We All Have Junk

August2012 Second Reflection

Dear Cassi,

       

How is it so hard to talk about remodeling? Because I knew something was wrong and didn’t want to say anything. I saw Pickles flipping the bill after years of him hording his disability and thought it was his call. He should lose his benefits because of all the money he has in the bank. Five times what I make in a year in this man’s account and still the government pays for his daily bread.  Legally he should have his benefits reduced but federal benefits are poorly monitored. If he was under state disability he would have lost it years ago. 

       

So I wanted him to spend the money on his home so he would have a nice place to live. The people in my family are all hoarders. Alan spends his life hording pills, I hoard junk, Pony girl hoards more junk, and Pickles hoards money. Junk is how we feel safe I guess. Pony Girl keeps a room of junk at my home, has a storage unit and her home. We all have our nonsense to hoard, Pickles’ is money.

       

So the work we needed done was two washrooms completely remodeled and the house re-piped. It would have been no good to have the new fitting with the old galvanized pipe because that stuff rusts and gums up your valves. So all told it was just over thirty thousand dollars and that’s the going rate. The problem was that they cut corners without cutting us in on the deal, reused old fittings whenever possible, and used old junk they had lying around. They gave us a hand written contract and expected us to pay in cash only.

       

I have to figure that if they normally expected a cash only payment they had few customers. Then I can tell you that I would have never hired them a second time even if things hadn’t turned bad. For one they made a mess and offered to repair the messy parts of my home at a discount rather than clean up after themselves and for a second they went for everything they could possibly charge me for pressing and pressing for more work. In my experience, most folks who press hard for more work are the folks that drive off their clients.

Drive for what you need, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal