Cor blimey
I’m knackered.
Mel is in my bed tonight. I’m on my sofa. I’ve persuaded her to be in tomorrow in order to deal with the boiler human while I’m off to Kent to find future engineers.
I’ve tried to give her a crash course in plumbers. These guys are booked through my Vaillant insurance, and as with so many areas of skilled labour, it is easy to predict. “I won’t know what to expect until tomorrow morning when they call me. If they speak with a British accent then you’ll have to fight to get them to do the job. Here’s how to fight. Any other accent and they’ll just get on with it. I’ll let you know when they ring me in the morning.”
It’s like with Team Know How… “Team know how to avoid working”. A pair of awful humans who laughed about the old woman who turned on “the waterworks” when they found a technicality that meant they didn’t have to deliver an oven just before Christmas. I was in the loo, and one older workshy bastard was tutoring his younger colleague. He found some twenty year old mouse droppings and used them as pretext to avoid doing the job. “You’ve taken it better than a lot of people do,” he says, betraying that he thinks his job is to avoid doing his job. I don’t blame Curry’s, despite the fact I was in three months of pain after pulling something in my shoulder taking the old oven out. I do blame that nasty entitled lumpish man.
But tomorrow who knows… I just hope it’s not a brit. It’s a sad place we’ve come to though, where I don’t trust someone with my accent to be reasonable about some labour. It’s as much to do with the post code as it is to do with the economy.
I’m up tomorrow morning to inspire young people to go into engineering. Maybe I can help them pick up skills and then use those skills without cudgelling their clients. Maybe. It’s gotten to the point where it makes sense for me to get my own gas certification etc… There’s a huge price tag on a simple training. But the payback is pretty quick, and I could change the world by being an English accented plumber who isn’t a thief.
I went on a brilliant Dickens walk this evening and I’m too tired to write about it.
https://www.peculiarlondon.com/
Book a ticket.
AlBarclay 