Is it too much to ( insert expletive of choice ) ask for a client, to not tell me how long it takes to do my job?!!!?
Or asks for the same quality but cheaper!
Ha ha this priceless meme popped up a couple of years ago and i had to save it just incase I ever needed it. Today feels like one of those times!
What is it with terribly nice middle class people and thinking they know more than you do? Is it a class thing? Is it a hierarchy thing? Or are they just born annoying?
I can’t think of another job where the client thinks they can try and tell you your job, as much as the building trades. I don’t walk into your office and say come on then, stop hanging around the coffee machine I bet you could do that lots quicker if you put your mind to it.
One thing i’ve noticed about some middle class clients is that they often have stories of some builder or handy man who was ‘ simply amazing ‘. After prying a bit, I often find out that the amazing guy was someone that stayed longer than their 8 hours , or worked all weekend, or did lots of work for free only charging them a portion of the job.
After hearing numerous stories of ‘the brilliant Pete , Or Bill, Or Mark. I then noticed something else. I noticed that these same people who had stories of their brilliant builder were also the most likely to come out with the phrase we all love to hear:
“While your here could you just…”
For the last year i’ve ended up doing alot of work, where due to the complex nature of the job, The lack of client plans, the changability of the clients mind, the unknown elements of say taking up floors to inspect joists and weatherproof victorian timber etc. I’ve had to say: — ‘Yes i can do it, but it will have to be on a day rate basis’. Thats time and materials in other words.
I’ve found that there has been a distinct lack of : ‘could you just’ and asking lots of questions when it is their time and therefore their money that they are taking up. But oh how some of them love to chat when you have given them a fixed price quotation. This is especially true of the ‘ while your there, could you just’ brigade .
— I have a younger female painter friend that recounts endless tales of mission creep to me. I explain that i’ve developed a more surley gate for these clients in an effort to deter them even asking. I honestly cannot believe how much some people, often men, seem to see a strong woman tradesperson as someone to question even more than I would even imagine. This is what she says:
“Maybe they think i’m a phoney, maybe they think its a big job for a little girl, (which is not only patronising but full of entrenched patriarchy). They constantly question what i am doing and there’s quite a bit of oversharing of personal information. Which is uncomfortable “
I might say you need to stand your ground but i understand its hard when you have to fight against mysogyny and patriarchy. You have to choose your battles. Sometimes you just need to get paid!
I don’t know if it would help here to illustrate — if i gave you an example from today. —
I have a client that wants to replace some badly painted and damaged architrave that goes around a upvc door. It also only has one side piece instead of the require two. (old house-many bad renovations) There is some damage to the wall and so wider architrave that covers all of the offending wall is desired. This is dutifully sourced from the builders merchants. Straight pieces without knotts is chosen from the rack by myself by hand and bought and paid for and loaded into the van with two sheets of 18mm MR MDF and other trim pieces needed for the rest of the job. (building cabinets around two alcoves in the same style as the originals in the room next door) On my return I take to removing the offending architrave and i need to do this sympathetically so as not to disturb the original lath and plaster wall. If your not careful whole chunks of the stuff come crashing down. What was once a efficient mix of lime sand and horse hair now just seems to be dust with a few hairs sticking out, which hardly hang onto the 140 year old strips of chestnut.
After removing the top section of architrave I find that there is no insulation between the inside and the 2.5mm of plasic trim that is around the exterior of the UPVC french doors. THIS is a massive bug bear of mine. I have never taken out a 20 to 30 year old UPVC window or door set and found anywhere near adequate insulation between the inside and the outside world. I have seen in a house i remodeled at least a 50mm gap all around the windows in this particular building. So thats 2.5 mmon the outside and 2.5 mm of plasic trim on the inside and that is all that seperates your cozy home from the howling gale outside. In fact i do the 1980’s installers a disservice here. Some of the windows had tissue paper stuffed in them and others a copy of the 1980 Sun newspaper.
I wonder just how much warmth you are turning into cold as each hour passes by having this huge air gap around everyone of your double glazed windows. Anyhow I digress. But what i’m saying here is that i care. I care about the building science, I care about doing a good job and i take extra time to put those pieces of building fabric back together in a suitable way.
So back to the job at hand. After i had cleared up lots of old dirt from the walls i tracked down via the client some glass fibre insulation and packed the offending cavities. All of this — The going out for materials , the discussing with the client what should be done about adding timber cheeks to enable the architrave to be framed nicely took up to lunch time.
Ok you get the picture here: Its not hard to fill up 4 hours. Just think back to that last day off you had and how suddenly it seemed to be 3 pm and all you had seemed to of done all day is eat toast and play ‘The Chain’ by fleetwood mac about 5 times since discovering that the opening few, not chorous bits ,are just as good, if not better than the famous dum… de dee dum de dee dum dum dum… bit that featured in so. any driving programs of the 90's… In fact you didn’t even realise that its the same song!
Yeah time flies and discussing optons , driving , choosing timber , loading , unloading, removing , packing and cleaning the glue holding the original upvc trim on takes up plenty of time. I’m quite impressed here that i did get all of that done in 4 hours.
Now that was just half the day — after lunch because the architrave was wider than a standard door architrave I chose to add biscuits to the mitres so that they stay aligned ,then fitting the cheeks in timber that had to marry up with the one side where i had to make the decision wether to put some kind of thin timber piece on top of the plaster edge so that its timber all around or somehow go with the existing edge…..
I feel like i’m going in to far too much detail here for the lay reader but this kinda illustrates my point! that you hire someone like me because I have the experience to make those decisions based on all the factors such as budget , time allowed, state of the building structure etc etc. Thinking takes time!! and its really disengenuous of disgruntled clients when they come back to you and tell you that they have seen this job done in two hours. Which this client did! Which is a little like me saying — I’ve seen my daughter make a tik tok advert in 3 minutes how come it takes you a week to make a tv advert. Sounds a ludicrous comparison doesn’t it?! Like i say I think ‘the trades’ are some of the only jobs where clients seem to think they can let us know how they know better than us.
Which is why ludicrous comparissons and assertions that: ‘my daughter had one done around the corner fully primed for half the price ! ‘ really get to me! — Let’ s take this statement. Firstly even after agreeing a budget you are now disbelieving how long in reality its taking to complete. Even when you can see with your own eyes the progress…. I have a theory on this too!
Some people think as soon as prying eyes are off we skive as much as they do! — in the office browsing social media, buying theatre tickets, organising holidays and meet ups. ( I’ve worked in an office i’ve seen it happen) Let me tell you there is generally not enough hours in a day to bring a project in on budget. We have to work efficiently and fast nearly all the time.
Ok Ok!! I know there are some dodgy tradesmen out there. Its true I’ve heard the stories. I honestly hold my head in my hands when i hear stories of people paying thousands of pounds for a days work because they have no idea what the process entails and have been blinded by a bit of slippery talk. It really grieves me that some of these people give us hard working honest tradespeople a bad name. We have enough to deal with, with trying to be competitive whilst managing clients expectations of what they can achieve for their budget. Many of us might be good at the construction side of things but the budgeting and spreadsheets thats a next level challenge for alot of us. We have to be the front of house, the designer, the maker, the secretary, the budgeter daily.
So back to the statement: ‘ My daughter had one made and fitted painted for half the price ‘ — Ok So Just HOW !! How can someone go to the timber yard , design, pick up, unload, cut, build, reload, deliver, take upstairs, set up tools, build carefully scribing in to uneven floors and walls, fit, clean, reload van, for half the price of lil old me who has been working 8 hours a day on this job for 3 days!!!! Just How…..? Now basically YOUR either bullshitting me or You are leaving out some really important information — like it was done 15 years ago when prices were much lower, It was done as part of a bigger job and the firm did this as a loss leader. Either way just throwing this in to your email is designed to say — At best your not competitive at worst — Your ripping me off ! — Thats not a nice thing to say to someone you want to do some good work in your home. Can it be that you have no idea what your words mean? How can this be so? How can someone that runs a business that employs people not know that words matter?
I don’t know what its like in other countries but here in the uk there is a definite class snobbery at play. See the Three Classes Sketch for a uniquely british way of looking at class. Link to video via You Tube here:
This classic Sketch — first broadcast in an episode of David Frosts satirical comedy programme The Frost report on 7 April 1966 has the working class described pretty well. ‘ I could look down on them , but i don’t ‘ — ‘I get a pain in the neck ‘ ! — Ha Ha right down to the pain that inevitably comes from years of manual labour.
I often think that if i had had the opportunity to go into academia I would of been an anthropologist. The science of how people react and believe in certain things really interests me. So this brings me to a wider topic that i can’t divorce from my view of yesterdays events: — Middle Class Liberals — Really bloody stupid or malicious calculating evil that is intent on ushering in a fascist hellscape ??
