Tuesday, 25 May 2004
So It Ends With a Whimper, Not a Bang
So anticlimactic it was, I never even thought to mention how my experience with the worker-thieves came to a close.
One week ago yesterday, after several weeks of halfhearted phone-tag, I ran into the owner of the apartment above mine. Daniel (his name, and much easier to write than repeating some descriptive sentence) had hired a contractor to fix damage in my apartment. Said contractor, in turn, was apparently very let down by what can only be termed a professional betrayal on the part of his workmen (man?).
Anyway, despite the fact that the only real proof that I could present was a list of long-distance phone calls, Daniel got € 50 from the contractor, which he passed on to me. That's almost twice the cost of the calls, but doesn't really cover my frustration or what I had lost (a favorite sweater, a bit over € 15 worth of shiny, never-circulated, first-year-they-existed coins).
Nor does it help me with the fact that I still have to find a contractor on my own to repair the broken floor panel and the unfinished plastering in my kitchen. Fortunately, at least, the owners of my apartment have promised to repay me those expenses. Not that I have the time or the energy to do it anytime soon...
Being the cynic that I am (or rather, have become), I wonder whether I got the full amount that the contractor had paid to Daniel. Or if anyone in the chain of people really even did feel any remorse. I know that I would have just rather lived in an apartment with cracks than put up with this. Like I wrote before, it's hardly my responsibility to put up with this kind of crap, much less arrange for repairs.
See, kids: this is what "they" mean when "they" say that what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Rather, what doesn't kill you will just wear you down to a nub, an object eroded such as to presents the smallest possible target to the world and what it throws at you. Sometimes I think, if my love of music or movies didn't require auditoriums and theatres, I'd probably become a hermit.