Waiting

The most irritating situation in the world is waiting for something that someone has promised.  That is the situation in which we find ourselves as we are "trapped" at home waiting for yet another Florida contractor.

Rick has always been a person who likes to take charge and to control every situation, so he is less than patient when a contractor tells him that he will arrive on a certain date and then does not show.  Granted, this is Florida and contractors seem to have a habit of making (and breaking) such promises to everyone.  We are far from alone in this matter.

However, that leaves people like us in limbo.  We don't feel we can venture too far from home, yet staying here will soon drive Rick crazy.  Thank God he has a book to read which really holds his attention right now.  If not, he would be driving me crazy.

This area becomes a terrible, muddy mess when we receive rain,
so we cannot wait to concrete in the whole area with a patio.

We are waiting for our concrete contractor to come to our house to dig out and to frame our concrete patio.  We want to remove the 1960's back slab and to pour an approximately 12 x 20 foot slab in its place.  Someday, we may even erect a lanai over the concrete.  For now, though, we would be happy with just the slab to keep us out of the mud that always seems to form in that area when we have a hard rain.

So why aren't they here yet (at 112:44 p.m.)?  Well, when Rick looked online this morning, our permit to have the work completed had only passed two of the three departments through which it must go.  Ah, our lovely City and its omnipresent permits!  So perhaps the City is holding up our construction.

Reasonably, since this contractor is uber-busy, I would think that getting the concrete trucks to pour in the morning for jobs which have been previously approved and framed would make sense.  They may be busy pouring someone else's foundation or patio and will come to frame our job sometime later this afternoon.  Perhaps previous work is holding up our construction.

They also may have many larger jobs than our small bit of work, so I could understand where they would want to complete the bigger job and then fill in with our little job toward the end of the day.  Perhaps that is why our construction is delayed.

For whatever reason, I only would ask for one thing: COMMUNICATION!  This contractor has an excellent reputation and is known for quality work which is why we hired him; however, like many small businessmen, his organization is not set up to efficiently and effectively communicate with the customer.  We know from experience that our phone calls are not returned and our e-mails sometimes take days before we receive a response.  Okay, he's busy.  I get that.

However, part of being a good businessman is having good communication with customers.  A simple, brief phone call telling us at approximately what time he might arrive -- or a message telling us he got delayed (or the permit got delayed) and he will not come until tomorrow -- certainly would go a long way as far as customer service is concerned.

Having taught communication for 30 years, I know the value of good communication, and sadly, that is one attribute this company lacks.