Tradesmen who don't turn up. Grrrr....

Poor Ken had yet another taste of unreliable tradies today.   I was at the Craft And Quilt show all day, and left him at home to wait for a plumber from Rainshield Roofing to add some final bits to the roof.   We were told on Monday someone would be here today.   The bits and pieces have been sitting on the front lawn for a week.    As well as that, a plasterer was lined up to fix the hole in the kitchen ceiling left by the electrician last week, who moved the exhaust fan to another part of the ceiling. I was going to get a tradie from the local paper to do this, but he (the electrician) said he had a mate who would do it for us. The Mate lives about half an hour's drive from us, but Electrician phoned him and Mate said it was okay, he would come on Thursday (today) and do the job for us.

I got a call from Ken about 1 pm while I was admiring beautiful quilts at the Craft & Quilt Show.   He was really spitting chips.    Now my Kenny does not usually have a bad temper and he rarely yells at people, but I could almost hear him gnashing his teeth over the phone today!    He had waited until midday for the plumber and plasterer, but nobody came, and nobody phoned to say they weren't coming.   So he called them.   The guy from Rainshield claimed he hadn't told us the fixtures would be installed today, and said their bloke would be here on Monday to do it.    Ken gave him a serve and said they could whistle Dixie for the final payment ($4000, so they have something to be concerned about!).   Then he called the plasterer, who said "Oh, I didn't have your address" to which Ken asked "But didn't you have our phone number?"  . "Oh yeah. I forgot. I'll come on Saturday morning".   Ken said "No you won't - just forget about it, we'll get a local tradie like we were going to until your mate the Electrician said you were reliable".
 
When I got home about 4.30 pm after driving through gridlocked traffic in the city, my nerves were a tad frayed too, but Ken was still extremely cheesed off, so I soothed his ruffled feathers with appropriate comments about rotten tradies.   Then I got the local phone book out and found a plasterer in the next suburb who said he will come out tomorrow afternoon and fix the ceiling.   I said if he doesn't turn up he won't get another chance, as we'd wasted one day already waiting for someone.   He grunted something that sounded liked 'typical young ones today', and said "I'll be there".   He sounded like an older (as in middle aged) bloke, so hopefully he will turn up.   As for Rainshield Roofing, I typed out a two page letter and emailed it to the manager, saying how pleased we were with our new roof but it was a pity his staff had such bad communication skills, because we were going to leave good feedback on their website, but won't be now.   Gee I am such a s--t stirrer. Let's just hope we don't get a rock through the front window from any ex-employees. At least the company offices are miles from here, so hopefully none of their non-communicative employees live over this way.