Pia Arrobio is the creative force behind LPA. Although the fashion label is only in its sophomore year, its effortlessly cool, Italian-inspired vibe with a vintage '70s flair is already beloved by famous faces like Emily Ratajkowski, Kim Kardashian, and Gigi Hadid. (Oh, and Pia also happens to be one of faces of beauty brand Glossier's Body Hero campaign.) But when she's not creating pieces for LPA, Pia often spends time working on her home, which she shares with her bulldog, Ciro. Once, she hired a TaskRabbit for a project that quickly went south; here, Pia tells Clever the nitty gritty story of the night(s) when it all went wrong.
The weekends are really important to me. It's the time when I work on my home—I'm almost done with everything at this point. Aside from hanging some art, putting up the TV was the last thing I had to do inside. The last thing.
I went to an event with my mom on Saturday night, so I slept at my parents' house and we did Sunday brunch. Afterwards, I drove back to my house and realized I had an entire Sunday to do apartment stuff. I set up a TaskRabbit for 2:30 P.M. I figured that while I was arranging my succulents, repotting things, and hanging more bougainvillea, the TaskRabbit guy would hang the TV. I had everything ready—I had bought a universal mount and a kit to hide the wires. The Tasker messaged me right away and asked, "Instead of coming at 2:30, do you mind if I come at 5:30?" Which was fine—a little annoying, but okay.
As I was cooking dinner for three girlfriends, I realized it had been two hours. I called the Tasker at 7:30 P.M. and asked if he was still going to come. He said, "I'm so sorry, I'm on a plumbing job and the pipes are really old. It's a huge mess over here, so I have to postpone. I can be there by 8:30, and it should only take an hour." I said that was fine, thinking I could go to bed by 10 P.M.
But then it was 9 P.M. and he still wasn't here. I called him, and he said that his GPS gave an ETA of 15 minutes. I asked my girlfriends if they minded staying late since a stranger was coming over, and they were fine with it. But then it was 9:45 P.M. I called him again to tell him we should reschedule. "No, I'm really close, there was a horrible accident on the PCH," he said. "Someone died and I saw a body bag. . .but I'll let you know when I'm here." He showed up at 10 P.M., really shaken up, and told me, "I'm really sorry, I threw up when I saw the body." I thought, What!? This is so weird. I handed him the mount and wire kit.
A few minutes later, he was still staring at the instructions. This was supposed to be so easy that I could install it in two seconds if I wanted to. But when I looked over again, he was YouTubing how to use the kit. I said, "You said you mount TVs all the time, right? However you want to hide the wires is fine with me; I just want the TV hung. Here's exactly where I want it. Just make it happen." He began setting everything up, but finally said, "Well, this mount is too small, you need a different kind of mount." I thought, What? I specifically bought a universal mount. By this point we were both exhausted; it was 10:45 P.M. I told him this wasn't going to happen tonight, and he said he would come back at 5:30 P.M. the next day.
He arrived at 6 P.M. It took him two hours just to hang the mount. He told me how secure the mount was and that I could hang from it if I wanted to. He watched more YouTube videos on how to install the wire-hiding kit, and then—at 10 o'clock at night—he started power-drilling into the wall. Now, I live in an amazing community where everyone is very close. We all have our own technology start-ups, we all know the same people in the industry, and we have a group chat. We also all share walls. I immediately texted the group, "I'm so sorry that he's drilling, he's been here for hours. I've gotta get him out of here; it'll just be five more minutes." One of my neighbors, who is so cool, wrote back, "My bedroom wall is shaking. You've got to get this guy to stop." He and his girlfriend were headed to San Francisco the next morning at 6 A.M. I felt horrible.
I was in my bedroom finishing emails when I heard him say, ". . .Oh." You never want to hear someone who is drilling a hole in your wall say ". . .Oh." So I yelled, "WHAT?" and he just said, "The beam." This guy had been Mr. Stud Finder all day long, saying things like, "Oh, I found the studs, this TV will never fall off the wall." How did you not know there was a giant beam in the middle of the wall, Mr. Stud Finder? He had already cut this big hole, so I told him, "Okay, just hide the wires. You cannot drill anymore." He agreed, but then quickly backtracked and pleaded, "I need to drill another hole at the bottom next to the power cord." I told him no multiple times. It was 10:40 P.M.
As soon as I went back into my bedroom, he immediately started drilling again. I ran in to ask what he was doing and he said, "I just really need to get this other hole." I asked if there is any other way, and he said he would use his knife. He started to panic and said, "I really don't want to disappoint you," which threw me off emotionally. I thought he was having an emotional breakdown. He kept repeating that he didn't want to disappoint me, and I thought, Oh, my God, I'm going to unintentionally ruin this guy's life, so I just said it was okay. As he pulled out his knife, I thought, He's using his pocket knife. . .to cut a hole. . .in the wall.
Every time I said that I needed to go to sleep, he pleaded, "Okay, okay, okay, okay. I just need to do this one thing." All I saw was drywall, dust, and chunks of wall everywhere. I heard him rummaging through a bunch of stuff, so I peeked out of my bedroom, and there he was, patching that hole up in the shittiest way possible: with his finger and a giant container of spackle. I remember thinking, I can't watch this happen, so I went back into my room. I honestly had to stop looking.
He finally patched the hole and re-hung the TV, but my Apple TV was still dangling in midair. He asked if it was wireless. What? The whole point of this was to hide wires. So he then installed the wire kit's power outlet—completely crooked, leaving marks all over the wall. He asked to borrow a vacuum to clean it up, but I told him, "It's 11 o'clock. You are not vacuuming. Everyone will hear that." I told him I was having a photoshoot here the next day, so the cleaning lady would be coming in the morning. That's when he got really panicky. He kept repeating himself, but I just said no. So there was this pile of drywall, a hanging Apple TV, and a long cord dangling next to it. Great. He finally started to leave, and as I was shoving the wires up behind the TV, he stopped to say, "Oh, you can't do that. The TV will fall." I just stared at him and said, "What? You just told me that the TV will never fall!" He just kept apologizing. As I was shutting the door, he had the audacity to ask, "But if you wouldn't mind writing me a review?"
He sent me this crazy text yesterday. I think he only charged me for the first hour, so he sent me his PayPal account information to see if I would pay him for the rest of his time. I don't want to give him a bad review, but in exchange for not reporting him, I'm just not going to pay anything extra. It was all just so unbelievable.
