Buzzer No Work

While we were away on summer home leave, we've had some things break around our Shanghai house. So now that I'm back, I've got a short list of things that need to be fixed. One of them is the house buzzer at our garden gate, which poses a big problem. Because when the workers come to fix things, they buzz the non-working buzzer and then leave, because I don't answer... because I don't know they are there. So I call the management office and tell them to come back and they say, "You no home," to which I reply, "I am home, my buzzer no work. If you fix it then you will see I am home". It then takes another week for me to get them to come back. And the vicious cycle continues...

Well, now I taped a sign OVER the buzzer itself. But unfortunately I can't write Chinese characters. So I wrote: "BUZZER NO WORK. COME TO DOOR" with an arrow. I figured that even though the workers can't read it they will get the basic idea from the arrow and the fact that the sign covers the buzzer. So now I got them to my front door. But instead of knocking, they start yelling. I don't respond to yelling in Chinese because there is a lot of yelling around here already and I've learned to block out loud Chinese yelling.

Finally, I look out the window and sure enough they were calling to me. I showed them how to knock to get me to answer. Hopefully, they will knock the next time. Sigh... I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow and ruin my sign...