Letter from Poland.

 

The rise of the Polish plumber.

09.04.2008

Ania Piwowarska recounts a tale of an ultimate ‘cwaniaczek’ (wheeler-dealer).

I should have known from the moment he started calling me “myszko” (little mouse), that my plumber was suspicious. Jacek had been recommended to me by my mother-in-law a couple of years earlier and had installed a bath in my newly redecorated bathroom. He was expensive but very good. So, when my tap came off my bath a few weeks ago, and I started flooding my downstairs neighbour, he was the first person that I called.
“Call me Jacek,” he said as soon as he came in my house.
And I did even though my mother-in-law has warned me never to steer from the formal form address of ‘pan/pani’ in my dealings with plumbers and builders. She was probably right. But how was I to know that going from first name terms would lead to being called ‘myszko’, which would very quickly lead to me getting completely fleeced…
As soon as Jacek arrived he started tutting and sighing and going on about what a massive job it was going to be to fix my tap. He was right in the fact I should have seen to it as soon as it started wobbling. However, there are always more important things to deal with than wobbly taps, aren’t there? The main problem was that I hadn’t left an opening to get under the bath. Everything was either sealed up with tiles (I had no replacements so we couldn’t break them) or with a wall.
“You should have thought of that when you were doing up your bathroom,” said Jacek, smugly.
“Hang on, you were the one who did the bathroom,” I thought, “surely you should have thought of it”.
But I didn’t say anything as I hadn’t had a bath or a shower for two days and was desperate for him to do the work as quickly as possible, without getting into an argument.
We decided that the only way to get under the bath was to knock a hole through the wall of the toilet.
“Oh, it’s going to be quite a job knocking through that wood,” said Jacek rolling up his sleeves. “Look at it, that’s got to be around 400 years old”.
Well, I’m not sure if it was so old but certainly the wood was pretty old – it was extremely thick and seeing as the building was originally built towards the end of the 18th century it could have been a few hundred years old. So Jacek got down on his hands and knees and started to saw, hack and pull, (all accompanied with a lot of huffing and puffing) until he finally made a hole in the wall of my toilet.
“Phew,” he said, bead of sweat dripping down his bald head “Look, I’ve scratched myself here, broken my watch here and got a hole in my t-shirt here. From all that work”.
I didn’t really know why he was telling me all this but I should have suspected that in showing me his ‘wounds’, he was preparing me for something.
After he had prepared the hole, Jacek squeezed himself and his ample stomach into the small opening and looked under the bath.
“It’s all right,” he cried out, “we’re not going to have to replace the battery! That’ll save you around a thousand zloty.”
I gave a sigh of relief but was still worried if he’d be able to dislodge himself from the hole.
“So, what was it?” I asked.
“Oh, the tap was unscrewed from the battery. I‘ll fasten it with glue so it won’t move again. And I can see that your shower hose is leaking. But that’s easy enough to replace – I’ve got a one at home which I can go and pick up now.
“So what’s it all going to add up to” I asked nervously as he started gathering much of his equipment up.
“Well…” he said, “I’m going to have to charge you eight hundred zloty myszko!”
Eight hundred zloty? Was adding the word “myszko” at the end supposed to soften the blow? I was so shocked, I had to sit down. Jacek left pretty rapidly to go and get the shower hose and leave me to deal with my heart palpitations all by myself. He had done barely four hours of work, so that worked out as 200 zloty per hour! Who earns 200 zloty per hour apart from maybe hot shot lawyers and soap stars? Certainly not plumbers! Doctors and teachers earn that in about half a month! This was insane. By the time he returned, I was fuming.
“Jacek, that is a ridiculous amount to ask for four hours of work.”
“Well, if I was doing this job for someone off the street I would have asked for 1,200 zloty,” he fired back but I could tell that he was avoiding my gaze.
“Can you really, honestly, truly, from the bottom of your heart say that what you did today was worth 800 zloty?”
“Yes” he answered, still unable to look me in the eye.
“And you’re not going to even board up that massive hole that you’ve made in my wall.”
“Oh no, not me!”
“Well, the world’s gone mad,” I said.
Finally we settled on five hundred zloty.
“I haven’t got that money now, I have to go to a cash machine,” I mumbled, angrily. Now I was not able to look him in the eye.
“That’s fine; give it to me when you can. The end of the week is fine, myszko.”
“Don’t call me myszko!” I screamed inside my head.
“I’m obviously in the wrong profession,” I said as I opened the door to let him out.
“Well, we all earn money any way we can,” and with a twinkle in his eye and a smile like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, he was off. Now, that is what we call in Poland a ‘prawdziwy cwaniaczek’ – a real wheeler-dealer.