Clueless homeowners

It really makes me angry reading this. This guy is an idiot. Maybe he should read some statistics about tree workers and tree working homies. He won't feel too smart then.
 
A guy up te road called me up one day , asked to get a bid on some Black Oaks ( dead wood ) gave him a price and then he said, " whats that work out to the hour"?. Well, it was my usuall rate for about fourty to fifty and hour. He looked at me and said, " you know thats to much money, I never made that kind of wage even as an accountant". I wanted to tell him that he must have been a crappy accountant , but I kept my mouth shut and said " get some other bids" and I left. It was only about an hour or two worth of work.

The next week driving home I see this guy in the bucket of a front loader trackor, at about twelve feet in the air, stretched out with a makeshift polesaw trying to cut off the dead limbs. Found out he bribed my neighbor for the tractor to do it to . So cost to him was just his time and risk wobbling around in the bucket.
Sheesh ! this guy had money , but was to cheap to pay me and few bucks to do the job and do it right.

You know what erked me the most , was the fact he felt he was educated and felt he should have made more per hour then me, an arborist. What he didnt know , was that our job (education )never ends.

Greg
 
Greg,

Your reply would have been, "Well I never made that kind of money when I was an accountant either, that's why I started climbing trees" :)

If an accountant can't understand overhead and profit he is a hack. His tree work mirrors the accounting work he does. Too bac for his clients.

When I get those people I ask them if they expect their dentist, accountant and veterinarian to stay current on their education. Of course they do. Then I explain that I stay abreast of the current practices in my profession which is to thier advantage. It helps if you know what they do for a living. Anyone who works with a computer knows that there is training needed everytime a new version comes out. Who pays for the training? The clients in the end.

Tom
 
"...This guy is an idiot...."

You know what, though? He got the tree down safely. No one got hurt, he didn't break anything, and he saved a lot of money. I think in most people's book, that'd make him a pretty intelligent person.

love
nick
 
One thing to be a moron, another to be a moron and brag about what a moron you are.

I used to feel sorry when I heard stories about know-it-all homeowner X getting crippled or killed doing it themselves. After reading that, the only people I feel sorry for are the widows and orphans.

Total cost $3.50??? Huh?? Is his time worthless??? Or his life??

Jeez.....
 
Well , I dont wish harm to anyone. Even if they are ignorant and trying to save a buck, but you do want to walk up to them and smack them along side the head and say a few choice words.

Tom, good advise. That was quite some years ago and I wasn't as witty on the come backs as I am these days.I can handle most all clients now and thier idiodic reasonings, but at that time I really didn't even care wether I did his trees or not.

thanks,

Greg
 
Re: Clueless Its not $40-$50/Hour!

I had a surgeon tell me the same thing. I thought about it afterwards and realized that yes it seems like a lot per hour but all wage earners know that what they "make" per hour is far different from their take home pay (net). So really the surgeon was really just looking for an excuse to not hire me.
In that case fine I am glad he cut things off short cause it saved me headache (and heartache) down the road...
Frans
 
Re: Clueless Its not $40-$50/Hour!

I have thought about this per hour thing. I have a good friend that is a CPA and does international tax for PWC. He makes $50/hr, 40hrs a week. When they bill though, it is for $250/hr.

In tree work, you may bill $50-$100/hr but the actual pay the arborist is taking home is much less.

It is a labor of love or some of the most thankless work on the face of the earth. If you are in it for money, then you ARE clueless. There are easier ways to make more. Personally, I love the job, love working with trees, and eventhough I complain about it, I love helping clueless homeowners find long term solutions for tree care.

After leaving university, I worked as an analytical chemist for almost a year working mainly with pharmaceutical companies on chromatography(seperation science) method development. Tree work is a better fit for me.

I think $40-$50/hr is too much for many tree crews. The ones that rely on ladders and out dated techniques. On the otherhand, a well trained tree team is poetry in motion and I feel that $50/man hr is too little....
 
This sort of information should not even be allowed to be put into print. My wife is a pschylogist who has worked the past 10 years with people who have suffered spinal, brain andother deabilitating injuries due to falls and accidents. A lot of these injuries occured in much less risky situations than what this guy did. Ask any of these people if saving a couple of hundred (or thousands) of dollars was worth spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair or confined to a bed, and I'd bet you'd hear an ear full!
 
They don't see it that way... at the time.
Thieves never think they're going to get caught either that's why they steal.
It's human nature and it will always be with us.
 
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