Over the past few months, I've had virtually no interactions with the sociopathic little contractor building a luxury house close to mine. There has been plenty of construction noise and dust, of course (I hear a loud, annoying drill as I type this).
For some time I had been looking forward to the expiration of the contractor's construction zone permit. He has two large signs warning "NO PARKING/VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED" on posts embedded in concrete, which he deployed where he wished, moving them about. Indeed he moved one by my friend Joyce's car after she'd parked one day and then called DPT to have her ticketed, but she had the ticket overturned after pointing out that he'd moved the sign after she parked. Anyhow, his paid permit to deploy these signs expired last month, and for some time he didn't put them out. But then this last week he started setting the expired signs out again.
I found this maddening. Normally parking is easy on this block, but on street cleaning days, it can be quite stressful to find a spot. By putting his signs out, he's unlawfully preventing people from using several spaces.
While that was just irritating, another occurrence was unsettling. I stopped by my house briefly with Iris Uber Alles in tow the other day, and when we left, I heard one of the workers call, "SHE'S GOING OUT NOW." I looked around. Iris and I were the only "shes" in sight. Were they monitoring my movements?
I reported this to the Sober Husband, who was dismissive as usual. He even defended the little sociopath's use of his expired signs. "Think of it this way: the sign is just a way of saying 'Please don't park here.'"
"It's not saying 'please!' He's not the type to say please. It's saying "I will tow you!'"
"But you know he can't tow you. It's just stopping people who are too lazy to read it."
I seethed. How dare he side with a balding sociopath against his allegedly beloved wife!
Quickly switching into condescension mode, the husband pulled me close and hugged me. Speaking in the same tone of voice he uses to reassure toddlers, he murmured, "How dare he put those signs out! And watching when you come and go! How terrible!"
Dismissive husbands aside, the idea that the contractor has his workers monitor my comings and goings is profoundly unnerving.
9 comments:
That quiet tapping you hear is just me tip toeing out of the room.
I'd be pretty freaked out, too.
My now-fired contractor complained about us--in a nasty personal way--when my oldest daughter was sitting quietly upstairs where he couldn't see her.
The capacity of these people to get nasty in a very personal way is way, way underestimated by most people.
SH should realize (and given his awesome understanding of human nature AND software code, this is easy for him) that for the most part, there's a reason why those people do what they do for a living. There's a very few great ones, some good or okay ones, and a big number of stinkers.
And the stinkers don't operate with "professional" ethics.
Walk over next time and tell them you're leaving.
2 words - spray paint. the sign will look spiffier in no time!
This is where moving the parrot cage closer to a window and training her with a few choice phrases could come in handy.
i think dressing iris and lucy in princess outfits and having them bring out cookies for the workers would totally fuck with their heads. after all, lucy is GOD.
It's kind of like your own secret service, you know, "the eagle is leaving the nest" and all that. Perhaps it's Lucy's secret service. I think you should all do the royal wave next time. Or offer them lemonade - they'll be too worried you poisoned it to be all bitchy-like.
You don't have any friends who can drive by in dark sunglasses, dark suit and black Lincoln, pull up, eyeball them, then whisper into a walkie-talkie?
Melissa:
"these people?" Which people?
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