Octopus, Part 3

This is part of a series of posts, drawn from emails I wrote during the last few months, in the wake of what may have been a tornado.

Monday, September 14

The contractors hadn't worked on my place since last Tuesday (so much for the alleged rush), but somehow today, my last moving day, they just HAD to be in there. And precisely when I was moving the heaviest stuff. I asked them to wait an hour and they wouldn't.

Aren't these charming folks?

In truth, some of the guys in the crew seem OK, but why they think they can just muscle in and work when they please is beyond me. Unfortunately the lawyer I consulted when this all started hasn't gotten back to me yet.  Anybody know an appropriate lawyer for this kind of thing?

So I've had seven days in the self-destructing apartment, me and my SARS mask and more insulation every day. On Wednesday, the workers were in a neighboring apartment (why couldn't they have been in there on Tuesday?)  On Thursday they took the afternoon off -- because they're in a rush, you see.  On Friday it rained, and another section of ceiling collapsed:

The workers did not show up at all except for somebody milling about on the roof briefly, and nobody seemed to care that my ceiling was leaking in about a dozen places, streaming in two spots (I lost some more stuff, nothing important but picking up wet stuff coated with roof is not my idea of a good time.)

After the really annoying stuff was already cleared.

Landlord Jr. (the "caretaker" and utterer of "Oh Poor Baby", from my last email) showed up around the time I was there, so I know he was around . . .

On Saturday the cieling was leaking even more, and the pond had become a lake. Landlord Jr.'s son came around, inspecting the place. Nothing had been done to stem the tide in my apartment, and two more sections of ceiling collapsed.

My bedroom was developing it's own body of water from Friday -- partly from living room runoff and partly from the bedroom ceiling's own leaks.

Sunday was a frenetic move-out of everything left that wasn't large, which brings us to today, the day I walked in to find my ceiling completely gone and my stuff yet again moved for the contractor's convenience.

At one point I found one of the workers, a sort of piratey-looking guy with several gold teeth, handling a replica I own of a medieval weapon. Why he felt he could just pick it up, I don't know.

[Insert sounds of chimps here]