Searching for the Ark of the Contractor

Why does attempting to hire a contractor leave me staring at my phone like a Victorian widow awaiting news from a ship lost at sea?

I needed to have some plumbing work done. Now, I’m pretty handy, but this was beyond my scope of “I can YouTube it.”

Which sounds simple enough in theory: find qualified person, pay qualified person, receive plumbing. Except at this point, I think finding the Ark of the Covenant would be easier.

I started calling people who are supposedly hired to do this professionally according to their job descriptions. I got recommendations because apparently finding reliable help is now its own Olympic event, and for some reason finding people felt excruciatingly difficult. I left, and this is not hyperbole, eleventy-million messages.

Most people wouldn’t call me back. Perhaps I scared them off by sounding desperate and needy. If they did call me back, they didn’t show up. If they actually did show up, they wouldn’t send a quote. It was like a very irritating scavenger hunt where the prize was maybe getting a sink installed someday, but only after surviving significant emotional trauma along the way.

I did have a few people actually come out so I could walk them through everything I needed done. I need sinks here. I need water to come out there. Pretty straightforward. Then a week later, I’d have to call and gently remind them they were supposed to send me a quote, only to hear, “Yeah, we’re probably not going to be able to do this. You should call a general contractor.”

Um… what?

I needed a plumber to install plumbing. Isn’t that what you do? It’s literally in your company’s name. And now you’ve wasted a week of my life while I sat around believing you were going to actually do this work. I had money. I was willing to give it to you in exchange for doing the job your company claimed it did. This felt like a pretty straightforward social contract.

I wasn’t asking anyone to teach pluperfect subjunctive to my college students. That’s what my employer pays me to do, as my title of Spanish professor suggests. Your job, allegedly, was plumbing. You put pipes in places. Water goes where it should. We all celebrate and move on with our lives.

One highly recommended plumber assured me it was “no problem.” Week one: “I’ll get that quote to you.” Week two: “Sorry, I’m working on it.” Week three: “Yeah no, I can absolutely get this done in your timeframe.” Then complete silence. Gone. Vanished into the tradesman witness protection program. Ghosted by a man who promised he would be different from the others.

So how was I getting this so wrong?

After having essentially the same conversation with ten people out of the three dozen calls I made, I finally found a plumber to help me. Honestly, by the time the plumber finally showed up, I felt less like a business owner and more like someone whose long-distance boyfriend had finally returned from war. There he was. A real live contractor. With tools. And follow-through. I half expected orchestral music to swell as he entered the building.

At one point during the process, I considered just learning plumbing myself out of spite. Not because I wanted to. Not because it seemed wise. Purely because after thirty-six phone calls and enough ghosting to qualify as a paranormal experience, running water started to feel like something I was going to have to manifest personally.

Honestly, one more week and I would have been holding a PVC pipe and whispering, “I can do all things through rage, which strengthens me.”

Tracy Winslow has been building out a new location for Low Country Shrimp and Knits because having 37 seconds of sleep was apparently completely overrated. Shout out to PBJ Plumbing for actually showing up, doing the work, and ending this harrowing contractor-themed psychological thriller. Come check out the new location, new yarn brands, and new coffee shop, One More Row Coffee Co.! All the delicious details can be found at shrimpandknits.com. Come check out Bluffton’s newest third space starting June 16th.