Integrity, where has it gone?

Oh I am in a baaaaad mood! We have been working on getting a "brick" (actually a paver stone) patio put in. It's been a lot of work. First we had to excavate through the lovely clay soil of Indiana to remove about 400 square feet 3" deep. That was back breaking, but nothing compared to shoveling, by hand, 5.5 tons of crushed stone into the hole (yup, filling it up again) . Once that was all done "all" we had to do was get a ton or so of sand and wait for the stones to be delivered on ............. oh, yeah..... last Tuesday.

They never arrived so I called at about 8:00 Tuesday night and they said the truck was still out making deliveries and we were scheduled for an evening delivery so they'd more than likely be here any time......no such luck.

SO yesterday bright and early, I called the store and the manager of the delivery department said the truck had broken down but it was being fixed and they'd "have those stones" out to us by nightfall.......surprise!.....no stones AGAIN.

Lucky man, got to talk to me again at 8:00 this morning, he said they'd been delivered....I asked him where (since I sure didn't see them in the driveway) and things just went downhill from there.....to make a long story short our stone is still sitting in the Garden Department at Lowe's an hour away from our house.....they've never even been loaded on the truck! No real explanation just, "hmmmm, I guess they're still here, we could "maybe" get them to you on Sunday afternoon if that would be convenient. "

Needless to say Sunday is not only "not convenient" it's also a week late and I want them NOW!!! On Tuesday it was beautiful weather, even yesterday it was in the 60's .....today it's 40 and they're predicting snow.

I'm just so frustrated. It seems that more often than not, when we hire a job to be done it goes like this, the workers show up....or not, the work gets done on time......or not, and there's nothing at all we can do about it. You wouldn't dare pay a contractor up front because you might well never see him again but since you haven't paid (or not more than a small deposit) they really don't care when, or whether, they get the work done.....I really feel like I'm at their mercy.

I try to be understanding but honestly if we ran our business like this we wouldn't be IN business. I just don't understand how anyone can even feel good about doing this to people. When we put in our fireplace they brought most of the supplies in August and the stone mason came out .... he said they'd be done in about two weeks with good weather. Well, the weather was beautiful but I didn't see him again until the middle of September and the fireplace didn't get finished until 2 days before Thanksgiving!

Okay, I'm done venting, I'm going to find something better to do with my time today than dwell on this.....hope your day is going well! : )

Sure Love Ya!