Roof Update

In out last episode, Jesús, former employee of Ben’s roofing company, said he would be here today to fix my roof before tonight’s expected rain. So at 2 PM I called him to check his status. He said he planned to be here around 3 PM.

While talking with Jesús I learned that Ben, former owner of the defunct company that re-shingled my roof, would not pay to fix the roof. That didn’t surprise me. Ben’s primary vocation is Preacher. He probably has more Biblical things on his mind than standing behind his work. Jesús asked if Ben had called me and seemed surprised to learn Ben had not.

You may remember a previous post in which I described the three kinds of people you can meet in a business transaction:

The first kind will tell you they won’t screw you, but they’re lying. The second kind will tell you at the outset that they’re going to screw you. The third kind will assure you they won’t screw you, and they really mean it, but they screw you anyway.

I don’t think Ben intended to screw me. But after all is said and done, Ben has my money and I have a leaky roof. What a deal.

Since the old roof didn’t leak, I see an alternate scenario for what happened. It goes like this: Ben and I discuss the roofing job. We agree on a price. I write Ben a check. Ben puts the check in his wallet. Then he takes out a pistol and fires a bullet through my roof, gets in his truck, and drives away. The result is the same: I have a roof that leaks. The difference is: using a bullet eliminates the labor-intensive process of removing the old shingles, putting down new tarpaper and new shingles, and cleaning the yard of nails and debris. A bullet is simply more efficient at creating a roof leak than having a crew of laborers take shortcuts on the job. Oh, I see I’ve wandered into Sarcasm. I’d better wrap up this blog post.

By the way, Jesús never showed. Are we surprised?