I do not like falling asleep angry.
Over the years, I've talked to people about the "a happiness that ...[I] carried with me and could draw upon when I needed it." One way I could try to help them understand this happiness, was to say that I "go to sleep happy and I wake up happy."
The last few nights, I have lied awake at night unsettled.
[don't let the following imply I am concerned about the money, the cash. The cash is not the point. It's the dishonestly and the situational opportunism I witness and would like to defeat, destroy]
On January 17, or maybe January 16, overnight, our hot water heater, installed in 1989, sprung a leak. I knew when I turned on my shower at 6:30 in the morning and the water was colder than the cold water that normally starts the shower. I turn that shower off and I go downstairs and to my horror the carpet is soaked (again).
We get ahold of a mitigation company and they kick us over to another mitigation company. Representatives from the company come over and rip apart our carpet, flooring, and baseboards, which I now think of as a "torched earth" approach to force the homeowner into their more profitable side of the business, repairing the damage they have caused.
A day or two later, after a few telephone conversations, an insurance adjuster shows up just after the "CEO" of the construction company associated with the mitigation company. These guys are nervous buddies, the black adjuster a veteran of CAATastrophic events and chasing hurricanes and what-not. The construction CEO has a company whose name incorporates "quality" or "integrity" or whatever, but is basically guaranteed business through its relationship with the mitigation people. The two chat for a while and I hold Dawson and try to pay attention to what I can. In the days that follow I deal with a lady "Carla" who apparently is in charge of procuring the carpet. I do not yet fully understand her role in this catastrophe.
It's now February 6 or 7 and I've received a check from the insurance company; apparently the mitigation/destruction has already been paid for. Seemingly, the insurance company gives ME the check to ensure some level of competitive bidding from the construction company, but those guys do whatever they can to try to make the customer feel like they have one and only one option, and that it will all just get "taken care of." I am not convinced that this is the case.
I was reasonably happy with the arrangement until this afternoon around 5:15. Today, at 5:15, I got a call today from the construction CEO, and less than a minute into the call he's trying to get me to reveal a key figure from the insurance estimate to him. We are replacing a surface in the basement with a less-expensive alternative, known as "carpet" and he is trying to get me to reveal the "estimate" given by the insurance company for the more expensive replacement cost for the previous surface, the "hardwood floor." Don't misunderstand this; we are talking about a few hundred dollars and not an amount that will break me or make his year any better. We are talking about principals and dealing with people and being a fucking schmuck.
Very nearly right after hearing the question, my relationship with this "CEO" went very far south. My mind said "go fuck yourself" but my mouth said "I'm paying you for carpet; why in the hell are you asking me about an estimate for hardwood?"
Tonight, I walk around the basement, three weeks after the leak happened, with the insurance estimate, and the insurance check already cashed, and I ask myself what I would do for that sum of money. Would I try to learn a new skill, installing baseboards? Would I go on craigslist and search out a carpet professional at a professional, competitive rate to do the job? Would I indeed pay even more to not pay the schmuck CEO guy? Maybe. I've done weirder things in my life.
At this point it's more principal than money. I think I can get our basement into shape for $1,800, which would represent a $1,000 saving from the estimate given by the insurance company. I normally don't work this hard for $1,000 but in this case, I just might.
Writing this out changes nothing but I do think that it will help me go to sleep with that happiness I so treasure.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
the values of the hunter gatherer--his total honesty, his forthrightness, his courage, his willingness to share even of the little he has--these are his basic values. when men from cities and agriculture live for a time among the hunter gatherers they remark favorably on these values. but without these values the hunter gatherers would not survive. the hunter gatherer does not see himself as higher in any moral way. that is simply how he lives.
ReplyDeletehunter gatherer life represents 90% of human history. is it possible this last 10% of human history--this period of agriculture and cities and fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking and indebtedness and hoarding and consumption and the social hierarchy that arises from it; and also the deceptions, both of oneself and others, of selfishness and coercion--could we not say that man is being remade with new values?
the city, the suburb, the world of debt, and the domination of the earth that has grown from agricultural roots--in no part of this world does honesty and authenticity operate. the expressions of moral life found in the religions are perhaps the institutionalization of the dying values of the hunter gatherer.
the values men find so wonderfully presented in the hunter gatherers are exactly the values being erased. he who is manipulative and dishonest is victorious in the end. very few will remember how it was in the old days.
but to remember the old days and the old ways is to remember the long and abiding happiness. perhaps this great store of happiness can be recovered.
To think a man can't trust another man. To think a man can't work on a home with another man. What a cold circumstance of distrust. How *could* a man sleep? No, it is not a matter of pennies or dollars or pesos--it is that men can't look you in the eye, share yerba mate for what it is: a drink you give to others *for the sake of sharing*. Let your decency burn as a hot sun in such a dark kingdom.
ReplyDelete