The True Israeli Experience

When Ariel and I moved into our “new” apartment in Tel Aviv, we were a little scared that we didn’t have an air conditioner. After the first full week of summer we went running to the store to buy one. Fortunately I get a discount on the tax with my New Immigrant Status and we were feeling really good about ourselves.

Yesterday the guys came to install the AC unit and this good feeling quickly went down the drain. After recounting the story to some colleagues at work they just laughed and said “looks like you had the true Israeli experience.”

I received a call the week before to schedule a time for the men to come and we decided on 9-11 am on Tuesday. I asked to take the morning off of work and everything seemed to be in order. When the guys didn’t show up by 10 I called customer service just to make sure things were ok. As it turns out they were somewhere in suburbia and were not going to make it to my place until 11:20. (Note: whenever someone gives a time like that, you know they will not make it on time). I called again at 11:30 when they have not arrived and they told me they were looking for parking. This again perplexed me because I saw 4 open spots in front of my building. At noon they call to say that they are standing in front of my building and I am not there. When I assured them that this was not the case, since I was in fact standing on my balcony and did not see them, they admitted to having the wrong address. Around 12:30 the doorbell rang and the men finally arrived. 2 ½ hours later they were finishing up and left me an enormous pile of dust and pieces of wall that they had drilled through. By the time I finished the vacuuming and dusting it was 3:30. At that hour it was too late to go into the office and not early enough to do much of anything else.

To top it all of, the man said: “Listen, your installation comes with 2 meters of tubing but we had to put in 3. We actually gave you 4 but I will not charge you for the extra meter. All you need to pay is 70 shekels.” What choice did I have since the tubing was already in my wall?

To sum up the “true Israeli experience” as I understand it, you must: waste an entire day for something that should take merely a few hours, pay extra money for something that no one told you about and you are not 100% sure you need, and experience hours of needless pain and frustration. All this to be cool in the Tel Aviv heat.