BOILER buggered? Need extra plug sockets putting in? Chances are the workman who comes over will be an opinionated wanker charging you to listen to his crap:
The electrician disgusted by your ignorance
Simple questions about which circuits govern what and behind which walls your lines run are met with total incomprehension, much to his contempt. It’s the worst kind of bigging yourself up and you could burst his bubble by mentioning your own specialist workplace skills. Pointless though, as he knows every other job is bullshit.
The one who’s always buggering off
This tradesman keeps leaving to get another part from the yard. However he disappears so often you’re starting to think a more plausible explanation is that he’s leading a secret life as a superhero and keeps hearing a bank robbery six towns away.
The twat with right-wing opinions
Not all tradesmen, no, but there’s always one who jumps right in with his obnoxious views. You keep your input to a noncommittal ‘Mmm’, thus tacitly agreeing that the EU is sabotaging Brexit because they’re funding a radical Islamic takeover. It’s cowardly, but you try sticking to your principles when the toilet’s been broken a week.
The football monomaniac
Not into football? A visit from this dishwasher installer involves an enormous amount of bluffing. Of course you could grow a pair and admit straight out you don’t follow football, but somehow your brain makes you say feeble things like ‘Yes, I hear Liverpool are back on top like in the Ian… Rush? days.’
Passive-aggressive class warrior
He’s definitely got a bad attitude because you work on a laptop and have a degree. You only wanted some floorboards in the loft, not bloody class war, and it’s actually quite annoying because you’re not privileged in any way. Still, he’s set the tone, so you won’t be offering an Earl Grey or dark chocolate ginger biscuits to this beastly plebeian.
The ignorant know-it-all
This polymath knows everything from the true motivations of the government to what universities teach these days. Unfortunately it’s all bollocks. And it will soon become apparent when he says ‘Ted Heath used to have threesomes with Cliff Richard and Reggie Kray, but there was a cover-up.’
