There is nothing quite so terrible as being woken up before 9 on a Saturday morning by heavy construction in the unit next door. After trying my best to ignore the drilling and hammering — tap tap tap TAP TAP tap tap TAP! bbzzzzt! bzzzzzzzt! tap TAP! TAP Bzzzzt! — my desire to fall back asleep turned into anger. What the heck kinda show were they running next door? Was it the new guy who had just moved in mounting a whole gallery of art to the ceilings in there? Or was it construction? Trying hard to discern between the bbbzt’s and tap’s, I woke up a little more and figured it was most likely construction. You think my landlady would have at least given me some kind of notice, sheesh. I mean, here I was about to call her out of courtesy to confirm that it was indeed construction and not some weirdo putting up a Chihuly exhibit for commercial purposes. Because if the new guy really was doing that, I’m sure she would like to know too.
My landlady’s phone number isn’t programmed into my work phone, so first I had to rummage around to find it. With a minimal amount of opening and slamming drawers, I found it. Vision blurred, voice froggied, I called.
“Sylvia, is there construction going on next door?”
“…,” A long pause from Sylvia.
“It’s Sobrina.”
“Ohhh,” she said. It was one of those “oh’s” where you know in about a minute you are going to feel just a little bit dumb for calling all in a huff. “You didn’t check your voicemail yesterday, did you? Yeah, I left you a message to let you know the unit next door is getting new windows and construction would start at 8.”
And then I remembered why I had to ransack the house for her number to call her on my work cell. I noticed last night around dinner time that I had misplaced my personal phone somewhere but was too lazy to look for it.
So she did call….
“Hey, well, listen Sobrina, if there’s a better way to reach you or to leave you a message…”
“Oh, no, heh heh. That’s ok, that is the best way.” I remembered chiding her early on for calling me on my work cell and making a specific request for her to only call me on my regular phone. Heh, heh. Who’s the jerk now?
She ended with, “Ok, well, your new windows aren’t scheduled to be in until the spring. We need to recuperate some costs first.”
After we hung up, I stopped feeling bad about being a jerk when I realized that this new next door neighbor jerk of mine scored himself some new carpet, hardwood floors, new paint, brand new appliances and new windows. Really??
And to top it all off, as I made coffee in the kitchen, I found myself staring straight out the window into a man’s crotch. There was a man on a ladder dangling cords and things right in front of me. I recognized that black vest he wore… When he had to move my trash cans to get to the side of the house, I had had enough.
“Umm, what are you doing?” I opened the back door and asked.
“I’m just putting in a line for your new neighbor there,” he said. As he turned to face me I read the corner of his fleece vest — Comcast.
So here is this new guy, not even moved in yet, waking me up with an entire construction crew at an unholy hour on Saturday morning and reaping all the benefits of my hard work with Comcast. My 50 phone calls into them probably resulted in him having to make only 1. And he’ll get to enjoy the benefits of high speed internet while sitting in his newly upgraded home.
And what do I get? Maggots, dust, diddlysquat. Call it by any name you want, but nothing is pretty much always nothing. At least his first Comcast bill probably won’t be $4.12 down from $62.56. Yes, that just goes to show how much of a discount daily pestering will get you.