The few square metres of flagging was skewed out of alignment and included all sorts of cuts in a futile attempt to make modular metric flags fit some other module that seemed to exist only in his tiny mind. Of course, it wasn't his fault that the flagging was sub-standard - it was the flags that were "not straight", except that every flag we measured was bang on 600mm wide, so then it was the walls that were at fault: the house was in the wrong place. And then it was next door's - their patio was even worse, as if that, in some way, mitigated his own slipshod work.
Moving on to the block paving, this clown had managed to lay the paving as something like a 36º herringbone (yes, 36º!). The pattern veered off to the right, but, surprise, surprise, it wasn't his fault. He'd set out the paving from the gate posts, and so it was the house that was at the wrong angle (again), not his paving. When it was pointed out that he should have used a line taken from the house, he claimed that "everyone always lays from the gate posts".
So, as the paving was skewed in alignment, the cuts at the edges, instead of being a uniform size as is the case when a 45º herringbone is laid correctly to a perpendicular edge, actually got smaller and smaller, to the point where the final cut of a series was a miniscule triangle measuring approximately 5mm x 5mm. Again, this was not his fault, as that was the way block paving is supposed to be laid to driveways. He claimed to know all about of in-board cutting (or 'turned round cuts' as he calls it) but he had never used it on driveways as there was no 'pounding' from traffic.
Apparently, and I have to admit I never knew this, the rules and regulations governing construction work don't apply to private houses: not even the Building Regulations - none of it matters because it's "private". The standards used on building sites, office developments and that sort of thing, are different: there are no standards for paving at someone's house, and he has documents to prove it. He's going to send me copies, so, I'll be able to share them with all us other contractors that have been getting it wrong all these years.
And it wasn't a "pavement", it was a "driveway" - did I know effing nothing? According to him, a pavement is only something found at the edges of a road; patios, driveways and the like aren't pavements, they're some undefined entity with no name, but they're definitely not pavements. Any fule no dat! And he wasn't a paving contractor, he grandly proclaimed; Oh no - he was much grander, he was "A Subbie" and therefore the rules of paving did not apply to him. He'd done "all them poncey courses" I'd done, such as health and safety, but he couldn't remember the names of any of them or where he'd studied.
One section of the driveway was backfalling. We had the automatic level on it, but it was obvious he had no understanding of how such a level works or what it does, and so he decried it as 'fixed' and got his neanderthal son to kick the tripod as he walked past, dragging his knuckles on the floor. When the spirit level, his own spirit level, also showed the paving to be backfalling, it was because the blocks "hadn't been whacked" and that when they were "whacked" the correct falls would magically appear and all would be well.
By this point, there was steam emerging from his ears and I was "making him mad" as I obviously "knew nuffink". He kicked the spirit level 10 metres up the driveway when the bubble wouldn't do what he wanted it to do, and meanwhile in the background, the neanderthal son was grunting "not bin whacked" over and over again like some sort of mantra. He said he wanted to smack me, but I wasn't worth it (I'm not! Believe me!) and he stormed off to 'phone the main contractor and complain about me.
I've spent 20+ years dealing with difficult, aggressive and infallible contractors, but this eejit, and the lumbering hulk of a missing link that is his son, take some beating. He had absolutely no understanding of how modular flags, such as Heritage or Millstone, are supposed to fit together without needing to be cut, and no understanding of what a "gradient" might be. He could not adequately explain any of his setting-out, blamed the house, the flags, the fence, the drains - anything other than admit he'd virtually no idea what he was doing.
The couple concerned have endured 8 weeks (yes - 8 weeks for a 60m² driveway and 15m² of a patio) of sheer hell. They had to endure a two week gap between the previous drive being excavated, the drainage smashed and the boundary fence broken, before the contractor/subbie returning to continue the work. All their previous requests for work to be corrected have been rejected on the grounds that they don't know what they're talking about, and they've hardly slept for the past week as it became more and more obvious that the work just wasn't right, but they were terrified of confronting the contractor.
It saddens me that folk such as this are part of our industry, and are besmirching our trade by reacting so aggressively to any suggestion that their work is sub-standard or just plain wrong. Until we get a proper training regime, with proper accreditation, the unsuspecting general public has no alternative but to be browbeaten and fobbed off with shoddy work by a small but scary minority of our number.
Let's hope 2005 sees fewer of these eejits. The job's hard enough as it is without this kind of gormless sod making us all seem as useless as him.
