How to Deal With a Contractor if You’re a Single Woman
by Maggie Van Ostrand
Contractors are all the same. They just have different faces
so you can tell them apart. It’s a nightmare for a single home-owning woman to
deal with male contractors who seem to think we’re not the ones paying them. For one thing, they don’t look you in the eyes, they look you in the chest.
They don’t talk to you as a human being, they talk to you as a dimwitted slug.
In fact, they don’t really want to talk to you at all, they want to talk to a
man, preferably your husband, the one they assume pays the bills.
For some reason, when contractors can talk with your husband, it brings a lower
job estimate than if they have to talk to you, a <gasp> woman, otherwise
known as someone who thinks a Philips Head is the head on the neck of someone
named Philip, when it’s a special kind of screwdriver with a wonky tip.
What if you haven’t got a husband at the moment? You are
defenseless, powerless, and apt to sign the contract they so presumptuously
shove at you with the pen they just happen to have in their hand. I’ve
experienced shoddy workmanship without a husband to direct and inspect their work before final payment is made. And that was before I realized I
needed a new roof.
When it dripped rain on my sleeping head during a recent storm, I realized the old
roof wouldn’t last another winter, and started calling roofing contractors. I
learned how to deal with feckless contractors; there’s nothing more frustrating
than to handle a contractor with no feck.
Never mind that the local roofers’ estimates were almost
twice as much, for the presumed convenience of proximity,
let’s just cut to me finding a fairly priced roofing estimate from a company
about 60 miles away willing to make the long round-trip drive for
several days. This time, I thought, a contractor will not take advantage of
husbandless me because by the time work commences, I will have one.
Living near Los Angeles, the hub of the entertainment industry, I first thought
of hiring a movie extra, until I found out what it would cost. Second, I
thought of interviewing male escorts but they not only cost more, they were
all too young, too handsome, and too expectant of special extras of their own.
Desperation drove me to a better solution; I already had a possibility.
I asked my long-time handyman if I could hire him at his
regular rate to act like my husband, explaining the need for a man to join
me in meeting with the contractor. He was thrilled because, he enthused, “I’m
62 years old and this is my first acting job!”
Hiring a husband worked out very well. The contractor
addressed all his remarks to him, the handyman asked intelligent questions I
never would have thought of, and made it clear that I (his “wife”) was in
charge of home repairs.
What persuaded the contractor to address future comments to
me, satisfied all parties, and sealed the deal, was when my hired husband told
the contractor that I was in charge of the checkbook. Now I have a nice
new roof to prevent raindrops from falling on my head, but my checkbook has sprung a leak.
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