My friend lives in a beautiful apartment building from the 1950s, on Línea street. This morning, as always, she prepared to leave for work, when suddenly, the washbasin that had heroically resisted the pounding of 50+ years of survival, had given way to the implacable advance of the years, and a crack had finally caused it to burst.
That same afternoon, when she arrived at the office, she started the arduous task of finding a plumber, who in addition to knowledge of his profession, would give his word and come to repair the breakdown.After two days of making multiple calls to different telephone numbers recommended by neighbors and friends, she finally found one who promised to go without fail that same afternoon, to see if he could take a look at it. Actually, the man lived up to his word and turned up for the appointment. The judgment was finally declared to be a malfunction of the washbasin. That is where the odyssey began.
The first thing he did was to look into different chains of stores with a hardware department to learn which one to go to and not lose time and gasoline, that is really $1.15 CUC per liter, although that’s not what I’m talking about now. After going around to the best stores fruitlessly in the city, finally he found it in Roseland, at half the price of the same thing that he had see in Palco days before, and couldn’t buy because it was excessively expensive.
Happy about the discovery, she arrived at the store with measurements recommended by the experienced plumber. The happiness ended there. The salesperson that was in the department in question, told her — after greeting her “good afternoon”, and finding out what the client would like — that she couldn’t help her because today she was lacking many workers.
Before many requests and pleas from the possible buyer, the employee, with a very bad character, decided to call another sales assistant so that he could work on the issue. The first thing that this person did, was to talk with my friend about the annotated measurements that she brought, telling her that they didn’t exist, but at her insistence, visibly contradicted, she agreed to go down to the warehouse, but at that moment, it created a tremendous discussion between the two employees, where the person who just recently arrived told the bad tempered worker from the department: I’m going to have to kick your A-S-S.
My friend, horrified but turning a deaf ear, told the boy, Go on, I’m going to give you $2 if you help me, to which this swift guy answered, if you want me to help you give me $5, now you know, madam, one hand washes the other, and two hands wash the face.
Note: the facts are true and if someone from the Roseland store, is, by chance, reading this post, he knows that what is related here is absolutely truthful.
Translated by: BW
January 30 2012
