This thread made me think of a uncle of mine. He had a guy come out to clear some land. He sat and watched him for about a hour and went up and told the cat driver that he wasn't paying for him to back up. You can guess what hit the fan.
Without a doubt, this is the funniest story in this whole thread.:laughing:
There is some validity to both sides of the argument in this thread:
In my younger years, I turned wrenches for about 10 years.
This was back in the days when things were repaired instead of replaced. Started out on a salary of $39 for a 44 hour week. Finally got up to 60% commission on labor and 10% on parts.
I operated like this:
I gave the customer a quote to do the job. The quote would be for everything, diagnosing the problem if necessary, parts, and labor.
If I wasn't real familiar with exactly how long the job would take, I would look up the time in a labor book (don't remember it's name) to give me a general idea. Then I would use that time on which to base the labor part of the quote.
If the customer agreed to the quote, then I did the job and the quote is what the customer paid.
If I allowed 2 hours for labor and I did the job in 1 hour due to the job going smoothly and/or my experience in that particular job, then so much the better for me. The customer paid what he agreed on (the quoted price) and received the same quality work as he would have if the job had taken the 2 hours.
On the other hand, if the job didn't go as smooth and/or my inexperience caused the job to take 4 hours, then the customer still paid what he agreed on (the quoted price) and still received the same quality work as he would have if the job had taken the 2 hours, and I bit the bullet on the extra time.
Seems to me, that was as fair as fair can get.
Now, for my mini rant:
The only occasions that I pay someone to do something for me is when I have no choice. ( I can't operate on myself; I can't fill my own teeth, etc. I have, however, cut my own hair for the last 40+ years.
)
It just seems like the integrity of doing things right in nearly every field has gone down the toilet.
Sure, that is a blanket statement, and a lot of people working for the public are proud of their work and rightly so.
However, there are also many out there who are either outright crooks or are pathetically incompetent.
Like the guy that replaces a dozen items in trying to find the problem and charges you for them all, parts and labor, and the problem is still there.
Or how about the 'Economy oil change' where even if they actually change the oil and filter, they leave the drain plug loose and it leads to the destruction of your engine.
So the challenge for the public is how do you tell who is who, especially for those of the public who aren't knowledgeable enough about the work they need done to recognize that they've been shafted even after the fact.
I guess the long and short of it is, that today you have to really educate yourself about what it is you want to pay someone to do or you're just asking to get ripped off.
Well, since I'm ranting, I'll add this little bit about how the quality of the things you buy has changed.
Use to be that if you bought the most expensive, you got excellent quality. In fact, it was hard to buy something that wasn't worth what you paid for it. In other words, 'you get what you pay for' was generally true.
Today, you buy the most expensive and hope that it's not broke before you get it out of the box.
And I'm not talking just about the cheap China stuff. Today, made in the USA does not automatically mean it's a quality item.
Well, I guess I'd better stop before I start ranting about politics and who knows what else.
Stay cool in this heat wave,
