A few thoughts about tradesmen...

We have had a number of tradesmen through our little old flat in the last year.  There have been plumbers, builders, sparkies, chippies and fitties (by which I mean window fitters, of course).

Some of these guys were cowboys.  Sadly, we are having to sue two of them for the thousand pounds' worth of damage they did whilst "renovating".

There are a few things that these guys all had in common.  These are simply observations and ponderings.

1) Why are builders all Bobs?  Where are the Belindas?
They were all men.  Not one female tradesperson in the whole lot.  Why is this?  Do women not like doing these jobs?  Is there some sort of misogynist conspiracy keeping them at bay?  Who can say?

2) Half a job - at best.
They were all a bit crap.  When did we as consumers simply accept that if you "get a man in", they will do most of the job and then disappear into the sunset before finishing?  We have had window fitters leaving wooden frames and packaging in the garden (along with their Subway wrappers).  We have had other window fitters who destroyed plaster, paint and various fittings who then just left it as was and walked out of the door.  We have had plumbers and builders who - actually, don't get me started as to how much these guys sucked.

Now, it's not as if we were paying mates' rates or employing people at random.  They were, at least, sourced from RatedPeople.com and they were paid just over the average rates etc.  They just couldn't be bothered to finish the jobs properly.

3) My home as well as your workplace.
The staggeringly arrogant way in which these guys treated our home was breathtaking.  Shouting at each other (whether to do with work or not) is one thing, but doing that when you are clearly on a work telephone call, for example, is just rude.

Moreover, it's the things being shouted.  Homophobic abuse (in a house with two gay guys, not that it should matter) and racist talk of "pakis and gypos" is just offensive.  But it shouldn't matter whether I am gay, Pakistani or of Roma decent, or have friends who are anything else.  Coming into somebody's home and just assuming that you can be racist/homophobic at the top of your voice is just as bad as assuming that you can spark up a doobie in somebody's living-room when you have only just met.  It demonstrates either arrogance or ignorance or both.

And if they want to make it about matters of race, I have limited experience of anything other than caucasian, British tradesmen but the limited experience I have had of Polish workmen has suggested that they are faster, complete things to a greater standard, not particularly cheaper (a job done well deserves reward) and, if they are being racist and homophobic, owing to my lack of understanding of any Eastern European language, I cannot understand it.  Why are people "fighting to save" the jobs of the "British" tradesman if they are not up to the job?

4) Customer satisfaction
When something has gone wrong during the course of such works, you may have to raise the issues either with the workmen or their employers.  You can do this in the most polite and, well, "British" sort of way but, to a man, the response seems to suggest that somehow you are to blame for wanting a job doing competently  and without destruction of your home and, preferably, without feeling like it has been done by Combat 18.

I am fed up of tradesmen.  In future, despite the fact that I am lacking the skills and my hours being what they are and so on, I will look the job up online and do it myself because, if nothing else, I'll care about how it ends up and I have a right to treat my house like my home because it is.


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