I discovered that my builder will communicate with text messaging. You could blow me over with a feather!
Go figure!
He is a master of The Great Panamanian Avoidance Dance meaning that he rarely, and I mean rarely, answers the phone, much less returning messages. He is allusive and slippery, like smoke or a mirage coming off hot pavement.
We were at our wits end trying to get a few things done on the house. So, I switched gears and started to force seeing him EVERY DAY. I might have to stop by his house, hunt him down on the roads around town, send messages through his workers but, one way or another, he hears from me EVERY DAY.
This started last week. I really turned up the heat and demanded that we spend all day Saturday and Monday going to David with our attempts to start the electric service process. (See previous posts for the background) During those extended periods of being together, he promised that he would complete a few things this week.
Like a Sunday morning preacher promising salvation for money, he didn't fulfill on his promises, so I upped the ante.
I text messaged him asking why he wasn't doing anything. I got a cryptic message saying, "why didn't I re-read his morning's message which told me what was going on and I should have patients!"
I couldn't help it. I laughed out loud alone in my car.
This was too funny. Him telling me I needed patients. It just hit me as funny. So I texted him back telling him he was funny.
Oh boy, I shouldn't have done that.
He texted back faster than an electron could travel across the universe saying "he wasn't funny and he was never funny about his business, he never jokes about serious stuff..."
I knew I had crossed some cultural line and screwed up. So, I did what I had too, I groveled and apologized.
Interestingly, he texted back apologizing too.
I definitely had pissed him off, though. But, you know what, good! It is about time I got his attention about the gravity of the situation.
Today, no one was working on my house once again. So I pondered how to text him without making him mad. I told how beautiful the woodwork was that he installed yesterday and asked when he planned on finishing it.
Remarkably, he texted back with the schedule.
The best thing about all this, is that we are talking EVERY DAY.
I'm his new best friend, like it or not.
I think I'll buy him a blow torch so he can apply it to his own ass, saving me the trouble!
2 comments:
I TOLD you texting was a much better way to stay in touch! Good job with the blow torch methodology!
You're right. I never would have guessed they do this here in Panama.
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