Tradies

"Tradies" is the general name for any person involved in a trade. There are more specific names; "sparkies" are electricians, "chippies" are carpenters, "dunny divers" are plumbers, "brickies" are bricklayers. You get the idea.

Almost six months ago we moved into a house we had built. Since then, we've had a lot of tradies coming in and out of the house. First there are the people who were fixing flaws on the house - the electrician who came to put a light on the end of a light switch that did nothing, the plumber who came to figure out why it takes our kitchen hot water about 5 minutes to heat up (answer: They put the water heater too far from the kitchen. Sorry about that.).

We've had the cable/Internet people out to our house multiple times, and finally after 3.5 months we have Internet and a home phone. We've had window treatment installers out twice, and they need to come out two more times. The window treatment people schedule us for installation and don't tell us when our appointment is, or they change the appointment without telling us. We've had the gutter guy come out to clean and install gutter guards.

Then there were the ones who were doing work on the outside of the house, which didn't come with any kind of landscaping. We needed tiers built, new fences erected around the entire house, concrete laid, etc.

Joel called six people to come bid on our back fence. Three wanted to quote for it, two showed up. One said our quote was in the mail, but it wasn't. The third one we came to an agreement with. The fencer decided to come three days later than expected, with his three kids and his wife who works with him. The three kids were sweltering in the 40 C heat outside, so I invited them in to at least get them out of the sun. The kids tore up the house, asked to take home a few of my kids' toys, and were generally annoying. I made up an appointment to go to so I could kick them out of the house.

Our first landscaper, Andrew, came recommended, but kept doing things other than what we wanted. Joel told him, "I want three straight tiers in the back garden." Andrew made one straight, one crooked. Why?? Andrew thought it would look better. Joel said he wanted stairs with sleepers down one side of the yard. Andrew made stairs with sand. Same reason. Andrew asked if he could keep his equipment in our garage. We said yes, and he proceeded to set up house, installing a kettle, a sandwich press, some plates and cutlery and a huge mess. It took days to clean out all the dirt after he left. He filled our bins with detritus from construction, like bags from the sand or concrete. He built retaining walls that were on other people's property, and when we asked him to fix it, he quit, sneaking away midday with all his things and leaving some dents in our walls as payback for daring to ask him to do his job properly.

Our first concreter came with Andrew. They did all the concreting around the house, but when Andrew quit, he took his concreters with him and we were left with a driveway but no crossover from the street to get into the driveway. I called multiple concreters to try to find someone to complete the job. Three called me back, two showed up to give an estimate, one actually delivered an estimate and did complete the work.

Andrew had built our front fence on what's called "council property", or property that belongs to the city. One would think the council's land would end at the sidewalk. No no no! The council in our area takes anywhere from an additional 40 - 52 centimeters past the sidewalk closer to your house. You are NOT allowed to have a fence on this property. You are, however, expected to maintain the property. So you need to put grass, or concrete or flowers or something on this strip of council land, and take care of it but you are not allowed a fence. When I asked what the difference was, the council's answer was "liability. Your fence could fall on someone and hurt them." When I pointed out that the fence's height limit, per council, was 1 metre and it was concreted into the ground, and asked how someone would hurt themselves on a 1 metre high fence - too small to fall on top of anyone, too big to trip anyone, where's the liablity risk? They had nothing to say.

Joel found some random tradies on the street (seriously!) and asked them to help tear down Andrew's fence. Then he asked if they wanted to rebuild for us. They agreed, and negotiated a price.  They built half the fence, but built it to 1.25 metres instead of 1.0. Unsurprisingly, they ran out of material. They said they'd order more and come back to finish the job, but asked to be paid first. Joel paid them half.  One of them, let's call him Mike, called Joel back on Tuesday morning to see if Joel wanted them to finish the job, and if so when. Joel didn't call back immediately because, well, he was at work. Mike called back that same afternoon, this time saying he was going to come to our house and tear out the half-fence he had built for us if Joel didn't see fit to call back.

Joel was like, "Whaat?" and called Mike's partner, Trevor. Trevor was more sensible, said "Ignore Mike, we're happy to come back and finish the job." Joel said Mike wasn't welcome on the property, Trevor said whatevs.  So this morning Trevor showed up, did the work. Mike showed up to deliver tools, Joel reminded Trevor that he didn't want Mike there, then Trevor threatened to pull up the unfinished fence. He said that he and Mike had torn out some other guy's deck because the man refused to pay them. Joel didn't bother reminding the tradies that WE HAD PAID THEM and that really was the bright line between reasonable and crazy in this business they were running.

Anyway, Joel stood over Trevor until the job was done. Some of the panels in the fence are crooked. Joel didn't care, he just wanted these lunatics off our property. He insisted on a receipt (the guys had wanted a cash-only job, but after these shenanigans, Joel was all, "uh uh." On the receipt, Trevor added an additional $100 fee for fixing the height of the fence, despite us having told them the height limit was one metre. Joel paid it to be rid of them, and now he's outside fixing the wonky panels himself.

We are thoroughly sick of tradespeople around our house. We're sick of waiting from 8 - 12 at home for the Internet guys, sick of having to supervise supposed professionals after a plan has been decided on and written down to make sure they're actually executing the plan properly, then being the bad guy when we insist they do what we had previously agreed on. We're tired of supposed professionals just not showing up to work or quitting mid-job because they decide it's too much work to finish.  My colleagues here tell me this is not uncommon; that tradies often just decide to go to the beach or the pub or wherever instead of working. As an American who is used to pretty good service, I find this reeeally frustrating.

The end to our Andrew story, at least so far: Andrew was always complaining about how tight money was for him, and that he was barely getting anything for his work. After he quit, and we were in the process of rebuilding his front fence, we went looking for additional wood to complete it. We discovered that that particular wood hasn't been in stock for years, so Andrew apparently charged us for wood he already owned, probably left over and paid for by a previous job. We also found some old potted plants of his buried in our garden.  He is the tradie version of the gift that keeps on giving. Whenever anything goes wrong in the garden, we now blame Andrew.