The driveway saga continues!

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So when we last visited the driveway saga on Thursday, the concrete guys (while tearing everything up) had completely ripped out the cable line under the driveway. (Luckily, the cable company was able to come out that night and reconnect it.) Tom was told the guys would be back “first thing Monday morning” to pour the new driveway. Well, as luck would have it, Tom was (finally) going back to work Monday, so he really couldn’t take that day off…so I had to take it off. (We normally wouldn’t have to be there for them to pour the driveway, but the garage doors had to be open to get close enough, and we just weren’t comfortable leaving them open with all the workers there.) Of course it rained off and on all weekend, so we had a huge mud pit…and since we were missing our “step” up onto the porch, it was interesting gymnastics to get into the house bypassing the front porch steps (which were no longer there).

Monday morning about 7:30, I see a van of guys arrive and start walking around. I think “Great, things are on schedule.” Then they got back in their van and parked at the house next door. Okay, I thought, they are moving their vehicle so the cement truck can get in. And I wait. And wait. And don’t see the guys anymore. Come to find out, they are working on the house next door—they are NOT there to work on my driveway. Well, I had hoped to just take the morning off, but come 9:30 NOTHING had been done and no one was there so there was NO WAY the driveway was going to be poured in the next two hours. I called the builder’s office and she said maybe they were waiting on the weather (it was overcast). I explained that I was missing work waiting for them, and if she could find out what was going on, it would be appreciated. She called back about 10 minutes later to say they were waiting for a load of dirt, but of course she had no idea how long it would take. Well, amazingly, the dirt arrived about 10am…

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followed by….nothing. No one showed up. ARGH! So I wait. And wait. And wait. At about 11:30 some guys show up to start spreading the dirt. I went out to ask if they knew when/if the driveway was going to be poured since I really had to get to work…and of course they barely speak English so all I got out of them was “uh, maybe…don’t know.” So I made sure they knew my phone number was on a note (I had taped to the door) and that someone would call me if they were going to pour the driveway and they needed the garage doors open. Fine. So off to work I went.

Now, about work. You wouldn’t think it would be a big deal for me to take a day off now and again. Yes, I’m taking a ton of time for our upcoming honeymoon, but I’m not the type of person to call in sick all the time or ask for days off out of nowhere or abuse my boss’ good nature—it’s RARE that I need an unplanned day off. So I didn’t think anything of it when I told my boss I’d need the morning off (and possibly the whole day). I had to leave a message on Sunday, but she called Monday morning after I told her I would be out all day…and it was the grand inquisition! She had a litany of questions for me—she wasn’t pissed, per se, but you could tell she was not happy. Of course, she had a project that she wanted me to do (I can count on one hand the number of “projects” I’ve had in the last few months, but of course the day I need off last-minute is the day she has one for me).

So I’m at work for literally one hour when I get the call that they’re pouring the cement. The guy who called (Kevin) was very nice and I said I would be home within a half hour. I quick finished my stack of work and headed home. I get there, open the doors, and busy myself with stuff around the house.

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I go up to send Tom an email update and…no internet. Hmmm. Reboot. Nothing. Check the TV. No cable. At this point, I have an idea and look out the window and—yep—the cable was just laying there. THEY HAD RIPPED IT APART A SECOND TIME! Needless to say I called Tom immediately and we were both just livid. There was absolutely NO reason it should have happened. The cable was simply laying on top of the driveway—all they had to do was dig a little trench and bury it, then pour the driveway! We couldn’t tell what happened and no one spoke good english, so it was extremely frustrating. As the cement is being poured closer and closer to where the cable line is supposed to go, I finally got through to one of the workers and he understood that the cable needed to be buried and he told me it would be. Okay. So as I’m watching from the second floor, I see the cable in the grass and I see them pouring cement completely past the area. WHAT!?!?! I call Tom again, totally freaking out. In the meantime, he has called the cable company and they say they can come our tomorrow, but if we’re not there, it will be a week or two. A WEEK OR TWO?! I wanted to scream. There was no way either of us could be there for the cable guy. So I went outside again, and Kevin just happened to be pulling up.

Okay, Kevin was NOT what I was expecting. He looked like a total backwoods redneck and smelled like he’d been drinking all day. And you know what his first words to me were after saying hello? He told me how he’d been drinking for the past hour or so and how that probably wasn’t a good idea and that he had to meet someone soon but he didn’t think he should be driving. OH. MY. GOD. So, trying to get any usable information out of him was impossible. He tried to explain about the cable…he said they accidentally ripped it up again. (Okay, I wanted to ask, just HOW could you do this? It was laying across the driveway in plain view!!) So they had installed some plastic tubing so the cables could be strung underneath. Whatever. I could barely stand to talk to him since the alcohol on his breath was bowling me over. But the interesting thing he told me was that his crew had poured the driveway to begin with and when they saw how it turned out, they were going to redo it BUT THE BUILDER TOLD THEM NOT TO! So apparently the builder was hoping whoever bought the house wouldn’t notice it or ask to have it fixed! So, we think even less of our builder at this point.

So I went back inside and tried to keep my mind off everything. When Tom came home and heard the full story and saw what had been done, he was furious. He called Kevin and let him know we were NOT happy. When he got off the phone, he said he could barely understand him because he was totally plastered and I said he’d probably continued to drink all afternoon! The only upside is that when we called the cable company again, they said we wouldn’t have to be there…so hopefully we will have cable when we get home tonight.

Stay tuned.

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