Interesting Complaint

[CT18fireman]

For the last three days we have stared work on a pretty large residential retaining wall and raised patio. Materials will be from Unilock. Becuase of a delay on another job I have been able to focus on this one and we are conservativley a day ahead of the schedule I gave the customer.

Today we were working in the morning raising the wall. The first courses are in and leveled so I was concentrating on briinging up materials and backfilling as my brother and other employee laid block up. Just after 12 my wife pulled up to the job. We shut down all macines left the immediate area and I went to my wife's car, to get lunch that she had brought. She also had some financing papers for me to sign and I said "hi" to my kids. My brother and I chatted with her for aout 15 minutes while we ate. My wife and kids all stayed in the car. After she left we immediately went back to work.

About 5 minutes later the customer came out (I knew he was home) and complained that my wife had come to the jobsite. Annoyed, i tried my best to calmly explain that she had brought me lunch and we had a few things to go over. I also stated that we are ahead of schedule & normally we take a half hour and that I could have just gone home in that time. He went back in with it kind of unresolved.

Now my wife has her own job, but being part time she occassionally brings me lunch etc. To avoid problems on this job she will not be coming again, but it kind of got me angry. I consider myself to have a safe and professional worksite, but quite often people who know me and see me working may stop and want to chat. This customer is a bit "odd" so I guess I will just leave it at that, but it really make s me wonder sometimes, what people are thinking.

[Squizzy246B]

Jesse, I'm always respectful to the client but never ever take a backwards step when they state something which is not true. Some people will try and find an excuse or something to hold against you so if extras on the job arise they have an axe to grind with you. I wouldn't change your routine...my wife will often come past with some paperwork, drawings, somethin I forgot to sign etc.

If the guy is inside with the stopwatch running he has a miserable life thats all I can say.

[Dozerboy]

:yup I would of told him it he wants to argue about it I charge by the hr.

[jmac]

I 2nd that dozerboy! holly crap, pretty soon the customer will be telling you (self employed you) when you can take a crap.

[Dwan Hall]

is this job by the hour? or a firm bid? If it is a firm bid then it should not make any differance what you do or when you do it but if it is by the hour then make sure you record the time you are off his clock.
Sounds like problems could come up later on this one. You could tell him if it should ever come up again that if he does not want your wife to braing you your lunch then you will have to go home for lunch from now on and it could take a little longer to get back to work. I would not argue with him as he is the customer but be furm in telling him that your time is your time not his.

Good luck and post pictures of your work.

Dwan

[CT18fireman]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this. We wanted to finish and then went right into cleanups.

It was a set price job with a finish by date that had to be met written into the contract. I knew we would have no problem finishing and we ended up finishing two days early.

The following day the customer came out and in talking to me apologized. He is a business owner and was have some problems with his employees as he was working from home that day. From the discussion I also establihed that he had no idea of the scope of the project in terms of actual volumes of materials and labor to get it done. As I said he is a great customer who has given me a lot of work so i did not want to threaten that.

As we only had a few days left there were no other problems. We continued to take our lunches etc. We actually stayed until 8pm working in the dark on the last day because we were so close to finishing. When we went back the next morning to grade out the area and pick up the leftover material we got a thank you and he gave my brother and other worker a nice tip.

As for pictures, I am stupid when it comes to posting them on a forum. Always have a problem with size. If someone could help me or I could send them to someone I woild post some. I am running xp and have the pics on my harddrive.

[Dozerboy]

Jesse's pics
Before

[Dozerboy]

After

[jazak]

Looks good. Glad everything worked out; we all have a bad once and a while.

[LowBoy]

I had 3 bad experiences with hourly projects. One was for a supposedly familiar-to-the-business modular home dealer, at his personal home. I spent a week finishing up what the original contractor left undone.(Should have seen the writing on the retaining wall right there...)
The jerky customer had me doing some weird things, but with an excavator and a ten wheeler by the hour, it was working out good...until it came time to get paid.

He asked for an itemized bill for the hours. I respectfully hauled one out, all recorded from hour-meter in excavator. He stated "this isn't the same amount of hours as I have down", and proceeded to tell me he wasn't paying for the 15 minutes each morning while I was warming up and greasing. After a heated debate, the Hungarian temper flared up in me, and I threw my 79 F-250 in reverse, and floored that 400M, and dug two beautiful deep ruts about 40 feet long into the freshly compacted shale fill I just placed in his driveway.
My next stop was at the town clerk's office to file a small claims complaint against him. Once they heard his name, the two female clerks just chuckled...he was well known...

End result. A month later with an attorney, 7 p.m. in a one room courthouse in Cambridge,New York. I won the case, and was paid on the very last day of the court ordered decision. That's all I asked.

Another one did burn me, 2/10 of a mile from my house. A trust fund baby, building a snowmobile storage building near me conned me into doing a bunch of work clearing, stumping, etc. for the slab of his new 40X80 building to store sleds. I agreed, for an hourly rate again, but for frogskins, no checks.

Came time for payup, same deal. Docked me 15 minutes for greasing and warming up, and twice for my wife's 15 minute lunch visit. Got paid a month or so later, minus a couple of hundred bucks. This was the second episode. The latest one right after that resulted again in small claims court, I did indeed win again, and was paid every dime. Since the last episode, contracts were the only way I'd operate. In this "I'll sue you" society in which we live in today, it all needs to be in writing, as difficult as it sometimes can be with uncertaintees, but at the very least you have something to go on with the "Brotherhood of Thieves", er, uh, the lawyaz...