Dealing with handymen… difficult enough, and if you add the language difference, impossible!

For the past four months we’ve had a leak in our bathroom… it started small, but as every water trickle, the damage builds up with every day that passes.

Being that me and my husband are not always in the apartment during business hours for the handymen of our building, most of the time I have to call the manager (who speaks Polish) and explain to him in English (with the difficulty that I don’t know the technicalities in that language) what do I need from them.

Finally, after several months of trying to ‘discover’ the source (which every plumber can tell you it’s an impossible task if you don’t tear down the wall), we finally pinpointed the problem in the shower.

The verdict was that we spent 10 days without taking a shower… well, not literally, just not in our bathroom.
6 am every morning, I’ll cross the hall to our aunt’s apartment in my PJ’s and the pillow still stuck to my face – ‘quite in the morning mode’ as my mom refers to it – dreading to find a fellow neighbour and give them the harsh reality that my blond, sleek, brushed hair, is not that sleek and smooth when I just stepped out of bed… neither is my face that friendly, nor my mood that welcoming… needless to say that at 6 am, no one is their usual, polished self!

Ten days later, we had our bathroom fixed… in the in-between, during my stealth visits to our aunt’s bathroom, I forgot my shampoo twice, I finished the soap in the middle of my bath (no new one in sight), I dropped my towel running to the door (luckily, no one gets up that early) and I even forgot my clothes… needless to say that when the time came of finally having the problem fixed, I was ecstatic!

Two days later, I still had daily visits from the Handymen… wall kept showing leakage remnants… now the problem wasn’t in the shower, it was in the faucets… later on, was the Dishwasher… after that I lost count.

Handymen are always driving around the problem thinking that you’re stupid enough to buy all the bull they feed you, like your master degree doesn’t apply to plumbing… they haven’t met me.
I set my mind to pester them with requests… daily ones… so they have to; no… NEED TO, fix my problem… because if they continue coming to my house with new theories as to why my wall is falling apart, I’ll come back with real facts to call and call and call and call… you get me?

If life gives you lemons, make calls.