Well I ruined someone's day today. I feel like quite a shit. But also what more/different could I have done? Mini aibu here...
Carpet fitters arrived earlier than expected and plumber was still fixing the leak. They got started at 9.30 as opposed to 9. I said to both different guys that the landing carpet stripes were to go lengthways, the front room was the sandy colour carpet and the back room the blue. Then I left them to it and went to work in the shed office.
My husband made them coffee and expressed an interest in all the prep work with grippers and underlay and stuff. They had the carpets for the bedroom laid out in there loosely. They assumed that was him agreeing the carpets were in the right rooms....
I followed the covid instructions of staying well out of the way and letting them get on with it. But eventually I really needed to pee and we still only have one working loo, upstairs... Stairs and landing are looking lovely I said, then OH NO! You've got the bedroom carpets the wrong way round!
There followed a load of "but your husband never said anything" kind of backpedalling. He said it looked good, after they were fitted, and it does - it's a great job, and they don't clash badly, but it's not what we ordered.
So I've had a painful phone call with the supply company, and they've phoned the fitting company, and it's going to be redone, but not for a few weeks because there's a silly lead time on one of the carpet types. But the fitters have to bear the cost of the mistake and he was furious while he was doing the last of the stair sections. I'm mildly concerned that he'll have punched at it a little too hard. Good job the stairs were brand new and hopefully strong timbers!
I genuinely feel awful that this mistake has happened but they should have had instructions and plans that didn't rely on us being there to say which room was which, right? If this was a few weeks ago we would have been leaving the house for the day so we weren't sharing the airspace with them.