So you’ve hired a contractor to install a pool in your backyard. Congrats! Unfortunately the contractor’s a little busy. Not the best communicator. So when he emails you and asks you to wire payment to a weird-sounding user name, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you’d do it, simply for the sheer relief of getting one step closer to Pool. Hopefully things don’t go as colossally wrong for you as they did for Devin Friedman and his wife. And if they do, hopefully you can write a piece as hilarious and insightful as this one.
So yes, we fell victim to some highly suspect shit. But let me ask you this: If your contractor seems like they’re doing something a bit dodgy, would that really surprise you? Don’t you kind of assume your contractor has angles? Don’t you suspect that every contractor is subtly fleecing you, while also subtly fleecing the people who work for him or her, in a velvet-gloved mafioso kind of way that everyone has tacitly approved? Isn’t our national OK-ness with Donald Trump a subconscious admission that we assume everyone in the building trades is on the grift? And isn’t what a lot of us actually look for in a contractor someone who’s a little suspect? Who can maybe find a way to not have to get the permits? Who’s maybe going to pay some folks under the table? Would you bat an eye if your contractor asked you to make your check out to his wife instead of him (which has happened to me)? Or if he told you to just Zelle the money to Personal Breezy?
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