As I alluded to in my last daddy brog, I was to have some work done to my house, specifically, fixing up the wood around two very high up windows, so that they would no longer allow moisture into my home. The day in which that work was to happen has come and gone, and hoo boy, do I have a story to tell, about just how much failure can possibly be packed into a single day of one individual person, being me.
For starters, when it was evident that moisture was getting into my home, I was pretty quickly able to deduce that it was coming from an upstairs window, based on where the water was seeping into parts of my home. Honestly, this was something that was flagged during my home inspection back before I even came into the home, but it wasn’t listed as something that was critical, but something to look out for in the future. And the future had arrived, and the seal clearly had worn down to where water was getting into my house when the rain came sideways.
So, thinking it was something fairly minor and maybe a few silicone caulk re-sealing wouldn’t fix, I opted to get a handyman, whom might have a 26-32’ ladder, since my 22’ extension ladder wasn’t tall enough for me to go up there and inspect it myself. It took a day or two for the guy to show up, as he had cited a child emergency on the first day, and being the new dad I am myself, I was extremely understanding and empathetic to the needs of children first.
When he did show up, we joked about how we both hoped this would be a quick job where he could hop up onto the ladder, slather down some caulk, and be on his merry way, bam, easy $100, but it turns out that it wouldn’t be that simple because nothing in the world is ever that simple. It turned out that the frame around the window was mostly rotten, and even the ladder coming into contact with a piece of it caused it to immediately disintegrate like Castlevania blocks.
Now this, is the point where I feel like I could have changed history. Like if I were Cable from X-Force, I could body slide to this point in time and smack myself upside the head and tell me to NOT ask the guy,
Can you fix it?
Because of fucking course he said he could, what handyman is ever going to say no and deny themselves the possibility of getting a job? And then he quoted be some number that I didn’t find egregious, and frankly I just wanted this shit fixed up as soon as humanly possible, and didn’t want to go through too much bullshit trying to track down a window person to come and re-examine and re-quote song and dance.
But then this is where things got a little weird, and frankly, the second point where I should have body slid back in time to beat myself and act upon a very fucking obvious red flag going up (#1): he asked if I would rent a scissor lift. I mean, it made sense, because the window was at least 25 feet in high, it’s not like he could go through the entire process of removing dead wood, removing glass, and re-sealing the whole thing while on a precarious and wobbly ladder. And what the fuck did I know about installing windows to question what someone needed to get the job done?
So in spite of my confusion at the initial request, I was like yeah sure whatever, I’ll rent one. His wife/business partner was even so kind as to track down a place nearby that would’ve had the cheapest cost for a scissor lift, and gave me their info to book the reservation.
I called up the local tool rental place, and asked about it, and everything was going fine until he asked what kind of project I would need a scissor lift for. When I told him that it was for external window work, he asked what surface the lift would need to be on. When I responded with grass, he immediately let me know that the lift couldn’t go on surfaces other than concrete or asphalt, and that they’d undoubtedly sink into the turf (red flag #2). I thanked him for the very important information, and proceeded with no reservation.
I got in touch with my handyman, and told him what I’d been told, and he told me that it would be fine, because he would drive the lift solely on plywood, and would have the lift sitting on sheets of plywood the entire time. I mean, I’ve seen entire stages be wheeled onto baseball fields, plus this guy sounded confident and acted like he’d done this before, so I went ahead and said that okay, we can go with it, except that I’d have to go make a reservation somewhere else, because it’s not like I could call the first company back and be all like “j/k, it’s going to be on asphalt/concrete” and actually have them believe me and not have a billion dollar deposit.
So I reserved one from my nearest The Home Depot, which ended up being like $450 once the delivery to and from were factored in, and this is where my initial pit of anxiety came from which prompted the initial brog posts of anxiety. My gut was seriously screaming at me that things seemed way too fishy to have a massive piece of equipment that two companies had explicitly told me to not run on the grass, planned to go on grass, and expect everything was going to be fine.
Which brings us to today; right about at 10:30 sharp, The Home Depot delivers the scissor lift right on time because of course they did. I let my handyman know it was here, and he responded that they were on their way, just had to stop by their own THD in order to pick up necessary supplies. So at around 1:30 he finally shows up, and I tell him I sure hope he knows how to drive one of these things, because I sure as hell don’t, to which of course he responds he can.
I watch for a few tense minutes as he maneuvers the thing, precariously close to my garage door, and my asshole is clinched because he’s so close to making contact with my physical home, but he miraculously manages to not do any damage. He then lines up with my gate door, and eases it forward, while I’m watching with bated breath as he approaches the end of the concrete and prepares to go off the lip onto the first sheet of plywood.
And then the wheels ease off the concrete and land on the plywood, and there’s an immediate cracking sound as a nearly 5,000 lb piece of equipment eases onto an inch-thick piece of plywood. (red flags #3, 4, 5, 6, through 72). But since the guy was so confident that this was going to work, I walked away and let him do his thing, planning on holding him accountable if anything were to go awry.
From my kitchen window, I could see him and his wife precariously maneuvering the lift, while alternating the sheets of plywood like fucking Solomon’s Key, but the thing was slowly making its way to where it needed to be.
But then, right in front of my kitchen window, where I was cleaning baby bottle things, and tending to my daughter, I noticed progress seemed to halt. Furthermore, I noticed that the lift was now at a weird angle. Getting on my toes to get a better look, yup, sure enough, one of the wheels was not on plywood, and was most definitely sinking into the grass which was now mud.
Like a fucking meme, I face palmed.
The one thing that gave me the greatest concern, was happening, as it probably was supposed to happen, because scissor lifts weigh five thousand fucking pounds and it’s been intermittently raining off and on in Georgia because it’s fucking Georgia, so even on a sunny day, the ground is probably all sorts of still moist underneath an inch.
Needless to say, the window repair might as well have been on the fucking moon at this point. The lift had to be moved, either to its working position, or gotten the fuck back onto the driveway, but there was no way in hell that the window was going to get fixed if this thing couldn’t move.
Early on, I poked my head outside to ask if we needed to get a tow truck; after all, it was still the heart of the day, and there were bound to be many specialty wreckers or tow services that might be able to help out, and I didn’t want to get into the position of where they waited so long that no towing would come until the next day, and the lift was due back for pickup at 10:30 tomorrow. A quick “no sir” was what I got in response, from an obviously flustered handyman, and I let him be, because maybe he could figure something out, regardless of how unlikely it all seemed.
For the next few hours, I could feel my heart beat elevated and my tension extremely high, and if not for my baby daughter to help keep me grounded, I probably would’ve gone ballistic as the tragedy of errors continued on just outside my window, as the lift began to sink more and more, because he was trying to shovel out the wheels, and drive pieces of wood in there to try and fulcrum out the stuck wheels.
Nevermind the damage he was causing to my yard; I’m not exactly Green Thumb Gary when it comes to landscaping, but I do keep a fairly clean back yard. But ultimately, I’m willing to deal with some divots in my yard, as long as the lift could be removed, because at this point, to hell with the window, I just want the lift back on the driveway, without any more damage done to my yard.
But the lift was irrevocably stuck now. My worst nightmare was coming to fruition. The feeling was indescribably helpless, because I have no earthly idea what these guys were going to do, much less myself. Was I going to get stuck with this shit in my yard? Was I going to be on the hook for whatever cost it was going to take to get this shit off my property? What the fuck was it going to cost in order get shit right??
Finally, when it was apparent that they were done trying to move the lift themselves, I went outside to pick their brains to see what was going on. Apparently, and thankfully, they had taken the initiative to contact a tow truck themselves, which was somewhat of a relief to me, because that was not going to be an expense that I’d have to incur, although at this point, I was willing to eat whatever cost it would take in order to put an end to this nightmare, and get back to square one.
However, I did have grave concerns over a tow truck, because it doesn’t take a physics genius to understand the likely complications of the positioning of the stuck lift, to where a tow truck and its chains/hooks could actually access. I had much concern for my fence, which at this point, was barely a year old since its installation, and there’s no way there was any way to access the lift without a conflict with the fence.
And when the tow truck arrived, my concerns were validated, because there was no way their cable could actually pull a 5,000 lb. lift without the cable tensing around the fence. And when truck is pulling 5,000 lift with a fence in the way, the fence is going to lose 100 times out of 100.
I watched, mortified, as these people wrecked my yard more and more, trying to get the lift to move in the first place, and then remove entire panels off of my fence, because they needed the space for the cables. But because I’m also a new dad trying to juggle precarious feed and nap times, I stepped away to feed my child, but then rushed back to see what fuckery was happening next, and I could see the handyman sawing one of my fence posts, much to my horror. I stepped outside at this to question the decision, and he basically was like this is the only way like fucking Kuiil from The Mandalorian, and I just walked away, with my head blowing up nuclear inside.
Finally, the lift was back on the driveway. It was like 7 pm at this point, and there was less than an hour of sunlight left, so obviously the window was definitely not going to happen, and I’ve got a wrecked yard, and a wrecked fence, and a scissor lift covered in mud, due back tomorrow, with a $200 cleaning charge likely to be triggered. I walked around the yard of wreckage like a survivor of a bombing, and my first thought was that I needed to photo document all this shit, for whatever reason might need be. Whether it’s for Thumbtack, internet reviewing, or just for my own edification and documentation, I felt like I should photograph the carnage, if for anything at all, the very important lesson learned today of just how the fuck not to fucking fail so fucking badly.
Surprisingly, handyman explained to me that his wife was putting together some documentation of all the shit that happened, so that they could be in charge of taking care of it. Two damaged fence posts (one outright cut off), the panels unnecessarily removed, and a completely fucked yard. If you need it spelled out, the image above is the actual yard’s aftermath; completely decimated.
Honestly, I’m surprised that the handyman was taking accountability of all this bullshit. I had resigned myself to the fate that I was going to be in charge of fixing all of this shit myself, and what was supposed to be a window repair was going to turn into a multi-thousand dollar landscaping/beautification/repair project.
That’s the only good thing to have come out of this entire day, to be perfectly honest, because otherwise, I have this feeling that this has been the worst day that I’ve had in years. Seriously, I’ve only recently gone through ten years of brogging, and I don’t remember seeing any sort of posting of a bad day like this in years.
What really kills me the most about today is that abso-fucking-lutely everything could have been avoided if there was just some honesty up front, and not this false confidence and bravado that the job could be done, just so that a job could be had. I respect that the guy is taking accountability for all his fuck-ups, but I’d have respected him a whole hell of a lot more if he just admit that this project wasn’t something that he could handle, and not have put up both in the boat of eating hundreds of dollars in sheer fucking waste.
Seriously, if he hadn’t taken the job, I wouldn’t have just sunk $450 (+200 for cleaning, probably) in a scissor lift that NEVER got fucking used, and he wouldn’t be out the hundreds of dollars it’s going to take to repair my fence and my lawn, not to mention the obvious inevitability that I’m most definitely not fucking using him to fix my window, so it’s an overall sunk cost for him too, although I get the impression he’s going to make a business insurance claim.
But what it boils down to is the fact that none of this happens if I didn’t make the choice. It’s not often that I like to have any regrets, but it’s an understatement to call this a simple mistake. It’s the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made in years, and it leaves me so discouraged, angry and disappointed in fucking everything, that it’s going to take some time to shake this one off, especially since there’s so much visual reminder of all this fucking failure.
This is what I get because I wanted to support the little guy, and support small business. My gut threw up countless red flags and reasons why I shouldn’t have done such, and just contacted an actual window company, but no, my righteous sense of fucking empathy and wanting to help others bites me in the fucking ass like snakes on a motherfucking plane. I just had to want to support a guy just trying to feed his family, and instead letting him drop an atom bomb on my property where everyone loses, and wastes all their time just trying to get back to fucking zero.
I’m out $450 for absolutely jack shit, and I have no window fixed. It’s supposed to thunderstorm over the next few days, so there’s a good chance that my house will still have some leaking issues because of it, and all I’m left with is smoldering anger, distrust in people, and most of all, disgust in myself for making such a bad and costly choice.
Fuck Thumbtack, fuck every lying shithead of a repair service person who thinks way too highly of their capabilities, and for a day like today, fuck the world. Mother fucker I’m so upset.
