Dick

The more sensible sibling to my Alex wedges, the Alexlo from Stuart Weitzman. Part of same shipment from the US via my mail forwarding service in Jersey. (Every shopper with a black belt should have one. And, guess what? I found out about this service from a GUY at work. Beat that. So shopping is not just a girly thing.) Easier to walk in, but not by far as glam as the taller version. More of a Monday or Tuesday shoe.

As you might have noticed, we are not entirely happy with our gardener/pool boy, a.k.a. Quasimodo. One thing is that he does not really meet my standards of what a French pool boy should look like, but I could live with that if he at least was a good pool boy. Or gardener. Or ANYTHING other than a real sleaze bag, really.

Last Friday he managed to mess up things properly in the pool utility room. As he wanted to prove to me that the plumber I had hired had not fixed the leak, he had to start poking his nose in things far beyond his competence level. You see, he does not like the fact that we can fix things on our own, or with the help of people he has not "approved". So, he stated that there was still a leak in the pool room, as the pipes were a bit damp (which as far as I could see was just condensation, but what do I know...). The story peaked with him unscrewing the main valve to the pool. Clever. As the water pressure was quite high, he managed to SOAK himself as well as the entire room, and he had a real struggle getting the valve closed again. And when he did, guess what? Now we had the MOTHER OF ALL LEAKS. Awesome. Mr. Incredible arrived, and instantly hit the roof. Clearly telling the pool boy what he thought of his work, in a phrase I will just refer to in Norwegian ("Din jæææævla kuk!)" and not translate, in case someone under age is reading this. The guy got the message. He said he would be back to fix the mess Monday, and left.

With the help of our housekeeper's husband, we managed to close the leak the same evening. It turned out that Quasimodo had put the lid of the valve back on without the little rubber ring that firmly closes it (sorry, this is where my English vocabulary ends).

Still, we waited for Quasimodo to turn up again on Monday.
And Tuesday.
And Wednesday.
And Thursday.
And Friday.
No sign of him.

Yesterday I decided to call him. He did not answer, so I left a message telling him we were expecting him. In the afternoon, I heard a car in the backyard. And with him being the only other person with a key to the gate, I knew it must be him. So I quickly asked my friend Miss J, who was visiting from London, and is - very conveniently - fluent in French, to be my back up in case I was not able to make myself understood.

When asked where he had been all week, the moron managed to put on silly grin and stated that he had been ON VACATION. That did it. I just asked for his keys back, and told him he was done.

His muttering of "no problem, no problem, no problem" all the way back to his car, and the way he rocketed off our premises in his little pick-up truck told me otherwise. But it felt really good. From now on I can even take a dip in my very own pool without being afraid of the pig suddenly appearing from behind a bush. Or, as our real-estate agent should later put it so eloquently. "I am so sorry. I did not know, but that guy is AN ANIMAL."

The moral of the story is, if you find someone to work for you that quotes you a fixed price that is too good to be true, it normally is. You should always expect to get exactly what you are paying for.


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