Two months ago the back of my house fell off. Well, not exactly. It was the back of the patio awning. Actually, it wasn’t really the whole awning. It was the horrendously expensive, if you calculate my man-hours, plastic latticework holding up the decorative jasmine plant along the back of the patio roof.

A certain amount of investigation seemed to indicate that perhaps the latticework that I had installed a few years ago had caused water to pool along the primary facing beam, and that had led to a rather severe case of wood rot. The whole facing beam, a monstrous thing 2 inches by 10 inches by 9 feet was completely rotted away. So I tore that down. Then to my dismay I discovered that two of the patio roof’s supporting beams were also partially rotted to a length of approximately 3 feet.

Now a conventional homeowner would have chucked in the towel, and called out a professional carpenter to rip out the two beams, and then re-roof the patio. However, anyone having worked in Efx. would naturally try to find a cheaper solution that did not require qualified professionals. So I ground out the rotted portions of the beams, then doused them liberally with a product that claims to ‘fully and completely’ kill all wood rot. Then, over a period of several days, I puttied in the large gouges that I’d created in the beams with a product named ‘PC Woody.’ It’s a two-part urethane putty, I think, that seems an awful lot like Bondo for wood.

Having repaired the support beams, well maybe – I guess we’ll have to wait a year or two and see if it collapses on my barbecue guests at in inopportune moment, I set off for the local Home Depot to buy a new facing beam. I was able to find the right sized beam, well it was going to be the right size once I had someone cut off around two feet. Naturally, I was unable to find any employees anywhere near the lumberyard. So for some time I strolled about the back of the store, lugging a 12-foot long 2 by 10 beam with me. Eventually I found a member of the crack staff. By now I was half way up to the front of the store, so perhaps the chap in the floor tile department had a right to be a bit startled when a customer dragged a huge piece of nude lumber into his showroom. He wasn’t very happy, he lifted both hands above his head, began to wave them about, and started shouting at me. I’m not sure exactly what he was saying, but I think that somehow he felt that the fact he was originally from the Philippines and used to be an accountant had some bearing upon whether or not I should have been pulling lumber across his display floor. Once he’d finished his little monolog about how over qualified he was for his job at Home Depot he picked up the phone, yelled at someone else, and then promised that there would be an employee waiting for me back at the saw.

When I arrived at the saw there was no one there. So I dragged the beam back and forth for a bit longer until it sort of blocked the path of a forklift, the driver of which vaulted out of his seat and he began yelling at me. Once again, I didn’t quite catch every point that he was making, but apparently before coming to America he’d lived in Indonesia, and used to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the State Security Forces. Oh, and I shouldn’t drag beams across the shopping aisles. Then he offered to cut the beam for me.

So I helped him put the beam on the saw, took the little note out of my pocket on which I’d written the dimensions of the original beam, and then asked him to cut it to “Nine feet, six inches please.??? He pulled out a tape measure, marked the beam at 96 inches, put on his safety goggles, and started the saw. (Do the math. 96 inches is only 8 feet)

I began waving my arms and shouted, “No, NO! NOT 96 inches. I said 9 foot, 6 inches.???

He stopped the saw, took off his safety goggles, and cautioned me that I shouldn’t distract him while he was running the saw, because it was a very big and powerful saw, someone might get hurt, and the wood might be cut to the wrong length. I pointed out, politely but firmly, that he was already cutting the wood to the wrong length. I repeated my original request for at cut at, “Nine feet 6 inches,??? then borrowed the felt tip pen from his pocket and crossed out the mark that he’d made at 96 inches. He looked at me sort of blankly, so I then took the tape measure and with the pen counted off the number of feet all the way from 1 foot to 9 feet. Then I counted off the inches from 1 inch to 6 inches. Then I said, “See, nine feet six inches??? and made a mark on the beam at that point.

He nodded, took back the pen, crossed out my mark, measured to 96 inches again, and made a new mark for himself. He then said, “Yes, 9 foot 6 inches.??? Then he put his goggles back on and waited. I guess to see if I was going to start yelling and waving my hands again in an unsafe fashion.

I, even more politely and firmly, said, “No, I said nine foot six inches.??? I then took back the pen and tape measure and used them to draw a thick black line all the way across the beam at nine foot six inches. I then looked at him, and waited for him to do something. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t even remove his goggles. So after a bit, I used the pen and to write the word ‘scrap’ on the other side of the line, beyond the nine foot six inch piece of lumber that I wanted to keep. We stood and watched each other a bit more, so I then drew a bunch of X’s along the scrap side of the line.

He paused, shrugged and started to cut the saw on my new mark, but as he did it he said, “The customer is always right, but the wood is going to be too short now.???

So let me sum up.
1.) The customer is always right, but
2.) He was letting me know that I was really wrong, but
3.) I wanted to cut the beam at ‘9 foot 6 inches’ (which is 114 inches), but
4.) He wanted to cut the beam at 96 inches (which is 8 feet), but
5.) He was willing to cut the beam at 114 inches to make me go away, but
6.) He wanted me to know that my 114-inch piece would be shorter than his 96-inch piece.

He must have been a heck of a policeman back in Indonesia. I’m sure that he always managed to arrest somebody. Not sure whether they actually did anything, but I’m sure that he arrested them.

Comment RSS -