The Client

The guy is retired and thank goodness his wife is not. I say this because they are both a cut of the same cloth, and having one of them around is enough. And I am not sure what makes them tick. Now don't get me wrong, I am glad that they are my client and the jobs that I do for them are profitable. But this does kind of fall into the category that if you help me I need to charge extra. But with these folks it goes further..... "if you are even home I need to charge extra."

The guy has no idea of the value of time. Either that or he has no other friends to hang with. It is really hard to get something done when someone is yacking at you all the time. Not only that he is constantly under foot. Not only that, when I bought materials to use on the job and set them down where I needed them.... they would mysteriously disappear. My crew had the same issues. It was like this guy took ownership of everything that came through the door.

At one point I saw him picking up pieces of hardwood and was heading down the hall. I said, "Hey, where are you going with that?" He said, "putting them in the garage." I said, "My floor installer just cut those and is about to nail them in." He said, "oh." Let me tell you, we spent a lot of time looking for our tools and materials.

So the job came down to this: it was my job to get the man out of the house. We went to the hardware store, to coffee, to lunch, and I drove as slowly as possible. It was my installer's job to get something done while we were gone. I actually joked with my client that my installer would like him to go find something else to do.... except I really wasn't joking.

My client liked us so much he has more work for us to do. I'll have to put on an extra guy just to keep him busy.