A group of construction workers decided to ‘undo’ their work following a pay dispute with a homeowner.
The drama went down over in Australia when tradesmen worked to lay a new driveway for a customer, but things got heated when she refused to pay them the full fee.
Construction worker Jesse Crowe, of Logan, Queensland, was working on Viola’s home and had negotiated a fee of just $4,012 ($6,000 AUD) for the job.
It involved concreting a large driveway which is attached to the side of the home, but on completion, Viola allegedly refused to pay the whole sum.
Instead, she paid $1,670 ($2,500 AUD), but allegedly refused to pay the remaining $3,500 AUD ($2,340) when she reportedly got into a dispute with Crowe about the quality of the job and rubbish removal.
The Australian homeowner opened up about the ordeal in an interview with 7News, claiming she was threatened by Crowe after she complained about the driveway.
“[They said] ‘you pay now, now or we will smash the concrete,'” she said.
The homeowner was not happy with the job. Credit: 7News
Viola also claimed she would have paid the workers, but they ‘refused to finish the job’.
“They did what they wanted, not what I wanted,” she said.
After Crowe realized he wouldn’t be getting the remainder of the money he was owed, he created a video showing ‘what happens when you don’t pay for works carried out at your place’.
Along with a co-worker, Crowe then lifted a pick-axe above his head and swung it into the concrete, causing a large hole in the freshly-laid drive.
The two workers then repeated the move all the way up the driveway, leaving it patchy, uneven and full of dents.
Behind the camera, the person filming the video could be heard saying: “You should have paid. And it’s going to cost more to get it all dug up, taken away and poured again.
“Didn’t want to pay? This is what happened.”
The builders allegedly warned Viola before smashing up the driveway. Credit: 7News
Crowe told 7News that he’d been in the trade for a ‘long time’ and had been ‘doing the right thing by people’, before asking: “They don’t want to pay, at the end of the day, what are you going to do?”
The small business owner, who was ‘tired of being ripped off’, added that he didn’t ‘like’ destroying his work’.
“I take pride in my work and I love concrete, I love doing it,” he said.
The family living at the home expressed plans to fix the hole-covered driveway themselves after Crowe took his tools to the stone.
Meanwhile, Crowe added: “I just want to get paid.”
The dispute happened late last year, but both sides are still standing firm after the clip was posted online a few days ago.
