Thursday, October 2, 2008

Smoke and Manners

On Monday the construction company finally gave us notice that we have to move our cars from the street by 7 am each day so they can pave the street that they have been screwing up/ working on since May. I did so for Monday, but they never paved the street. I moved the car for Tuesday, but they never paved the street. I did not move the car for Wednesday, and they still did not pave the street. I did not move the car for Thursday(this morning) because frankly, I don't trust these guys anymore and I had a lot of stuff to carry last night. I knew they might knock on the door again, so I figured I would deal with it.
I was woken up at 7:45 to laughing and talking. I thought it was my radio. Nope. I thought it was my son's radio. Nope. Then there was a knock at the door. Luke answered the door and I heard a man ask " is that your parent's green car over there?" Luke replied "Yes, but my parents are asleep" "Well go wake them up they have to move that green car!" Note the lack of Pleases and Thank You's in this interaction. I heard the conversation and the tone of voice by the construction worker was less than pleasant. Is it not normal to at least pretend manners when speaking to someone elses child?

So I got dressed and came down to move the car, totally prepared to talk to someone about their lack of manners with my son. I knew full well it would fall on deaf ears, but I still had to say it. Low and behold in front of my house I find 4 construction workers on my front sidewalk talking, laughing and smoking cigarettes! Keep in mind this is a tiny street so they are smoking less than 10 feet from my bedroom window.
I laid into them hard! I told them they should think about who they might be waking up with their early morning chatting (this is when I saw the cigarettes) and showed them how close they were to my bedroom window and suggested they should also use the word please when they spoke to people and most especially children. They said it was not them that came to the door, but another worker. I apologized and told them(this is the new paving crew, not the crew that has been here through most of the project)how bad this summer has been with the road construction and how this was the first time we had been given notice about moving the cars, I told them I had been ill all summer and how I have been constantly had woken up to knocks at the door at varying times through the day to move my car. Then I asked them to think about their choice to smoke so close to a persons house... and pointed to my still mostly bald head and said "Cancer!" and walked away....

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