Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Sun Fries Their Brains

It must. No other possible excuse. The gardener - who does a really, really good job keeping the yard looking nice and planting flowers - gets the Fried Brain award for April. He ran over my pool float with the lawn mower! He did what? Yes. He mowed my pool float. This one [scroll down to the very bottom]. It is beyond repair. A little puncture I could have fixed. I cannot, however, fix a float that has chopped up little pieces. What the he11 were you thinking?!? I want to beat him. [I am so beginning to see what it is that causes people, here, to want to pummel their "domestic" help with their fists or beat them with a shovel or a broom.]

My float usually rests against one of the chaise's outside when it isn't in the pool. It is done for. It has been mowed over. You idiot! How could you MOW over a float?!? You could not see that it was in your way and that you were going to have to bend down and pick it up and move it before you mowed right there?!? Do you think I am going to be able to repair it, now? And do you think I am even going to find one over here like that?!? No. My mother got it for me in the States and I brought it back a year or so ago to use here. The best we can find for floats is one of the blow-up ones that punctures if you accidentally grab it too hard with your fingernails. I've contacted two different companies to see if I can get a new float shipped over here and neither of them ship internationally. All I am going to be able to do is order one, have it shipped to my Mom's, and then have her ship it over for me and hope that I get it and that someone in custom's doesn't decide they'd like it and keep it for themselves. [Because THAT happens.]

Yesterday I asked DH what happened to the small barrel we used to have - it was a trash can - it had a cover - and I need it. I think, for some time I used it when we lived in the townhouse to keep dirt mixed in it - for planting houseplants, etc. DH said that the dirt got used, here at the house, when we planted the fig tree and that he had rinsed the barrel out with the hose and left it outside to dry and that the gardener ran into it with the mower. WHAT? Another mower mishap? You're kidding, right? I asked how - and it was a rhetorical question - Appuk could have ran over a barrel and DH responded, "I think the sun fries their brains." DH is on to something... Perhaps I should take Appuk's mowing privileges away from him - but I can't. [Who would mow the yard? And why am I paying to have a gardener if he doesn't mow the yard???] He's mowed my float, mowed a barrel [I'm still shaking my head - how do you mow over either a float or a barrel!?!] and he has mowed into my lime tree on a dozen different occasions even though he has been specifically told NOT to go near it with the mower.

Instead of beating him with a shovel - which is what I would like to do - in hopes that I'd be beating some sense into him - I am going to buy him a hat. Try to keep the sun from frying his brains. And if he runs over anything else, the replacement cost will be taken out of his pay. Pay - money - that is all these guys actually understand. We've got Inom vacuuming up shirts and Appuk mowing a pool float, a barrel and my little lime tree. Nope. Done putting up with stupidity and "fried brains." You ruin it? You pay for it! That will get their attention.

12 comments:

  1. Man, a pool....if I lived in Saudi, I'd never bother leaving the house if I had one.

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  2. I'm wondering if these mishaps - very simple yet quite dumb - are something else. A passive display of contempt for the Americans, perhaps?

    Would they do these things at their homes? I doubt it.

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  3. Either the sun has fried their brains or else they have a passive aggressive streak a mile wide!

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  4. What kind of imbeciles do they employ in the sandbox?

    I can so totally see how some of these idiots end up in a coma on the side of the highway.

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  5. I agree 1,000%...if they break something of yours, if they ruin something of yours or your husbands tell them right there it will be coming out of their pay to cover the expense of the lost item. Perhaps this will work. It did for my daughter when I docked her allowence for misbehavior.

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  6. I'm pretty much a home-body, here, SH. Rarely leave. But for vacations or occasional entertainment purposes. I'm out back - working hard at the pool!

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  7. Shannon - Truly I believe that some of them really don't have much for brains. Some of them, on the other hand, I'd go with a passive display of contempt... Apparently they forget to take into consideration who it is that is actually paying them.

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  8. Appuk now has a hat, DL. We'll see how he does. I tried to explain to him that he has to actually, physically MOVE things before mowing over them. He answers me, "Oh, yes, Madam," to absolutely everything I tell him. We have a serious communication problem - but his nephew is our houseboy, Inom, so I am now using him to translate. He will be paying for the next "mowed over" item! When Inom explained that to him - in my presence, his response was, "Oh, yes, Madam."

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  9. Whoever they can find in some other third-world-shit-hole that is willing to come over here for two year stints and make very little money, Janice. Give you a good idea of what their mentality is, right there.

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  10. I figure that is the only method from here on our that is going to work, marianna68. I've threatened to do just that - and when their pay is smaller than normal, I'm betting they figure it out pretty darn quick.

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  11. Hey if you wanna get something ordered from the states just give aramex a visit. They have some sort of mailbox in the states service. Order anything you like to that address and they ship it to you at a somewhat reasonable rate. Its called their Shop and Ship service. I think it will make your life very much easier specially since the customs rarely seizes aramex shipments

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  12. Have seen the Aramex trucks come through here, before, hermit. Will check it out. Thanks!

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