When we came home in January to find serious damage to our new bathroom, we congratulated ourselves on our foresight in hiring our housekeeper legally. We’d hired her from a house care organization that shall remain nameless, whose hiring conditions included liability insurance against just this kind of thing. All we had to do, we thought, was call the nameless organization and claim damages.

And indeed, shortly after our call, the manager of the nameless organization, who shall also remain nameless, visited our house, and looked at the damage. Our housekeeper, who’d come with him, acknowledged that the damage might have been her fault, and the nameless manager promised to take care of it all. An independent expert would estimate the damages, and all would be well.

Yeah right.

Six months later, after countless feet-draggings, broken promises, impossible last-minute appointments, and shady shenanigans, he had still not provided a solution. In fact, the only reason we could see that the nameless manager was still pretending to put in an effort, was the fact that we were withholding payment of his invoices until the matter would be resolved to our satisfaction. (We’d notified him of this.)

But then, suddenly, the nameless manager handed the whole matter over to his insurer, something we’d urged him to do for months. And lo and behold, within a week an expert came to our house, estimated the damage, and decided the liability question in our favor.

Whereupon the nameless manager proceeded to ignore the expert’s report, unilaterally break our contract, and sic a debt collector on us.

Now personally I’m not really the vengeful type, so I’m all for letting the matter rest now. But if after reading this you feel righteous indignation welling up, and you miraculously happen upon the nameless manager‘s email address, who could fault you for informing him of your opinion?

PS: As it turned out, our own insurance covered the damage, so it was a kind of happy end…