Contractors

According to my rough estimates, about 50% of the people working in the construction/remodel/plumbing, etc business are complete morons. I know that if they were rocket scientists they'd be out building some of them durn rockets, but you'd at least expect them to be proficient at the nuances of their chosen professions. Take today for example.

We hired someone to saw up our concrete parking pad. I gave them the EXACT dimensions & they estimated it to cost $450. Six hours of sawin later, the bill came to $850. Apparently they charge by the foot, and the estimator "guessed" it to be about 150 ft instead of the actual 350 ft.

How the heck does a guy who's job it is to estimate screw that up so bad? He should have been able to estimate it exactly by doing a little math. Even I could have estimated it exactly if I'd been given their price per foot. For pete's sake. Anyways, we only paid $450 for it, so who am I to complain?

So far we have hired six people to work on our house for us. Three of them have made the stupidest mistakes ever, or had absolutely no clue what they were doing.

1. The concrete cutting estimator - story I just told

2. The "handyman" who told me he did plumbing and then spent 12 hours doing our plumbing completely wrong. Apparently the "guys at the hardware" store told him how to do it. I could have gone and asked the hardware store guys how to do it. Why would I hire someone to do that? It took the new plumber only 3 hours to redo it.

3. Then there was the "Concrete Guy" who told radically inappropriate jokes all the time and who didn't know how to read the concrete dye card to get the shade of gray we wanted. I read the dye card and saw we needed 6 bags of dye. He brought 4. They went to go get more, the concrete sat too long in the truck & the whole project went to hell immediately after. Did I mention this concrete was being poured directly onto our brand new kitchen cabinets? When I say going to hell, I really mean it. (it all turned out ok, it always does...right??)

Well this is the polar opposite of "small joys fridays", I prefer to call it "Trash Talkin Fridays." I hope you enjoyed it all the same and if you were unaware before, you have now been enlightened to the perils of hiring people to do your crap for you.