Sometimes they apologize, other times they don’t.

One of the translators I hired who actually did one of the moves for me was a 23 year old kid, & he slammed on his brakes so suddenly, that my chair went flying forward. My knees banged against the dashboard (it was a jeep) & I cried out in pain.

It was obvious that the seat needed to be moved back, but he didn’t help me or say a word. He finally asked me if I was ok, but never apologized.

Another time he was carrying a large blowup bed & he wasn’t careful. He knocked a whole bunch of video tapes plus my pen holder & he broke 2 items. He never apologized or even said oops.

More on this translator…

I told him how much I was willing to pay for the move. He said he had his father’s jeep thingy which would be fine as I was concerned it wouldn’t be.

The night before he even saw how many boxes there were, but he never said a word.

He was a slow worker & had no help, so I ended up helping him in the end which I wasn’t thrilled about, but he was taking sooo long I had no choice as I thought it was going to take maybe 4 hours to move.

He started roughly at 9:30 am & with all the trips back & forth, it took until approximately 4:30 pm.

He also did 2 small errands for me afterward.

When it came time to pay him, he wanted more money & I was already going to give him $10 more, but he wasn’t happy with that. He said he was “sad” which I found amusing.

I had also paid for his lunch which was expensive, plus gave him more for translation, but that still wasn’t enough.

He didn’t say thank you for the lunch either.
In the end the move cost me $70 plus his lunch. This may not seem a lot to you, but for a Panamanian it’s a lot & it was more than double than what I agreed upon. I could have hired someone else for less & had 2 guys moving so it would have taken less time & I wouldn’t have had to help, but I live to learn as I always say.

I didn’t hire him again for translation. He was terrible at that & clearly wasn’t smart enough to figure out that he couldn’t move me easily & then he makes it seem like it’s my fault because it took so long.
Michelle