They say bad things come in threes. They also say getting a mortgage is the most stressful thing you will ever do. I disagree on that one however because if you do a Google search for “most stressful thing” you will find quite a lot of people saying quite a lot of different things are more stressful than everything else.
This leads me to the conclusion that either everyone is blowing mundane things out of proportion or, like a fat man on a seesaw, there is a heavily weighted scale of stressful things with almost everything you will have to do in your adult life clumped on one end.
Right now, my life has stopped. All this week I have had to deal with incompetent people who are taking up jobs hard-working and competent people would love to have. There are about three million people out of work right now and given that fact you would think people would be more inclined to do their jobs properly lest they lose them to someone far more capable. Nevertheless, these pathetic jokes are the ones that are working right now and I have to pick up the pieces when they inevitably cause a massive problem.
I mentioned that things come in threes and it is true. My first problem came early on in the week, when the gas was turned off for over a day because workmen couldn’t get their arses in gear.
This lead to heating and cooking problems, which caused me to have to take time out from my work to deal with them. Inevitably this prevented me keeping up with the targets I have set for work. Next there was a plumbing issue. Specifically, the waste pipe out of my bathroom broke, because it has not been fitted by somebody competent.
The end result is that I have lost most of this week, yet again, to sorting out problems caused by an incessant army of complete dickheads. I am starting to believe that there are few people in this country who actually know what a proper day’s work is and out of that tiny collection of people, the majority of them do not actually do a proper day’s work. I am literally surrounded by workshy scum.
So, problem one: I have targets to meet and hardly any time to meet them.
Next up, we have more aggravation with the mortgage. I have spoken at length on this subject before; here on the blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook about how there is just one problem after another. Each time we think everything is sorted, the underwriter throws up another nebulous issue and requests more documentation.
It isn’t as if we are a bad customer. Neither myself nor Jennifer has ever had a financial problem. We pay our bills on time, we live well within our means and we have put together a substantial deposit to the point where the mortgage is simply there so we can buy a house now because it’s the one we really want, rather than rent for the next five or six years then buy a house outright. Surely we are the best people to be lending to? We’re as close to a guaranteed repayment as they can get.
Yet we are suffering setbacks at every point. This is despite the fact that we have already paid for a survey on the house through the mortgage lender, despite the terms of the mortgage application clearly stating the survey will only be charged for and conducted once the mortgage is approved.
The survey was carried out two weeks ago (and I lost several hours of working time chasing that up, too. We have still not received our copy of it). The lender has, by their own actions, implied that they will lend us the money. What is the fuss, then? I really don’t know.
So there we have it: problem two, the mortgage is sucking away my time and going nowhere.
What else could be going wrong, you might ask? Well there’s always the car, isn’t there? As Jenny has mentioned on her blog, the car radiator was replaced late last year. As it turns out, the air intake valve was not refitted correctly; which tells me the whole thing was likely a rush job. We found this out not because the car overheated or started sucking water when we went through puddles (there aren’t any – we’re having a lovely summer) but because the radiator started gushing coolant onto the road.
Yes, that’s right, the radiator that was supposedly fixed late last year is now in a far worse state than before. Let’s chalk up another point for the army of incompetents.
Jenny is supposed to be at a book signing tomorrow. I don’t know how she’s going to get there. As I write this, she is raising hell at the garage that supposedly fixed her car. The car that took us to Brighton and back, a round trip of four hundred and forty miles on a faulty radiator. I am quite frankly amazed we got home.
If she can’t get the car fixed today, it looks like a hire car will have to be found. On Good Friday. When almost everywhere is shut.
So there we have it. Problem three: the car.
Now, having said all that, please excuse me if I appear to drop off the Internet for a few days. I have a lot of work to do, which means sacrificing my holiday weekend. The weekend I had planned to spend sailing in the lake district.
It’s another holiday lost to sorting out the mess left by people who simply cannot be bothered doing their job properly. I hate that I am constantly the one picking up the pieces but if I don’t do it, who will?
See you on Monday. Hopefully I’ll have some good news for a change.
That really sucks. Surely things will get better soon.
I hate it if I have to work with incompetent people, they make me so angry! So much time wasting and umming and arrring. I know it’s not just my opinion too, because I’ve had good feedback in Emails from people. ^-^
What I’ve seen though, is when our site had a re-sizing task, the people who were always on the phone to IT for stupid shit they’d heard 50 times before where the first to go. I imagine their refusal to learn new things was across their entire job, and not just IT orientated.
So perhaps when these companies you’re seeing have to make cut-backs, the incompetent people they hired when the economy was booming will be first up against the wall.
=)
*hugs*
Our car is pretty much okay now, but when we changed garage the new mechanic found that the brakes had be worn down to the point it shouldn’t have passed its last MOT. Under the first mechanic, a filter that should have been replaced every 2 years wasn’t ever replaced and when the radiator was replaced the old one fell apart on removal, suggesting that maybe it should have been taken about a bit earlier?
Unfortunately, the guy in question bought into an existing garage/sales lot, to which the previous mechanic still runs the sales side of the place, so he keeps getting people come back out of loyalty, so he continues to get work that really should go to more competent people.
It’s not just me & everybody I know that have noticed that trend then. And it’s getting worse by the month! It makes me go all Stalin – shoot them or put them in re-education camps, the world’s overpopulated anyway – then I have to lay down quietly in the dark & breathe till I’m fluffy again.
“breathe till I’m fluffy again” – I love that.
Sarah, I completely agree with you; working with incompetent people is one of my main bug bears! Admittedly, incompetence can be the result of inadequate job training and if this is the case the blame should lie with the employer. However, all too often people seem unconcerned with their jobs and the level of service they provide. Employees need to remember that poor performance is not just a reflection on the individual, but on the entire company. If quality training has been provided, it seems purely selfish of an employee to make little effort in their role.
Have you tried hiring a handyman off of Craigslist lately? Wow, I am going to echoe everything you said above. Many promises, but all we were given were many excuses. AND, we were even paying quite handsomly for the job in comparison to the going rate. No wonder this country is in trouble.
I think the incompetence factor is increasing because people have much less drive to do the work and be accountable for not only what they do, but how they do it. Laying the blame at the feet of the employer for poor training is a cop out in most cases as where is the initiative of the individual to buckle down a bit and figure things out for themselves?
The balance of work and play is out of wack in my opinion
I can sympathize with your frustration. I’m in the US, and recently had to deal with Comcast, my cable provider, a large national corporation. To make a long story short, I had to travel cross town for about a 1 hour round trip, lost most of my cable stations for 5 days, ended up talking to 6 people over the course of about three weeks, had two in-house service calls, and it finally got bumped up to their “Express Service Department” where a VERY competent individual got it fixed from their end within 5 minutes. Of the 6 previous people, 2 techs tried to impress upon me (at length) their incredible competence and how many years they had worked for the company, but both had me waiting on a part that, it finally turns out, did not even exist.
Peace.