Seemingly a long time ago my car's engine seized. When it happened I wasn't that bothered by it; I had money for such an occasion and knew that everything would work out. Now after a couple weeks and my engine sitting in my driveway collecting dust when its is supposed to be in my vehicle, my steadfastness is beginning to fade. Why my engine is in my driveway is a story I am about to tell.
When my engine broke I needed to remove it in order to get it rebuilt and Joan's son's friend helped me with that. His name is Charles. For the removal he charged $150 but I gave him $160 because he did it quickly and well. Charles from my observation is a typical lower class white male, biker, that has a family and struggles to get by and doesn't mind that the majority of the words he says are profanity of some sort. I got along well enough with him and decided to hire him to put it back in since he said he could do that for another $150. Last Saturday was the scheduled day for the install, my dad was going to be home and we were going to start at 9. Charles didn't show until around 2 and he didn't bring the tools he needed; he left around 4. Sunday he was going to be by at 8, yet again there was a miraculous lateness accompanied by shortly after leaving. He blames it on car trouble and difficulty getting the tools. This happens Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday each time with different excuses along with him complaining that he has no money and asking for gas money. Each of these days my dad left his business van in order to enable me to drive to the auto parts store if I happened to need any replacement parts while we installed the engine back. 5 times (in regards to time) he straight out lied to me, and many other times he didn't answer my calls. I don't know if it was his upbringing, or lack of understanding that other people's time (and resource of a vehicle) has some value to it. When he came over on Wednesday he said that he wasn't being a flake(lie) and that the engine was just in more pieces than he expected (truth 1), over the course of the week he had done nothing with my engine, and I told I would be willing to pay him more because of truth 1 but that his lack of work had made it impossible for my patience to want to give him any sort of bonus. These are not excuses of course and I am a fool because I thought I could give my patience and mercy to a fool and have him learn. He did not learn and I am done being disrespected, so I hired someone else. I am still frustrated however because I expected people of the world to be reasonable; finding this one example shows me that my hope in this is ill based. It makes me feel like a idiot because it is obvious people are going to be sinful and disregard my person even when I am kind and patient. It reminds me of what my dad said about how if someone doesn't do something right for him the first time, he finds someone else even if the original person is willing to fix it for free, because he does not want to be a fool and expect to have them not waste his time a second time.
Charles wasted a week of my time, tested my patience, disenfranchised me (probably good), and I am thinking right now "Well shit on him." Which he will have because his lifestyle is not in line with truth or close to being balanced. He seems to subsist upon beer, self defeat, and has no vision for his future; he seems to accept he is bad, in some sort of the word, and is going to be that way for the rest of his life. I hope he finds the virtue in doing right and the joy in the difficulty in loving one's neighbor.
No comments:
Post a Comment