“That’s an easy job”
I posted this on our town’s FB page and it seems to be resonating:
Neighbors, when hiring a trades person, don't say "it's an easy job"
After 36 years of small business, and thousands of interactions with home/property owners, may I offer an opinion: This will not help you. Just describe the job and stop talking😀
Small story then I will go away. My new-ish and expensive plow stopped working a couple of days ago. The local plow shop (where I bought the equipment) says, "Come down tomorrow after lunch, we will fit you in". I get there and there's a couple people sitting in the waiting room. I'm told "it's going to be a while, have a seat".
The place is busy, phones ringing and people walking in. I'm a fly on the wall, absorbing the mood of all the staff and walk-ins.
One guy walks in and says, "The lights aren't coming on, it's probably something simple, yet I'm not a wiring guy". I cringe----uh oh. He broke the golden rule.
The owner pipes up: "it's never easy, we will need to take a look, but I've got people ahead of you". The guy literally repeats himself. I cringe again. The owner politely tells him to fly.
He takes off. The office lady and I have a small chuckle. "If it's so easy, he should do it himself"
Plow got fixed, my life went back to normal. You don't need these trades people 'until you need them'!
Comments
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We get more and more sensitive to the ongoing stupidity in this world as we get older. Small irritants that would have gone unnoticed 20 years ago now stand up front and center and cause us so much distress that we have to post that distress on a website to relieve it.
I could go on for days with similar examples.
You can't fix stupid.
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Whenever I hear a apprentice or a journeyman say "Its easy" I ak them to explain how putting a forty foot ladder on the roof, hiking all the tools you need up there, going to class at night, getting up every morning, going to training, paying for training doing all of this and more? How easy was that?
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Never say its easy. Cause it aint.
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I'm fairly sure they are using the term "it's easy" to attempt to convince the service person to fix the truck immediately for them. Even the most stupid of them surely knows that it might not be so easy.
Remember, that emotions rule the day for most people…………..they don't even realize what or why they are making a specific statement.
Cannot fathom what the motive of the apprentice might be………………………
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"That's an easy job". In our work-world this will be "ever-green." Don't you love it when the call comes in from a familiar client: "I have a small problem. It's an easy fix and it won't take you long."
This is client optimism coming from the other end of the phone. You and I are "the expert", "pipe-whisperer", diagnostician, fixer, "miracle worker." WE are the ones to ultimately decide: what the problem is, how to fix it, how long it will take (many time WE don't even know….), and ultimately how hard or EASY the job was! Only then do we make out the invoice. Sigh.
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@LRCCBJ I don’t know, are we getting more sensitive? Do you think 20 or 40 years ago the shop owner would’ve said “oh, let me get the trucks out of the bay and pull you right in” ? My imagination is drifting; the shop owner might’ve been a little bit more straightforward than he was the other day
There’s lots of reasons I enjoy running a small business, but the social aspect is one of them—even though I don’t think about it every day. Few things tickle my fancy more than an old lady talking the lingo as if she’s a coworker. Then you’ve got the young college graduates That really don’t know any etiquette at all.
Most people are fantastic.
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Saying its "an easy job" was always a curse to me. I always dreaded what I was about to walk in to when someone would say it. I banned those words from my truck when I was in the field and made every effort to never use those words when I became a supervisor. :)
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Haha. I learned the hard way not to say that when I walked out the door to fix a problem.
Just like I don't say "I'll be back in an hour"
Took half a lifetime to learn that.
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I always reply "I only make it look easy."
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I think back to my time working and stories the old timers would tell me. Now I am the old timer.
Compared to when I started, we have better tools now. Battery operated tools and lights and vacuums etc. Less stringing extension cords. The trucks we drive are better, in fact everything is better. We have computers and cell phones.
Did it make our lives working easier? I don't think so.
It sped us up we can get more work done in a day, but now we are expected to do more, so we work just as hard. And the equipment is much more complicated.
My old boss told me that they would break up a concrete floor to save 4 2" black elbows and some pipe instead of running it around the wall. Labor was cheap. No one would do that now.
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@EBEBRATT-Ed "labor was cheap", wow have times changed? Covid changed the playing field, as did the Inflation jump two years ago (perhaps it's all the same topic). I always thought I was on the high end, but then I realized I wasn't. I had that conversation with myself many times over the years. Billable Labor is about 10x what it was when I started.
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We are more sensitive to the stupid. NO, of course the shop owner would not change his behavior one whit.
WE would not be otherwise perturbed by the comment "It's probably something simple". We would hardly even notice it. But, at our advanced years, we focus on it! We focus so hard on it that we bring it to HH TWO DAYS LATER and comment about it!
We don't like or accept the stupid behavior. It bothers us.
Ask Steamhead about it.1 -
stupid becomes toxic over 55 y/o
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As we age..our days are numbered..won't suffer fools, gladly..Mad Dog
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At one time my accountant told me you have to charge 3x whatyou want to pay yourself. Don't know if that is a good formula or not but when I was in business it wasn't easy to charge that much.
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Ed, 3x is just getting by. Are you talking sole proprietor or running employees? Two different things😊
Hot Rod will get his wife after you if you keep talking like that😁
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@LRCCBJ "bothers us": I guess, but if someone changes our emotional state, that's not good either!
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"Someone" cannot change your emotional state unless you allow it (or cannot stop it).
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I always leave my feeling out under the seat in my truck when I'm at work. There's no benefit to carrying it around with me all day, but I can run out & get it if I need it for something.
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