UMM...WHERE'S MY POOL?

All I wanted was some summer fun. What I got instead was a harsh lesson in the rip-off potential of payment apps.

- Devin Friedman

I was trying to reach Gary, the proprietor of Royal Palace Pools and Spas. Gary cuts a certain figure. Just a hair over 6 feet tall with an unusually high voice for a man his size, he wears a mustache, square wire-rimmed bifocal glasses and short-sleeved dress shirts. I wouldn't say Gary is perplexed by this modern world we find ourselves living in as much as he might not be aware it exists. Sometimes when you talk to him, he'll look up from his papers and blink, like a bird that has heard something in the underbrush.

Gary—not his real name-spends his days in an office covered desk-tocredenza in product manuals and spa brochures, and invoices produced in triplicate. A man trapped in the amber of another era, the type of guy who answers his phone "Yellllow" and says "Bye now" when he hangs up. But at this moment, Gary was not answering his phone at all. And I was desperate to reach him because my wife and I had paid him a deposit of $31,500 to build us a pool, and he had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth.

"I'm sorry, Gary is not available right now," said Cheryl when I phoned that morning.

As best I could tell, there were three women who worked at Royal Palace Pools. Cheryl, Cheryl and Sheryl. There was a rumor that one of the CherylsSheryl was Gary's wife.

"Do you know where he is?" I said.

"This is urgent."

"Um. And who is this?" said Cheryl.

I gave her my name and her tone changed.

"I see," she said tightly. "Well, I'll tell him that you called. Again."

"Please do," I said, trying to sound both grateful and angry.