Don't ever work for the general public.

I've been running round all day collecting things for WH and delivering them to his work site, actually somewhere he's been before and to where he was bound to return at the end of a warranty period. A builder's life is never simple, particularly when the customer is a prize pratt with obsessive/compulsive disorder and that's just for starters, even his family think he's a nutter. Anyway after delivering a load of insulation to stop his pipes knocking, pipes I hasten to add which were fitted by A N Other and not by us, I then had to deliver 4 cupfuls of cement from another job to fill a minuscule dip in a brick.

I met the depressed painter on that trip, he was tiling under a worktop which you can't see unless you lie on the kitchen floor and crane your head at a very unnatural angle, but hey, the customer is always right and all that, we will do these jobs without charge, with pleasure. By the same token, it gives us untold joy to sand down the underside of a worktop which also can't be seen because it feels rough when you stroke it. WHAT?? WH did say it was because it was cheap, the ones we usually fit are light-years better quality, but that remark, strangely, went unnoticed.

Later on I had a phone call, "Could I just deliver some cups of coffee from the local garage as by 1pm the customer hadn't offered any of the crew a drink." Again their wish was my command and it cost the best part of twenty quid to get coffees and extra cans each for later in the day. By that time WH was in need of paracetamol and luckily I found 4 under the seat in the car, wrapped I hasten to add. As to why they were there at all, it's safer not to ask. Having delivered these, I shot off again quickly, the customer by then peering at me over the top of his pc screen, handily situated right in the centre of the front room window, angry no doubt for distracting the workers for all of thirty seconds.

Just as well I couldn't stay long as the painter was about to tell me about his latest trouble with his mother, she doesn't like the smell of paint in his van. I thought we had problems.