Respect your elders...please!

I was taught at a young age to respect my elders.

As a matter of fact my mother instilled (sometimes with a wooden Dr. Scholl's shoe) many of my manners that have stayed with me until today. She was Sicilian and really acted like one! When she walked by us, we would duck......just a natural instinct. We were taught things like: "children should be seen and not heard" and "say please and thank you" and we were taught to eat everything on our plate, and not complain while doing it, or we would forgo our cheerios in the morning and get our cold dinner from the night before for breakfast.

I realize that she was just a bit extreme, but  there was value in the things she would beat into us.

So this post goes back to the job in Lambertville, NJ. My youngest brother (by 12 years) was working for me at the time. He had a way to make our day interesting....to say the least. We had just started the job, and as a matter of fact we really didn't do anything yet. This was going to be the first real day of the demo part of the job.
Because of the access to the back yard (where the addition was going to be) and the fact that the back yard was barely big enough for a small machine to fit there, I had to pay the town for parking spaces in front of the house so we could put the dumpster in the street. I had "no parking" signs made up and they were posted the day before to give the neighbors a heads up as to what was going to happen. I had a talk with my men the night before about what to do when the dumpster arrived because I had a meeting with the county the next morning and I was going to be a little late. I told them that if the dumpster got there before I did and someone was parked in our paid-for space to go to the door, and kindly ask them to move their car.

This is the actual dumpster!

I arrived at the job around 9 am to see all of my men sitting on the front porch, and no dumpster.  

I got out of my truck, and my brother exclaims:

"Man, you shoulda been here! Oh my God, there's a crazy old lady up the street, she's like 80 years old and she IS nasty!! I went over to her house and told her to move her car, and she went ballistic on me, so I told her that we paid for her spot and she better move it or I was gonna call the police. She got really nasty then, and we were both yelling at each other.....so I told her to shut her mouth and I called the cops right in front of her!, and guess what....they gave her a ticket! that stupid Bi*#%!"

I was not happy at all to hear this. I feel that when I start a job, especially a larger job, that I become part of the neighborhood. I need to get along with everyone, as I'm going to be there for a while, and I think of how I would feel if some contractor didn't respect our property.
So I asked my brother..."where does she live?"..... "Oh she's right up the street....over there" I looked over and saw that she was two houses up,....we didn't pay for that space and somehow my "no parking" sign was in front of her house. Now my blood began to boil...I asked who moved that sign? My brother confessed that he did it because he thought that the truck that was going to deliver the dumpster may need more room. Now I was having a really hard time controlling my temper.
"First of all.....THERE IS NO DUMPSTER HERE YET!, and second of all you had no right to move that sign. And most of all you yelled at this old woman???!!! I can't believe that you would put me in this predicament!! You should be ashamed of yourself....." He got mad at me and walked off to the back of the property.
It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I went over and rang her doorbell. She answered and started going off on me about how disrespectful my men were to her, and that she had every right to park in front of her house...It took about ten minutes to calm her down, and I promised that not only would I pay for the ticket, but that would never happen again. Turned out she (Helen) was the nicest person in that neighborhood, and we became good friends. Sadly, my brother didn't last too long after this incident, and I'm sure some of the neighbors were happy about that.

TIP OF THE DAY:

Dumpsters....

We need to do some spring cleaning.....like the yard, and the Garage, and finally get those never used things out of the basement. But how do we get rid of these things?? 

Actually your township should take most of it. Call them to see what they will take and if they'll pick it up. In most cases, you can rid of the majority of garbage that way. 

Dumpster in a bag!

But if not there is a really cool thing at some major home improvement stores now. It's the "Bagster" the dumpster in a bag! You buy one of these fabric containers at your local home improvement store for about $30.  Then, take it home, fill it with up to 3,300 pounds of unwanted material and call the number that came with it for a scheduled pick up.  There is an additional pick up fee that varies by locale.  The service is available in many, but not, all areas. Happy Dumping!

See you next time......from beyond.........