Warning to women: do not hire this man. He spent about five hours at my condo on Friday January 9. I hired him to paint, install a new light fixture, tighten up an outlet under the kitchen sink and install a new switch plate replacing the old style toggle switch. During that time he sexually harassed me, both physically and verbally.
Because there's nothing behind my condo but trees, there are a few houses but they're obscured by the foliage, I wanted my curtains taken down. He needed to patch the holes where the rods were and paint. The first thing he said to me within ten minutes of his arrival was: "Well, you won't be able to walk around the house naked anymore." Later on he said something to the effect, I'm paraphrasing here, of the two us of us spending our lives together. We were in the kitchen discussing how far down I wanted the new fixture to hang when he suddenly came up to me, got about a foot away, maybe less and said: "What color are your eyes?" My eyes are brown, plain old brown. But he went on for about a minute or so remarking about my eyes. He went out for lunch for about an hour and I went to the grocery store. As it was getting close to him leaving he saw the bottle of wine I'd bought and said: "I'm almost finished. Now we can have some wine." I have to buzz people into my condo. He had jerry-rigged the door so I wouldn't have to get up whenever he came in, but he took the tape off after lunch, so I had to buzz him in again. When he came through the door he said: "You just let anybody in. I could have been some creepy guy." I thought: talk about projection, you're that creepy guy. But the very worst comment he made was when he was working on the outlet under the sink. He wanted to use duct tape and he was trying to get it unstuck so he could unroll it. He said: "How am I going to bind you up if I can't get this unstuck?"
Twice he put he hands on my shoulders, and once he "accidentally on purpose" bumped into me and put his hand on my hip. I was sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen playing a NYT word game on my phone and he came up behind me, put his face close enough to mine that he could have kissed me and started asking me questions about how the game was played. He stood there for a very long two to three minutes.
The entire time he was here, once I understood what was going on, I was determined not to antagonize him in any way. I didn't encourage him but I didn't want to make him angry. We were alone in my condo, with him behaving in that fashion I had no idea what he might do if I rebuffed him, or told him to leave. As he was leaving I realized that my concerns were well-founded. He started telling me about an "old lady" who'd written a bad review, threatened to sue him and then got back to him and asked him to come back and do more work. The more he talked about her, the angrier he was getting.
We discussed him coming back to do more work. As I said, I didn't want to antagonize him, wanted him to think that everything was fine. When the time came for me to pay him I was sitting on my sectional, on the chaise end, which is where I always sit because I can stretch my legs out. There's a chair less than two feet away from the end of the chaise, which is where he could have sat. But instead he sat on the chaise, so I had to move my legs to the side so they wouldn't be touching him. He charged me more than what he had told me the jobs were going to cost. When he told me the figure the thought that went through my head, because he was sitting so close was that if I offered to "take it out in trade", he'd lower the price.
I have blocked his number and I've blocked him on Facebook. When I went to his FB profile I saw photos of his wife as well as her name, her last name isn't the same as his. I sent her a message yesterday via messenger, telling her that her husband is a creep. I've not heard back, doubt I will. I don't know what his vehicle looks like, I wish I did because if I were to see it around here I'd call the police.
This guy is a creep. Don't even think about hiring him. read more