What a Crappy Job

A buddy of mine told me about a guy who truly understood the fine art of getting even. Thought you might enjoy it.

It seems that there was a gentleman by the name of Vladamir who was a drywall installer by trade. He (Val) was hired by a rather well to do businessman to hang several sheets of drywall in his home. After hanging the rock he would mud and tape all the joints and then spray the walls and ceiling with the appropriate texture.

Having been in the business for many years, this was a pretty straight forward job for Val and he would typically complete a job of this size in about a week. As it would turn out, there was nothing typical about this particular job though.

From the minute Val showed up with the materials on day one, the owner decided to make his life a living hell. This pompous ass lived in a ritzy part of Portland and wanted everyone around him to know just how "Important" he was. Apparently he had made a ton of money during the Dot-Com craze and was one of those stereotypical "New money" types.

Nothing Val or his helpers did would please this guy. They didn't unload the materials from the correct spot. They got drywall dust on his driveway. They didn't listen to the right kind of music. They didn't put an exorbitant amount of screws in the drywall...etc. No matter what they did, this guy would find something to complain about.

It really started getting bad when it came time for Val to collect part of the money. The original agreement was that Val would be paid half of the money when all the drywall had been hung, (This is a common practice on larger jobs) Through a long series of arguments the owner finally paid 1/3, not the 1/2 that was agreed to. Words like "I don't trust you" and "I think you're overcharging me" were his excuse. As you can imagine Val was outraged. He hadn't changed the price that was agreed to prior to beginning the job and as far as trust was concerned, that just didn't make sense. The job was going according to schedule and outside of the jerk owner's ridiculous demands Val was performing as he had promised.

Everything seemed to be going south on the project now, but Val was in to far to just walk away. What he had been paid would only cover the materials and part of his crew's labor. He decided to stick it out and continue with the job. After completing the mud and tape portion of the job, Val went to the owner and requested the remaining money that was owed to him. Again he got some but not all of what it should have been.

The next day, Mr Jerkwad told Val that he expected the job to be completed by the end of the day and he would be holding an additional amount out of the final payment until he had a friend of his come over and inspect the work, sometime the following week. I won't repeat what Val said, but you can probably guess it wasn't pretty. This latest stall tactic was never part of the original agreement and it was now being sprung on him on the last day.

Val had had enough. He wasn't sure if he'd ever see the rest of his money from this unreasonable deadbeat, and he wasn't interested in taking anymore crap from him either. I'm pretty sure this is where the light bulb went on over Val's head.

He told the guy the job would be finished when he returned from work that afternoon and what he did after that could only be described as brilliant. Remember when I said Val wasn't going to take any more crap? Well...he decided is was time to give some instead.

After mixing the texture to the correct consistency he unzipped his jeans and let them drop on the living room floor. He then proceeded to use the bucket as his own five gallon commode. I can only imagine that this was one of the most satisfying dumps he had ever taken in his life. Upon completion of his bowel unloading, he put his pants back on, grabbed the mixer and blended in the previous night's dinner into the texture. He then took great care to spray the feces laden texture all over the walls and ceiling of the guys million dollar home!

He obviously got a call from a very distressed customer that evening, wondering what the hell had happened in his living room and why it smelled so rank. Val said, "We were wondering about that too. Maybe you have a dead animal in the crawl space?" Apparently the guy never figured it out and eventually Val did get most of the money that was due to him.

So if you think you've had some crappy work done by a contractor, maybe you hired Val and didn't know it.