I made a post on here a couple of days ago about wanting to have one of my contractors employees removed from my mom’s home renovation for lying about a mistake he made.
I left out a lot of context, and ultimately deleted the post because a lot of people, rightfully so, were making assumptions that didn’t line up with reality, and made the feedback pretty unusable. So if you didn’t see that post I’ll give a quick breakdown before giving the extra context, and telling the ultimate resolution:
My dad passed away a couple of years ago and now my mom is living in a house that is too expensive, and too big for her to take care of. We hired a real estate agent and were told there’s a good amount of work that would need to be done, we looked over the option of getting my mom a place to live temporarily while the work was done, but ultimately her, the agent, and the contractor decided that it would be better for her to stay in the house while they worked, as this isn’t a full renovation, just some paint work and exterior work. Painting started on Tuesday of this week and they prepped the whole house for painting, which they weren’t supposed to do. I told the guy who was in charge of painting, Juan, that the house didn’t look livable, and he responded that he thought my mom would be gone for the next two weeks. I scrambled to find my mom a hotel, and while I did I was trying to figure out why Larry or the real estate agent would tell Juan we would be gone. Ultimately I found out that Juan was fully informed that my mom would still be in the house, and disregarded that to save time. When he kept doubling down that he had no idea, I finally asked Larry to remove him from the project.
I was still angry at the time of my last post so I didn’t take the time to get my thoughts in order, so that’s my fault. Here’s a lot of the context I left out.
1. Juan is not a subcontractor. A lot of people assumed from my post that this was a classic case of a contractor, Larry, throwing a sub under the bus. That is not the case. Juan is an hourly employee for Larry, and he was tasked with hiring the painters and directing them. Larry being upset with Juan for telling my mom she couldn’t stay in her house wasn’t Larry covering his ass, as Larry and Juan’s asses are directly tied to each other. 2. this “renovation” isn’t for convenience. It’s stuff that had to be done before the house was sold. A lot of people were saying anyone who can afford a renovation can afford a place to stay while it’s happening. The whole reason my mom is getting this work done is because she can’t afford this house and needs to get into a smaller one. She had to get a loan for the renovation so no, she doesn’t have thousands of dollars for an air bnb for however long the work will take. 3. I don’t know why this one should really matter but Juan is white. A lot of you seemed to think that me and Larry were teaming up on a Hispanic, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Honestly me and Juan were tight when this whole process started and even were planning to go fishing together after the process was over. I would have no reason to turn on him if I thought he was being honest (not that him being Hispanic would be a reason to turn on him, but y’all seemed to think that way). 4. Juan knew that he was supposed to keep the house livable while he worked there. The biggest piece of context that left out was that we did a walkthrough last week, with Juan and Larry, and discussed how to best keep the house comfortable while they worked. Why did I leave this out? I forgot, my bad. I honestly didn’t even remember until the real estate agent brought it up.
So yes Juan knew what he was supposed to do, he did the opposite, told my mom she wouldn’t be able to come back to her house that night while she was delivering mail in 95 degree weather, and then lied about the whole thing, all while laughing in our faces and basically calling everyone involved crazy for thinking what he did was wrong.
Conclusion: I tried one last time to get past this with Juan, I told him I just wanted to move on and have a good work environment for the remainder of this project. He said he wasn’t willing to bow down to me until I admitted he didn’t do anything wrong, so yesterday I talked to Larry, and Juan was fired from the project. Larry was more than willing to pay for my mom’s hotel room, and the painters worked hard yesterday to make sure her bedroom, and living room were done so she could move back in. Also, now that Juan is gone the painting timeline has gone from 2 weeks to just one. Interesting.
Was I over reacting for wanting him off the job? My mom and I feel a lot more comfortable with him gone, so looking back I’m just gonna give myself a NOR. honestly wouldn’t have even made this post if I hadn’t have butchered the last one so badly.
Reddit consensus: MIXED (no clear verdict)
What do you think?
Voting ended onJul 17
Originally shared by Rude_Pop548 on r/AmIOverreacting on July 10th, 2026 at 6:59 PM UTC.
