I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him sitting in our salon; he did tell me on the phone that he would be in our neighborhood to pay a shiva call on such and such date, and that he might drop by. It’s just that, with everything else going on, I hadn’t been paying full attention. And if nothing else, Jeff deserves one’s full attention.

There he was, sitting in the little cluster of chairs that we had assembled in the middle of all the chaos in our apartment. I unloaded my shopping bags and sat down in the chair opposite his, and we began to chat. Like everyone who has wandered into our new place, he could look past the construction zone and appreciate the layout of the apartment, the size of our merpeset, and the great view out the picture windows. He and June have also had to relocate recently, so we could exchange horror stories. At least, no one was bugging me and Barbara about our cats.

It didn’t take me long to start regaling our friend with my ‘three for one’ story.’ I wasn’t referencing some special ‘Black Friday’ deal at our local mall; rather, I was back in Tanzania, where it took hours for those of us on the safari to get out of the airport. There’s one guy to give you the form, one guy who takes the form back once you’ve filled it out, and then a third guy who takes the money you need to shell out to enter the country. They could probably have one guy doing everything, but then two guys would be out of work, and jobs are hard to come by in that part of the world. What prompted this discussion? The repairman who was fixing the air purifier in our mamad.

 Perhaps a proper explanation is in order at this point. Newer apartments here in The Land come with a dedicated ‘safe room’ (‘mamad’ being an acronym for something, but I don’t know what), replete with an air purifier – just in case the ghost of Saddam Hussein launches a chemical attack our way. All well and good, except that ours was hanging off the wall – as limply as the explanation from Liz, the go-to person from the kablan’s office, that the mamad had passed inspection and was good to go (I’m not sure where). At least, she agreed to send somebody out from the company to check. Said somebody did come, acknowledged that there was a problem, tried to fix it, and couldn’t – although he did patiently explain how the thing was supposed to work.

While Jeff and I were palavering, a third stalwart from the company was hard at work repairing the injured unit, so that we think it would work, if need be. Of course, we would need another set of eager-beavers to straighten out the hinges on the heavy door to the mamad so that someone of normal strength could close it. This is how I explained the situation to Jeff. You have the first guy to do it wrong, the second guy to realize there’s a problem, and the third guy to fix it. There must be an easier solution, but it has proven to be elusive. To prove my point, I began to itemize the problems we had been having, all of which required multiple efforts by a host of individuals to straighten out.

The largest and most elusive issue was our water supply. Aryeh, our plumber, did show up and attached the faucet to the sink in the guest bathroom, so that was the easy part. (OK, the kablan’s workman had switched the hot and cold water connections, but we can live with that for now.) Then: How do we make it get hot – even if it’s backwards? After a while, somebody figured out that nobody had connected our water supply to the dud shemesh. And if the unit that heats the water is operating when there’s no water to heat, what do you think will happen? So they had to replace the now-fried heating unit. And they had to replace the kablan’s el cheapo wall timer, which controls when the heater is on or off – not once but twice. After several weeks of agony, everything got straightened out, and we could enjoy the luxury of a hot shower.

How about some heat to go along with the hot water, or are we asking for too much?

You’d figure that the compressor for our brand-new mazgan unit wouldn’t – couldn’t – be defective, but then you wouldn’t be noticing the pattern that seemed to be emerging. The large unit for the living room and kitchen wasn’t finished yet, but we could turn on the units for the three bedrooms, which did a good of blowing cold air – a good thing if it were July instead of December. When the guy from Tornado showed up (he would be #2 in our construct), he gave us the bad news. The motor for the unit wasn’t working properly (Yathink?), and he’d have to order another one, which would take a while. True to his word, he showed up several weeks later with a new motor, and that seemed to work for three or four days. Is it my imagination, or are we still only getting cold air coming through? Please tell me I’m wrong.

But, alas, I wasn’t wrong. Barbara called Rafi, our installer, who called the company. Back came #2, who diagnosed the problem. Some connection was loose, and the gas for the unit was escaping. What did he do? Or more precisely, did he fix the problem? No, he did not. Instead, he called back Rafi for him to fix the problem.  Which he did when he showed up a few days later. (Why do it yourself, when there’s someone else you can call?) We’re still trying to get the units connected via wi-fi, so we can program them for more than one day, but that hasn’t happened yet. We may have to get Yoni the electrician to install an old-fashioned timer instead. (I’ve lost track; would Yoni be #3, #4, or #5?)

BTW, Fred, whatever happened with the dishwasher that was sitting in your living room? Did that ever get installed?

And don’t forget the oven hood that was in a box next to it. The dishwasher installer showed up, moved the carton into the kitchen, shook his head, moved the carton back to the living room, and left. What was the matter? Somebody (think: carpenter who did the kitchen cabinets) had neglected to make an opening under the sink so the dishwasher could be connected with the plumbing and electricity. Somebody else, I think it was Gilad, wound up sawing the requisite hole. The dishwasher guy came back, only to discover that the piece of pipe needed to connect to the water supply was also missing. That would be on the kablan, so Barbara contacted their guy Nadav. With some effort, he located the missing piece to the puzzle, but he put it in wrong, so that it leaked big time.

This was more than a ‘pattern’; let’s call it a comedy of errors. It took four trips for the installer to connect our dishwasher and then give Barbara a twenty-minute explanation of how to use it. And to collect a substantial fee, which he wouldn’t have charged if he hadn’t needed to keep coming back.

And the hood for the stove top? A similar problem. No hole to connect the hood to the chimney. But you expected that, didn’t you?

In actuality, some of the disasters I’ve listed occurred after my conversation with Jeff, but I had enough examples in real time to prove my point to any fair-minded individual. In fact, there were other mishaps that I didn’t bother to mention: the non-functioning elevator, the lack of grout in the bathrooms, but I could go on and on. There seem to be no end of instances of penny-wise, pound foolish in this neck of the woods.

You might think that with everything going awry around us, our spirits would be dampened. But no!

            In the fell clutch of circumstance

            I have not winced nor cried aloud.

            Under the bludgeonings of chance

            My head is bloody but unbowed.

In the next installment, we take matters into our own hands and overcome the ineptitudes of others. Stay tuned….