A bad week.
Last week, I went to my friend’s house - we’ll call this friend Eugene so that nobody knows who I’m talking about because the last thing in the world that I’d want to do is let anybody know how frustrated I am. The last.
Anyway, I was supposed to take my mentally psychotic brother and his ganja-headed friend Billy down to look at Eugene’s roof.
Eugene doesn’t want to pay a lot to get his roof put on, and Eugene previously told me that the roof guy who lives near him, who is incredibly cheap, is not available to put it on for him.
When I mentioned it to Bobby and Billy, they thought it would be a great idea for them to go work on the roof. Billy used to work for a roofing company, and Bobby’s helped a lot of people put roofs on, and they together recently ripped our roof off and replaced it, so we’re good to go. Right? No.
Billy and Bobby invite another guy to go along for the job. His name is Nick. I don’t care who knows who I’m talking about when it comes to Nick, so Nick will be Nick.
I made sure I was there when they all agreed on a price for the job, because Bobby and Billy fight about money constantly, and I wanted to make sure what the deal was before I left.
So the conversation went a little like this:
Eugene: Well, I don’t know what you guys want to charge.
The three of them: blah blah, don’t know.
Nick: Well, I’d be happy with $200. I don’t know about my coworkers, but I’d be happy with $ 200.
Eugene: Is that fair?
Bobby & Billy: Yeah, that’s cool.
It was also agreed that because Billy would be driving, Billy would be paid an additional 25$ for gas. Nick also worked out a dumpster price, because Eugene really wanted a dumpster not only for the roofing waste, but also for a lot of other refuse that he had to get rid of from another project.
Fine. It’s all worked out. Each guy will get 200$ for putting on the roof, the dumpster will get delivered, and Billy gets gas money.
Not fine. What happens the day they are supposed to start the job? Well, they come to our house early in the morning - Bobby wasn’t ready yet - and they snuck into our garage, took the tools, loaded the truck, beeped the horn twice, and left. I heard the horn and I asked my mom if it was them, and there wasn’t anyone outside. So Bobby got left behind. It was about 1pm before he figured out that the tools were gone. My mom took him down to the project around 2pm.
The rest of Day 1 was a disaster because they fought about money. Nick and Billy said Bobby doesn’t deserve to be paid because he wasn’t there. Which is logical, to a degree, but it’s their fault he wasn’t there, and the tools belong to my mother, so if Bobby wasn’t there, then why were my mother’s tools there?
So we’ve got verifiable Thieves at this point. But it gets better.
Day Two, they can’t very well play the same game as Day One, so they actually do come pick up Bobby on Day Two. At 9:30 AM. So Bobby asked Billy how much pay he was going to dock himself for being late. That was all Billy needed to start up the fighting for Day Two, and Nick was obliged to start in on Bobby as well, because they planned to cheat Bobby out of his money all along. (See Day One and make your own conclusion).
Meanwhile, No Dumpster. However, Billy’s older brother, Donald, keeps hanging around in his truck. Billy and Nick made a deal for Donald to get paid the dumpster money for hauling away the stuff and burning it in the woods. Eugene didn’t say anything. Eventually, Eugene pays Donald $100 for hauling away shingles.
2/3rds of the day in, so much fighting starts between the three guys that Eugene has to try to play mediator because they all keep fighting about how much money they’re getting paid.
I don’t understand the problem. Each of them said they would do the job for $200. It is going to end up taking 4 days. So each day is worth $50. It doesn’t matter who does what or doesn’t come or does come, the job was contracted individually, not as a group. But Billy and Nick think that if they can convince Eugene that cutting boards and picking up nails and doing the ground work (Bobby’s not allowed to shingle according to big daddy Nick) is not worth as much as taking off shingles and making the mess, or putting on the shingles, that then they can split Bobby’s portion of the money.
So Eugene tells them they need to work it out.
They won’t agree to give Bobby more than a pittance, so Bobby says he doesn’t want any money at all. What he meant was that Eugene could just keep his portion of the money, but Eugene gives it to Billy and Nick.
Because he had been doling out the money in sections, at this point, Nick and Billy each have been paid $150.00.
The original agreement was that they would be paid $200 each when the job is done.
Well, since they can’t get along, Bobby isn’t going tomorrow. Bobby is finished with the job. So he worked 1.5 days out of the 4. To my calculations, that means that he should be paid $75.00. But as I said, Eugene gave $100 of the $200 he had reserved for Bobby to Billy and Nick. This infuriated Bobby because he saw that as them cheating him out of it. Which is what happened, even though Eugene’s attitude is that it’s one of life’s lessons.
So in the end, after talking to my mom, Eugene gave Bobby $100 of the money he had left, and Bobby is done with the job. My mom is telling Bobby that Eugene is paying him the whole $200 to keep him from flying off the handle, because Bobby thinks he should be able to go finish the job, and both my mother and I think that would be even more of a disaster, so the other $100 is coming from me.
This is so that I can have some peace and some sleep. Everybody knows that Bobby’s crazy. Everybody knows that I’m stuck living with him until I can get out of graduate school, and into a job that’s going to allow me an income and a benefits package that I can live with after getting out of the medicare/medicaid situation I’m in now. Everybody knows when you fuck over Bobby, my mom and I go through the 7th circle of hell before we get any sleep, and we just hope we can get through it without a bunch of bruises or more broken windows (6 of our windows are still broken from the last time he broke them out because we haven’t had the money to fix them). And Eugene knows this especially because he’s known us for years. So I have no idea why he thought this was a good way to handle Bobby, but he made the really pissy comment to my mother that “Nick said” - and you all know how much I love somebody that likes to believe everything somebody they just met half a fuck ago says - especially a shitbag like Nick Briganti - “Nick said you like to intervene on Bobby’s business…”
Yes. Nick would say that, Eugene, because Nick is trying to fuck over Bobby, and he knows that my mom isn’t going to stand around and watch. But that’s OK.
That’s OK because they stapled up your drip edge instead of nailing it, and they aren’t giving a shit about making things square, and they’re going to slap your roof together if it gets finished at all, and when it starts leaking, that’s going to be one of those life lessons you’re so fond of.
I personally spend at least 6 hours per week - sometimes up to 10 hours per week - for the last two years - working on a personal project for Eugene, for FREE, and previous to that I’d given up sometimes more than 20 hours per week - for free - working with him in some other capacity.
I am not the kind of girl who throws things like this in the faces of friends because if I didn’t want to help my friends I simply would not do it. However, sometimes the helping of certain friends comes at very inconvenient times, and always working around the friend’s schedule instead of working around mine. But I love my friends, and inconveniencing myself, and pushing things to the back burner to give one of them a hand doesn’t bother me. Usually. When I feel like I’m being shit on, however - like the time Eugene gave me a lecture series because he caught me doing my college homework on his work computer for 10 minutes instead of cleaning up his [insert place of work here] and told me that he might have to rethink my [remember this is volunteer] role in his organization, because he was the man, and he was the one that got to get pissed off, and maybe I should go sit in the other part of [insert work organization’s facility] and think about what I did.
He never apologized for that. He just made the excuse, “I didn’t know that that’s what you were doing.”
Times like that - that’s when it sometimes bothers me that for every hour or two somebody spends helping me I have to put in 10 helping them.
And then this. No, it doesn’t involve me directly, but I have to live with Bobby. And Eugene has had a career in which he’s dealt directly with people like Bobby for over 30 years, and also had a connection with Psychology and Economics, and he can’t figure out how to say, “Nick, Billy, you’ll get your $200 fucking dollars when the job’s done, and if I dock Bobby’s pay, I keep what’s left over, and where the fucking hell is my god damned dumpster?”
I have no idea how to handle this situation without it affecting my friendship with Eugene, but if there’s actually one of those life lessons he’s so fond of involved here, it’s got to be the one suggested by another friend after hearing about the episode.
Eugene is coming over later this evening because he needs me to help him with the writing of two documents.
Eugene, don’t shit where you eat.
