I live in a condo. And I rent. There are four attached units, horizontally laid out with no upstairs, and all the tenants lease from the owner. We have our own driveways, front lawns, backyards, etc. There’s a six-acre field behind the property that random homeless folks like to inhabit, use as a toilet, smoke meth in, etc., but that’s not really important to my review here.
I also work from home. Which, if you take part of this otherwise fortunate set of circumstances, you may strongly find yourself regretting your life decisions for the several weeks any roofer comes to replace your domicile’s overhead. Especially when they begin the installation part. But hopefully, by then, you’ll be so emotionally numb to the entire process that it won’t really matter.
Like I was.
So to the sh*tbag, f*ck-up thirtysomethings who’ve come to replace my roof—with your man-buns, face tattoos, marijuana vaping, horrible taste in music and carelessness in general for people who just want to live a normal life without being psychically accosted nearly every day of it—I have the following to say. Not necessarily to only you, but to anyone thinking of hiring you, what is (obviously) the cheapest roofing company in their town, with an ensemble cast of bros who look, with some regional variation, more or less exactly like you.
Let’s start with day 1, when you showed up for three hours, began tearing the roof apart, and then went home. The wind was blowing around 15 mph that day, and, subsequently, the amount of roof trash I was compelled to pick in my backyard was so abundant that I honestly should have been paid at least $50 for it. I fit what I could into my own garbage can, and threw the probably 100 yards of paper that remained onto my driveway for the night, assuming you’d pick it up the next day.
Over the next several afternoons, I had to go out and say something to you idiots so many times that I became that first-time parent who’s totally given up on being effective, knowing full well their child is doomed in ten years to a life of chronic ADHD, school suspensions, police-informed truancy and (quite possibly) tabloid infamy. First, it was moving your g**damn portable radio away from my kitchen vent, because I actually didn’t want to hear Blink 182 or 21 Savage with Offset and Metro Boomin coming into my living room ever. While I’m still alive. Zero times has been enough already, and I’d been hoping to keep that streak going for the rest of my existence.
Then, there was my opening my garage door to find my driveway barricaded with various lengths and girths of rotten roof trimming. When one of you saw me begrudgingly kicking and stomping the pile to the side just so my car could back out, you came and half-assedly ran a magnet over what was left, making sure I didn’t back out onto any nails or staples. Which likely speaks to the *ssssssss* I hear coming from my back tire now every time it rains.
Next, you threw away the gutter to my rain barrel without having removed any other gutters on the building. I came home one afternoon and *poof*. No gutter. The main gutter was still up, but my little section was suddenly gone. And since I didn’t see any notes saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to replace this so don’t get your panties in a wad’ or whatever, I asked you where my gutter went, whereupon you pointed to the trailer of garbage parked in my neighbor’s driveway, wherein lay the 8-foot length of my obviously worked-over, possibly previously tortured gutter. Which would have been fine, I suppose, if water didn’t start hemorrhaging from that particular missing section that night when the rain began to come down.
Fourth or fifth (or whichever number we’re on now), there was the gentleman with the face tattoo outside my kitchen window on his ladder, possibly looking in, possibly not, but still there without any warning. When I went out to say something, he only blinked at me. Because I, in fact, had nothing to say. Arms half raised, I only stared at him and he at me, like we were two star-crossed lovers locking eyes for the first time, and he had come on his ladder to serenade me, and I was in the stables cleaning up horsesh*t or something. No heads-up, not a single word, just walking through the gate into my yard and setting a ladder up among around an arrangement of a dozen or so plants and any number of other patio furniture pieces and valuable, delicate knickknacks you generally find in a person’s f*cking backyard when they have no idea some random stranger’s going to pitch a ladder back there without any warning and do manual labor for an indeterminate amount of time.
Good thing I wasn’t watching porno. I mean, I’m just sayin’.
And, finally, there was the day the roof itself decided to literally pee into my kitchen—just violently empty its bladder when you people went away those three days it rained like hell and obviously didn’t cover any of the outside vents. It was a good thing a bucket was already there due to the persistent dripping that preceded it, otherwise I would’ve been cooking dinner that night with my feet submerged in a virtual toilet bowl of wood splinters, shingle specks and dead stinkbugs.
And still your Nickleback and Flo Rida persisted, all the while. I suspect everyone else living here lacks a sufficient spine to say something (the squatters and meth smokers in the back field can attest to that) when you put your radio in front of their kitchen vents, but on behalf of the spineless (here and everywhere), I’d like to say the following: no one wants to smell your vape, hear your music like it were a concert experience, pick up your nails, staples and roof trash or listen to the over-caffeinated, shout-conversations you have about the memes, YouTube videos or Reddit posts you revel in when you’re not working ten feet from any of their windows.
I’d say the smartest thing you people do is not advertise the name of your company on the side of your truck. Especially while it’s parked on my neighbor’s lawn, in his driveway, or blocking the adjacent gravel road so that the garbage trucks and FedEx people can’t get by.
Save getting high until the day is done. Because I seriously don’t want to be standing over your barely-conscious body/possible corpse a minute after watching it fall onto my lawn.
Turn down/ turn off your f*cking music. Because: see above.
You don’t work in an office, you effectively work in someone else’s home. There are people literally living right underneath you. Imagine if I recruited three meth-smokers from my back field and we spent four hours a day walking around on your rooftop. I mean, I’m just sayin’.
And by the way, still waiting for that section of gutter you chucked to reappear on my rain barrel. Still waiting for that miracle.
