Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Freedom .
Finally, I’m getting somewhere. And not just in regard to the new roof, but with my life, too.
At 6:00 tonight, after work stopped because two nails guns broke, I talked to the roofing crew as they were leaving. Only one spoke enough English for us to communicate. Seems we’ve found the breakdown in the communication chain—it’s called “management.” The guy they work for, Don, who tried to guilt me into eating a $26,000 bill because the guys were “already here” and could not wait until Monday so an insurance adjustor could come out for one hour, had been told they couldn’t be there on time. Instead of relaying the message, he chose to be a coward (after jerking me around the day before with tactics that bring up my old issues) and the only message I got back from the major home improvement company about the whereabouts of the roofers was that they were turning into my driveway any minute at 3 p.m. last Saturday. The roofer was confused. They were an hour and a half away at that time, had notified the major home improvement company at 2 p.m. that, according to them, they couldn’t make it until Monday. So far, Don hasn’t had the balls to call me and offer even the flimsiest explanation for why I paid a premium to his company so I wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of crap, let alone his manipulation tactics. Nor has he done anything to try to show he regrets his treatment of me—I doubt he does because this whole mess hasn’t had any effect on him that I can see. He’s at the top of my list for bad service…and karma, considering his “guilting” tactics…though I’m finding some interesting people in this mess, too, one of whom gave me a message from the Universe without realizing it.
At 9:30 this morning when the sun was shining, the dumpster was still sitting on my front lawn, and no sign of my phantom roofers anywhere, it looked like another day of major home improvement company Hell. About 10:30, though, I had a very, very long conversation with a woman in their roof installation office. She claims to be working very hard to restore my faith in her company, though the people working for her aren’t making it very easy right now.
But something besides business came out of our conversation.
She agreed that the account statement that had dropped my credit score was erroneous and took care of it on the spot, something the Customer Care “I told you my name” person had refused to even hear could be an error.
Then we talked about how I’d been jerked around and unable to get a call-back, about how so many of the things I’d been promised wouldn’t happen (guaranteed in writing, too) had happened, about how frustrated I was with the lack of promised service that I’d paid extra for. She told me she was surprised because she was under the impression the men working for her—the project manager, the sales consultant, and the roofers’ boss—had been in constant contact with me and that I knew what was going on. Um, no. (And this is not male-bashing. Lack of service has nothing to do with gender, as their Customer Care department proved yesterday.)
This is where I sometimes feel sorry for businesspeople who try to blow me off and tell me I’m wrong about what they promised. Nah….
With this woman, who told me these men had said I was up-to-date with the status of everything and had been kept fully informed, I immediately—and without even having my notes in front of me—started with, “I talked to Don at 12:13 on Friday, November 18th when he called to surprise me with news that the roofer would be at my home at 8:00 the following day, then again at 12:43 on Friday, November 18th and we discussed my insurance adjustor’s inspection prior to his arrival, at which point he said the following offensive things to me and hung up.” From there, I listed the times, dates, names, discussion points, and status I was given, and then the calls I made that were never returned.
It’s hard to argue with someone who has every detail memorialized and knows what the fine print says. It’s what I do for a living, I said of my day job as a contract negotiator. I document, document, document, both in my head and on paper. It’s a habit most businessmen don’t expect from me, and when I present documentation or point out what the fine print says, they fold.
“Documentation is my life,” I joke. “I live to document.”
Whoa. Yeah. I do. I live to document. To document my life and the things I learn and to pass them along for others to learn or be comforted.
It’s a life mission that’s been forming more and more clearly over the past year. As the Nolalaln High Order told me, my mission is to take knowledge to all peoples. What I learn, I’m to distribute in a way that can be understood. It’s not about me or my life in particular. My life is the framework for the lessons. It’s about the information, the lessons, that I can give.
My conversation with this woman was just a reminder, a different way of seeing what I’ve been told already, in other words, about my mission in this lifetime.
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