Trading Time

And so on day three, I am a prisoner in my own home as I wait for the tradie to turn up.

This time he had left his cordless drill at home and went back to get it, only he never came back, and then said that he wouldn’t be able to make it today – this was 12.30pm and he was meant to come at 7.30am.

Yesterday he was suddenly called out to meet the electrician at the home of another client. Again, he was meant to be here at 7.30am – arrived at 10.30am and left at 11.30am.

The day before he was stopping to get something for smoko – must have been a smoked reindeer fillet, freshly slaughtered to order in Finland and travelling via cargo ship…

But this guy’s life is filled with drama – and he likes to tell me about it. I’m talking enough material to pad out a full season of Home and Away. Yesterday he apparently almost got taken out by another car on the round-a-bout, and he had earlier seen someone career off the road into the bushes. I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife ran off with another woman and someone turned up on his doorstep claiming to be his illegitimate lovechild with pyromaniac tendencies.

Is that the kind of person I really want in my house? I mean there is a real risk that we could get caught up in his messy life-plot and end up with a random sinkhole forming in our front yard swallowing up the children and neighbours (I do have great neighbours who let us use their swimming pool, that would be a shame).

“Flamin’ heck!”

It’s not atypical though, is it? A tradie who turns up several hours late, or on the wrong day, or at dinner time to commence demolition work on the kitchen just as you have carefully placed your profiteroles into the oven to bake.

Imagine if other professions had the luxury of such malleable time frames.

Your pizza delivery arrives at 2am, by which time you are so starving and in need of sustenance that you eat the two silicon sachets from the vitamin jar (Fluid retention? What fluid retention?).

The postie saves up all of your letters until they can get there – which could be next week, or next month…or never…sigh I guess I’ll never know whether Santa thinks I have been good enough for that My Little Pony hair salon.

The police operator tells you that you should probably take on the masked bandit in your home by yourself, they will send a car, but the crew are in desperate need of a coffee first, they will try to be quick and use the drive-thru though (how considerate), do you have a Taser perchance?

Paramedics – time to learn how to self-administer CPR, and plug that gaping wound with whatever might be handy and within reach as you lay bleeding profusely on the floor.

The Obstetricians who turns up after the baby is born, because he is out surfing – oh hang on, that was a true story (it happened to me, and he still took the credit for a safe delivery – kudos to those hardworking midwives).

I’m not sure my boss would be so understanding if I turned up to work whenever I felt like it. I reckon there would be a Diminished Performance Plan with big red crosses all over it printed and on my desk before I even made it through the swipe access door.

The irony is that tradies need to be quite precise. They need to take specific measurements, make the right cuts, and hammer in the right place to ensure the structures are going to cope, join the right wires, and connect the right sized pipes (nobody likes a surprise overflow). They need to schedule work in an orderly manner to work in with all of the other trades. The more efficient they are at this, the more jobs they can get done and the more money they can earn.

So we have locked this guy in for tomorrow, he apologetically declared that he will be here, at 7am and get it done, or he will do it for free. I might go out anyway, book a night away, apparently the surf will be going off.