Insomnia Alert

I can’t sleep. I have a 7 am appointment, and I’m wide awake. Lovely.

That doesn’t explain the zillion posts I made earlier today, which may be a personal record. Being awake is the excuse for this one, though.

We had an appointment for Shelley to see the vet at 5 pm, so at about 4 I asked the idjits if they’d need to get in the house again. They said they were about to leave.

Huh? They’d hardly been in the house or attics at all. They’d been outside on ladders and the roof, but not actually IN the attics. There’s no way they could fulfill the scope of work without doing so.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” I asked, thinking about the appointments Katie and I have all over town on Thursday.

“Nope, we’re done.”

Idjit 1 brings me a work order to sign. It doesn’t cover some of the stuff I know curiousmay9 mentioned. I didn’t see a written estimate, so I wasn’t totally sure of what had been included in the estimate. I did, however, know that whatever they’d done wasn’t enough. In the “customer recommendations” area, idjit 1 reported advising us to cut down the trees, stop feeding the birds, and do a bunch of stuff that they were already contracted to do.

I insisted that they go up into the attics to find the source of the current icky smell. Idjit 1 informed me that they checked for dead critters on their first visit when they gave us the quote for all this work. Fine. That was weeks ago. Get back up there!

They also tried to claim that idjit 2 had removed a dead raccoon from the attic during that visit. Bullshit. curiousmay9 and ridinrabbit took care of the carcass several days before these guys were ever on the property.

When they did finally go up, they didn’t go into one area at all. They just entered the two places easily accessible by drop-down ladders. They sprayed their “deodorizer” around a bit, too. That stuff stinks!

Idjit 1 did acknowledge that something smelled like a dead critter. He then informed me that there was a dead rat in the entryway wall.

WHAT?! RATS?!!!

We’ve never seen one rat or mouse. We haven’t seen droppings or other signs of them. If they’re in the attics, why the hell wouldn’t they be in the house? Dog and cat food available 24/7 has to be rat heaven, yes?

Idjit 1 informed me that rats and mice wouldn’t enter the house proper because of the cats and dog.

That sound you heard around 4:20? Blame idjit 1 for making a statement that pegged my BS meter.

Supposedly, the only way to locate this hypothetical corpse is to start knocking holes in walls ’til we see or smell it. Nobody likes sheetrock repairs enough to try that if there’s any other possibility.curiousmay9 is fairly sure that the dead rodent, whatever species it may be, is in the bitch-to-access scant bit of attic above the entryway. I think she’s probably right.

I knew that I was arguing with inadequate information, and I had to leave. I called in the big gun.

Within minutes, curiousmay9 was on the phone with the company’s office explaining the facts of business life. They’re to return and complete the contracted work to her satisfaction by the day of her return to town, or they don’t get paid.

We aren’t actually going to be here to allow them to work in that time, but I suppose that’s their problem to deal with since they already screwed up so badly.

I’m fairly sure that they’re assuming they can cruise through any “customer inspection” of their work because so few people are actually going to crawl around in the attic or climb a ladder at lots of points around the house to check up on things. They’re wrong this time. Oh, so very wrong.

I haven’t even told curiousmay9 about the cigarette butts in the yard and driveway, since I didn’t know about them when I spoke with her. That bit has me ready to demand that the idjits walk around and pick up every damned one of the things. Foul creatures!

I wish there were a not-tacky way to signify immediately to all comers that tobacco is unwelcome on our property. Of course, even if we had posted a big “no smoking” sign, precedent says these guys would have ignored it.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
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