Reply #6: I'm starting to get very frustrated with the cleaning company

[Ian David]

They mostly seem to treat my stuff like it's just something inconveniently in the way of their lucrative construction work.

We rented a 40 foot trailer for storage (way overkill) and despite all the extra space, they still piled boxes helter-skelter all over the place.

They didn't seem to care that much about my stuff in the garage. Why? Maybe because I'm not having any construction done in the garage.

Today when I got to the house, I saw one of my cheap Sauder Woodworking bookshelves in the garage collapsed. Nobody working there bothered to pick any of it up, even though everything on the shelves had stayed dry and clean.

What's most worrisome are my home movies. I just spent an hour digging through the boxes in the trailer looking for them, and couldn't find them. I'm worrying they might have gotten thrown away. Hundreds of hours of home movies. No copies of them anywhere.

The boss from the cleaning crew says he can give his guys about fifteen minutes tops to help me find them. And that they've taken really good care of me, so I shouldn't be complaining about how they handle my stuff or pack the trailer.

And for the most part, he's right. They've taken very good care of me in many ways. But I'm still damned worried about those tapes. I don't have copies anywhere.

For the most part I'm very pleased with them.

I'm wondering if there is a way to hire a "private foreman" whose sole job it is to stay on top of the contractors and pester them? Sort of a "Special Event Manager" for flooded houses?