Maybe a bird flew into it.

Words you never want to hear a contractor who is working on your home say:

“Oh, that was dumb.”

At long last, our flooring guys arrived this morning to tear out the carpeting in the living room and hallway and install the vinyl planking. I naïvely thought it wouldn’t be too disruptive to work from home while this was going on, but within minutes realized I’d vastly underestimated the amount of noise and clouds of dust this project would generate. When I heard the foreman, Todd (what is it with guys named Todd??) utter those words, I figured maybe he’d put a chip in the wall or scratched the paint. You know, something minor.

This is not something minor.

What it is, in case you can’t tell, is a giant hole in the screen door that once housed a window. Once as in, earlier this morning.

WT ever-loving F.

“Umm, sir?” Todd asked. “Got a second?”

Funny how I’d just been Mark up to that point but was suddenly elevated to sir. When I stepped out of the office and saw the sheepish look on Todd’s face, I knew this was going to be bigger than a chip in the wall or scratched paint. But I was not expecting to see the entire tempered glass window full of spiderweb cracks. The thing was shattered. Wish I’d gotten a picture, but I was in a mild state of shock. And then Todd had the nerve to say, “I don’t know what happened…maybe a bird flew into it?”

MAYBE A BIRD FLEW INTO IT?! Even a freakin’ pterodactyl couldn’t break a tempered glass window, dude.

I could tell ol’ Todd was scrambling for a way to avoid blame. He even asked if the window had been like that already, even though he was the one who opened the door and was going in and out all morning!! Finally, he conceded that his jam saw must have picked up an errant tack nail from the baseboard at the top of the stairs and flung that sucker through the air with such velocity that it took out the window pane. Which is an awfully specific scenario given that moments before he had “no idea” what happened.

Good hell. Someone could have been killed.

To his credit, Todd did end up admitting fault and took care of the problem immediately. On his lunch break, he brought the broken window to a shop in town and paid for a replacement. It’s going to have to be ordered, but at least we don’t have to deal with the hassle of taking care of it ourselves, sending him a bill, and hoping we get reimbursed.

In any case, the new flooring looks great!

What there is of it anyway. Because, wouldn’t you know it, the installers ended up a few boxes short. Ironically, this same thing happened the last time we bought a house. I guess flooring is the kryptonite to our manifesting.

Everything was measured correctly, but Home Depot apparently didn’t load all the boxes onto the truck. Even worse? Todd said this happens all the time. If we’re looking for silver linings, at least the flooring is in stock. They’ll be back tomorrow morning to finish the job. And they originally quoted us two days anyway, so no harm, no foul. Or, if I were addressing Todd: no harm, no fowl.

And then Monday, I get to do this all over again when we have carpeting installed in the bedrooms, which will be even more disruptive. Oy, vey.

It’s been a pretty weird week to be honest. All the comments I was leaving for my blog buddies were being hijacked by the WordPress spam terrorists. I’d type up a comment, go to post it, and then — poof! — it was gone. I’d then type up the exact same comment, go to post it again, and get the same result.

I learned later, from the WP support team, that you should never do this. Duplicate comments are flagged as spam, and then you are blocked from leaving any comment on that person’s blog. Going back periodically and commenting with “test” or “testing” only exacerbates the problem. It turns out there was a small glitch earlier in the week, right about the time I was catching up on blogs, and as a result, my comments on multiple sites were flagged as spam.

How rude.

And then, adding insult to injury, when I emailed one blogger directly to let her know what was going on, she shared the system-generated response with me.

I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t the work of some robot overlord I pissed off with my anti-AI diatribe. Skynet exacting revenge or something. Everything’s working fine now and I didn’t have to pay anybody a ransom, but still. The timing is suspicious, ya know?

Because the flooring isn’t quite done, power tools are scattered everywhere, and everything’s a dusty mess, we’re headed to Mr. Brew’s Taphouse tonight for bar trivia. Last time Booze Clues finished third, so wish us luck!

33 thoughts on “Maybe a bird flew into it.”

  1. For the love of Todd! What is it with folks who simply can’t admit fault, immediately apologize, and fix it? Ten bucks says if it had been Tara, Todd would have continued with the gaslighting. As you say, someone could have been killed. Or lost an eye!

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  4. Well Todd knows how to put flooring down even if he is a big ole liar liar pants on fire- Good thing the glass is on order and Todd can hit the road before the door comes back… or is he doing the carpet as well? Probably no power tools with that I guess. Many folks were having WP issues, but pissing off AI might be something you want to avoid just in case.

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    1. Nope, it’s somebody else doing the carpeting. Thankfully. It’ll be quieter, but there’s a lot more stuff we’ll have to move around, and I’ll have to work from the kitchen table. Small price to pay though!

      When I reached out to WP for help, they said I was literally the only person reporting this problem. That makes no sense given they later admitted to a “small glitch” affecting some accounts. Maybe they’ve all been replaced by robots!

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  6. Duplicate comments are flagged as spam? Welp the explains a lot to me. What a strange thing WP is. Oddly enough there’s a handyman around here whose business is called “That Guy Todd.” He’s popular. Best of luck with the house issues.

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  9. What I love about your screen door picture is how beautifully it frames the gorgeous scenery beyond. And then I had all sorts of other clever comments but your post sent me into my spam folder – and there was one in there from you plus other ones and then I found myself down a rabbit hole. Now I don’t remember my smart comments but am very thankful for the tip. 🙂 Hope that the trivia game included something about how flooring projects can cause collateral damage and good luck with Todd tomorrow.

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  11. OMG, that is unbelievable that Todd attempted to not take the blame at first! And the fact that he says that “It happens all the time” with Home Depot. Um, maybe count the boxes before you pull away, Todd? At least the flooring looks nice!

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  12. Todd may not be the worst liar in the world . . . but I bet he’s related.

    Good thing you were home. Otherwise, he would have blamed it on the neighbor’s kids, or their dog, or their drunken antics. 😀

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  14. I remember once when we were getting a furnace/heater tune-up the technician advised midway through that everything looked good…except for the part he broke off and had to now leave the house to get a new one. Anyway, all turned out well. At least he fessed up to having committed the gaffe. Here’s hoping all turns out well at your end. I don’t think that AI-inspired post caused these events. I think it is too busy concentrating on world domination.😀

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  17. Since no one got killed and you don’t have to deal with fixing the window, I will say that this was a most entertaining read and your floors look great! Even if they aren’t completely finished yet. Well, they probably are by the time I’m writing this.

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  18. They were a few planks short of a full deck, so to speak, when they installed our sunroom flooring, too. Annoying. I came in once after some contractors had done some work and found that they had accidentally made a crack in one of our bathroom sinks. The sink and cupboards under it were one solid unit, so they had to replace the whole thing. At least they were forthcoming about it when I brought it to their attention.

    Oh, WordPress, you had me thinking Mark had stopped following me or something! Glad you’re not being spammed anymore.

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  20. Your engagement with WPress reminds me to check if my problem with Kindle purchasing on Amazon has been sorted. I also went from it being “just me” to a “known problem” which was “nearly resolved”. I haven’t checked in a while because – fortunately – I have a stack of extra reading matter on my Kindle to choose from. Still, no need not to top it up when I can eh? 😉

    But yeah Todd, nice try mate… by which I mean so very not! Good luck with the carpeting.

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  21. Todd, Todd, Todd….what a wicked tale he weaves. ‘no harm, no fowl.’ Thanks for the giggle, at your expense.
    The flooring looks fantastic; so much better than the carpet in living areas.

    So weird about the spamming comments. I believe the AI BOTS are sick of you talking crap about them.

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    1. We were tied for second, three points behind the leader, on the final question. But it was about “East Bound and Out” or something like that. A show we don’t watch. We played it safe and only bet 5 points, but a bunch of other teams knew the show and pulled ahead of us. Bummer.

      Buuut….we did win a free pitcher of beer.

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