staring at them for the rest our lives.
Rodrigo tried to change the subject, pointed proudly at the wood planks. "But see that? It's going to be beautiful with these redwood planks."
That didn't seem right either. The planks were stained redwood color, but as far as I know, you can no longer get real redwood. It's kind of endangered.
"Redwood?" I asked. "Really?"
"Oh Dave, sorry, did I say redwood? I meant cedar. Stained to look like redwood. I'm sorry you misunderstood me."
I didn't misunderstand anything. You'll a fucking pathological liar.
At this point I was just ready to throw in the towel. The problems just kept piling up. The planks were all trimmed to different lengths and were crooked too. it was starting to look like an upside down picket fence. "Oh Dave, thats how they come from the lumberyard. They're always going to be a little off." I pointed to his workman, who was on the ground behind him with a handsaw, doing all the crooked trimming." "Oh, right Dave, I see what you mean. We'll fix it." To be honest, I didn't give a fuck anymore.
By the end of day two, most of the fence was up. If you could call it that. The most obvious problem, of which there were many, was the final plank on the corner. It was 6 inches wide at the top and then tapered to a point at the bottom, like the shape of a piece of pie. Somewhere around the middle of the fence, they had been placing the planks at an ever so slight angle, each compounding the angle of the last. By the time they had gotten to the end, the only way they could close the final gap was with a triangle. It looked like an optical illusion. Like and Escher drawing.
The next morning I made them take it all down and do it all over again. Rodrigo and I were no longer friends.
The final injustice was the pathetic little gate. They cut it about a foot too short. It looked like capri pants.
"Oh Dave, it's be easier to use that way" Rodrigo said, covering his ass.
I pointed out the chief reason we were getting a fence was to keep the dogs in. Which was no longer really an option since they could now just waltz out under the gate. I made him redo it.
By Wednesday, the job, such as it was, was considered "done". Rodrigo came for his check. Of course the final price tag came in higher - what a shock. All told it cost about $1800. I wrote him out a check for the balance. He looked it over and then looked somewhat perplexed. He pointed to my name on check and said "Who is this?"
It me dickhead. My name isn't "Dave".
