Word: repairs
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...consumer complaints, which are climbing almost as rapidly as the wages of carpenters, plumbers, glaziers and electricians. Typically, the Chicago Better Business Bureau last year counted 2,178 protests against the performance of home remodelers, substantially more than the number of gripes registered against the runner-up, the auto-repair business. Home repair is characterized by maddening delays, shoddy workmanship and startling expense...
...Their Mercy. Complaining consumers are the victims of a classic economy of scarcity, which enables contractors and repairmen to charge what they please and get away with it. The need for their services is enormous because few homeowners can perform any complex repair jobs themselves. Construction unions make sure that wages stay high by keeping the supply of craftsmen inadequate to meet the demand In the Oakland, Calif , area, the number of union plumbers, currently 900, is actually shrinking because the union is training only ten apprentices this year. Anachronistic spread-the-work rules prevent the most efficient...
Conflicting Versions. Each side blames the other for the latest trouble. According to the Soviet version, the Chinese had illegally infiltrated troops into the Russian area. Early one morning, as Soviet engineers landed from two river craft on their part of the island to repair navigation markers, Chinese ambushers opened fire with submachine guns and grenade launchers. The fusillade killed one Russian worker, wounded two and inflicted severe damage on the Blackbird and Turpan, the boats. The Russians, so they say, did not even shoot back...
...more serious was the situation on the road between the two bases. While working to keep the road open and in good repair, the American engineers could not depend upon the South Vietnamese for protection. On several occasions, the South Vietnamese refused to respond to pleas by ambushed engineers. Four weeks ago, a 20-man ARVN guard detail deserted a U.S. working party when North Vietnamese ambushers opened fire. Cursing their allies, the surviving Americans finally managed to drag their dead and wounded to safety. Over an eight-week period, the U.S. engineers lost 19 men killed and 120 wounded...
Many readers miss the florid circumlocutions of such erotic classics as Fanny Hill or My Secret Life. Today's pornographer handles a love scene as if he were dictating an engine-repair manual for high school dropouts. Not so the oldtimers, whose swooning maidens entered the amatorial bout with timorous displays of budded rotundities, swelling hillocks, portals of ecstasy and other geographical purlieus quite foreign to Gray's Anatomy. When it comes to a seduction scenario, few contemporary eroticists could match the subtlety of an anonymous 17th-century poet in reciting a pastoral love-in between a fair...