I've Had Better Weeks

As I general rule, I try to keep this blog's content on the lighter side-- I mean, it's hard to complain too hard when you're living in Europe, have the ability to pick-and-choose work assignments and have all the inherent opportunities that living abroad entails. However... sometimes you gotta vent. To wit:

The place still isn't finished. This may come as a surprise to some seeing that we moved in to the apartment nearly eight months ago. But here I am typing this while 10 feet away a workman is slowly completing trim painting that should have been done before they handed us the keys. The corker is that I completely cleared my schedule last week-- errands, doctor appointments, you name it-- to take on the onerous, stultifyingly boring task of sitting here inside all day every day so the building super could throw all his guys at the place and be completely, 100% done by August 1. You see, this apartment's owners, a very cool young couple from Frankfurt, drove out a couple weeks ago to ride this guy and force him to complete the work by this deadline. But like any slick operator, the super (who comes with the building) knows the law backwards and forwards (circumstantial evidence points to the fact that he has a local judge in his pocket), and knows there is what amounts to be a "3 Strikes" rule in Germany-- he was reprimanded once already, and Friday afternoon was merely his second. So despite his promises to this couple who took time out of their vacation to come out, despite him knowing that I committed myself to sticking around the place to let any and all workmen in... he had absolutely no intention of completing the work-- why should he? He was merely putting this off as long as he could until he collected a second reprimand. The super just had to ride out a couple people yelling at him for 30 minutes, make some more of his empty promises, and then get on with his life-- sort of like industry execs at a senate hearing. But even some of his answers were infuriating-- stuff that should have been here last year (we were supposed to move in last October-- the first of many broken deadlines) was just ordered from the supplier last week. Crap like that. We all felt punked, me especially. So now that he's on his 3rd strike, he's begrudgingly getting on with things... except he also knows (and is counting on) the fact that I won't be here all week, and with my parents' impending visit he also knows that there is a requested work stoppage for most of August-- so all of a sudden it's our fault that he can't complete the work. Like I said, real crooks know the law.

I should point out that all evidence points to the fact that this situation is highly unusual. Most building supervisors in Germany are responsible upstanding folks who take their jobs very seriously and with pride. Our building owner and the individual apartment owners (this is sort of like a condo arrangement) apparently chose this guy as a super because he promised the world, and worked for cheap. But seeing as he's screwed over nearly everybody in the building, his contract likely won't get renewed when it comes up in November. Small comfort, but we'll take anything at this point.