Almost fired my painter

MAGA MAN

MAGA MAN

Let's go Brandon!
He's my buddy Joe who I have known for almost 20 years. He's one of these guys who has been committing slow suicide since his mid 20's, and now he's 62, looks like he's 82 with 92 year old skin. All of his health problems have been self-inflicted: drugs, cigarettes.

He was recommended by a neighbor to do painting and house repairs that I don't have time for. He's was pretty good and fair about prices. We became friends and I don't harp on his smoking problem, but I told him long ago that the only thing keeping him from having a long healthy life was that stubborn piece of squash between his ears. I've hired him many times over the years. In fact he insulated, drywalled, sided, trimmed out, painted and stained my mountain cabin.

About four years ago he had a clot in his lung, and the only doctor who could perform the operation was in California. So he flew out, and the doctor made him promise to quit smoking 'otherwise I'd be wasting my time'. Joe promised, then had the operation. The way he described it, they had him in a coma for a half day, split his chest wide open, pulled out his lungs and extracted about 5 pounds worth of crud. He recovered wonderfully. A year later I caught him smoking. "Why don't you just borrow my Glock and shoot yourself in the head? It's a lot faster than the butt hanging out of your mouth."

Last year he redid one on the bathrooms here and did a terrible job. He had two guys on his crew and they didn't give a shit about quality work. Dumb as bags of rocks too. It really looks terrible when you look closely, which I do.

Against my better judgement I hired him to sand out and paint three exterior doors here (along with other minor exterior repairs). I just replaced the old pitted door hardware with beautiful oil rubbed bronze not long ago and I gave him two requirements.

1. No helpers. I've had his lackeys do too much damage to my house and landscaping over the years. Scratched windows. Broken branches. Trails through my ivy. Washing paint buckets out on my freshly sown lawn. Paint drips, basically everywhere. Scratched fiberglass tubs. My wife and I have a saying for it: "Joe it up" means you got dried glue, paint and drywall dust everywhere.
2. Remove the hardware prior to the work. I don't want so much as a molecule of paint on my new matching hardware (About $500 worth).

I asked him politely and even said please, along with a lengthy explanation of why, along with reminding him that I was paying him by the hour, not by the square foot. I've had tons of patience with the guy over many years with his shortcomings.

Today was his third day on the job. He arrived with a helper. I got on him right away about that. "WTF Joe? " "Oh, I'm behind schedule and I need someone to help."

Three hours later he told me that he had put the first coat of varnish on the front door and even took the step to mask the edges of my hardware. My response was "you are out of here".

"What- I didn't get any varnish on the hardware". I went up to inspect, and sure enough, drips on the hardware. I got some WD-40 and a paper towel and scrubbed it off. Then I took the tape off and inspected the edges. He didn't even varnish up to the edges. Only the lower part of the door needed two coats, so he just touched up the areas to do a complete pass on coat two.

I told him that he has one more, final chance.
 
Wow, that is real lib of you to give him one more chance.......

IMHO he is trying to get over, cheat you, why you would give him another shot to do it again is crazy.... Good luck!!
 
"Lib of me"? Isn't it the 'rat Party that expels their losing candidates?

Joe doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body. He's just friggin' lazy, and no mechanical aptitude. He's more scared of not being able to put the hardware back together than anything. I know this because he nearly freaked out when I disassembled an electronic lock in front of him.

Anyway, he didn't show up for work this morning. When he does I'll tell him that he's not painting any more doors here. For all the time I spend lecturing, pleading, debating and assisting (by taking the hardware off myself) it is less time for me just to paint the doors myself.
 
Right said:
"Lib of me"? Isn't it the 'rat Party that expels their losing candidates?

Joe doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body. He's just friggin' lazy, and no mechanical aptitude. He's more scared of not being able to put the hardware back together than anything. I know this because he nearly freaked out when I disassembled an electronic lock in front of him.

Anyway, he didn't show up for work this morning. When he does I'll tell him that he's not painting any more doors here. For all the time I spend lecturing, pleading, debating and assisting (by taking the hardware off myself) it is less time for me just to paint the doors myself.
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You tried to help him-props, now it's time to let him go & find a new, experienced & not lazy contractor..
 
Bill said:
You tried to help him-props, now it's time to let him go & find a new, experienced & not lazy contractor..
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That's awful lib of you, tossing the poor guy aside like that...

Joe's gotten progressively shitty starting about 7 or 8 years ago. I have another contractor that I've used since then for the critical stuff- like for instance a kitchen. Ever renovate one in a house that you are living in? You have to set up a mini kitchen in some other room and basically camp out during the entire project. Joe always takes 7 or 8 times longer than he promises so I hired my other guy for that job and got a $30k renovation done in three weeks.

When Joe did the finish work on my cabin he helped me in more ways than one. He found out that the plumber was trying to screw me, and I was able to fire that asshole before he got ahead of me on payments and before much of what he did got hidden under floors or walls.

On that same project the plumber's buddy, a junior county inspector, developed a hard on for me as well. His boss, the chief inspector, took the asshole at his word in spite of a mountain of evidence. It came down to me having to threaten to sue the county, and Joe was one of the guys that offered to provide witness testimony. As is my style I appealed directly to the elected county reps and Mr. chief inspector changed his tone overnight.
 
Right said:
He's my buddy Joe who I have known for almost 20 years. He's one of these guys who has been committing slow suicide since his mid 20's, and now he's 62, looks like he's 82 with 92 year old skin. All of his health problems have been self-inflicted: drugs, cigarettes.

He was recommended by a neighbor to do painting and house repairs that I don't have time for. He's was pretty good and fair about prices. We became friends and I don't harp on his smoking problem, but I told him long ago that the only thing keeping him from having a long healthy life was that stubborn piece of squash between his ears. I've hired him many times over the years. In fact he insulated, drywalled, sided, trimmed out, painted and stained my mountain cabin.

About four years ago he had a clot in his lung, and the only doctor who could perform the operation was in California. So he flew out, and the doctor made him promise to quit smoking 'otherwise I'd be wasting my time'. Joe promised, then had the operation. The way he described it, they had him in a coma for a half day, split his chest wide open, pulled out his lungs and extracted about 5 pounds worth of crud. He recovered wonderfully. A year later I caught him smoking. "Why don't you just borrow my Glock and shoot yourself in the head? It's a lot faster than the butt hanging out of your mouth."

Last year he redid one on the bathrooms here and did a terrible job. He had two guys on his crew and they didn't give a shit about quality work. Dumb as bags of rocks too. It really looks terrible when you look closely, which I do.

Against my better judgement I hired him to sand out and paint three exterior doors here (along with other minor exterior repairs). I just replaced the old pitted door hardware with beautiful oil rubbed bronze not long ago and I gave him two requirements.

1. No helpers. I've had his lackeys do too much damage to my house and landscaping over the years. Scratched windows. Broken branches. Trails through my ivy. Washing paint buckets out on my freshly sown lawn. Paint drips, basically everywhere. Scratched fiberglass tubs. My wife and I have a saying for it: "Joe it up" means you got dried glue, paint and drywall dust everywhere.
2. Remove the hardware prior to the work. I don't want so much as a molecule of paint on my new matching hardware (About $500 worth).

I asked him politely and even said please, along with a lengthy explanation of why, along with reminding him that I was paying him by the hour, not by the square foot. I've had tons of patience with the guy over many years with his shortcomings.

Today was his third day on the job. He arrived with a helper. I got on him right away about that. "WTF Joe? " "Oh, I'm behind schedule and I need someone to help."

Three hours later he told me that he had put the first coat of varnish on the front door and even took the step to mask the edges of my hardware. My response was "you are out of here".

"What- I didn't get any varnish on the hardware". I went up to inspect, and sure enough, drips on the hardware. I got some WD-40 and a paper towel and scrubbed it off. Then I took the tape off and inspected the edges. He didn't even varnish up to the edges. Only the lower part of the door needed two coats, so he just touched up the areas to do a complete pass on coat two.

I told him that he has one more, final chance.
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It's hard when it's someone we care about.
I think it comes from the hope that we'll say the right words and the light bulb will finally be lit.
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
It's hard when it's someone we care about.
I think it comes from the hope that we'll say the right words and the light bulb will finally be lit.
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That's what make it so frustrating. And he's delusional about his abilities. His excuse for disobeying a direct order: "I'm a better painter than I used to be." :palm:
 
Bill said:
You can do the work & give him the money, works for me, works for him & works for you, everyone is happy..:)
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I know that you're trying to be cute here but I've had that experience with many contractors, both professionally and working on my own house. If they can save themselves 5 seconds by doing something wrong and hiding it, they don't care that it will cost me an hour or more to uncover it, find it and fix it right.

Let's say to do a job right takes an hour. If you do it wrong but only take 45 minutes most contractors will see that as a win. Now to re-do the job takes at least twe the original hour, because you have to demolish what was done, clean up, then do the original job.

That's why when you find a good contractor you do whatever you can to keep him. Joe used to be that guy, at least 90% or so. He's degraded badly the last few years and I don't think that he even realizes it.
 
I got hired by an insurance company three years ago to inspect a re-do of a one-piece fiberglass pool. Kidney shaped, about 20' long, 10' wide and 6' deep. The owner sued the contractor because it leaked, wasn't level, and there was a huge bulge in the side at the deep end. He had already spent the time to rest it once, so he installed the pool twice.

The owner's lawyer made two huge mistakes with the settlement:

1. He allowed the contractor to try it a third time, with the caveat that his insurance company would hire an engineer to "supervise the installation". Anyone in the field should understand that supervision of a contractor is NOT the role of the engineer. So they tried to get engineers to do this, and eventually found one firm that gave them a "fuck you" price, which was high enough to hire another contractor and have him do the job. My proposal was for much less, but written with an ironclad agreement with the traditional role of the engineer: review means and methods for conformance with industry standards, inspect the work, and if acceptable, report that the work met the expectations.

2. The attorney did not require a schedule for completion.

The contractor dragged this thing out as long as he could. The project still isn't completed. a 6 week job is going on three years.

The bastard tried to cut corners at every turn. When he excavated the pool, the backfill was all dirt. The manufacturer requires pea stone. He claimed that the piping wasn't "plumbing", and therefore did not require leak testing per code. He expected me to do the testing. "Uh, no, you test it, and I review your tests." (Joe did the inspection work for 90% of the leak testing for me.)

It took him 6 months to produce a grading plan for the concrete deck, and when I finally got it it looked like it was drawn by a child. Then he failed to follow it. He's got an area that drains into the backfill. If not fixed it can float the pool out of the ground or cause soil migration into the pea stone. Of course he wanted me to come up with a solution for him. "easy" I said. "Demolish the slab and re-do it right." Then e came up with the bright idea to deny that there were low spots at all, so I dragged him out there, ran a hose and filled up the low spots, then used lumber crayon to outline the areas where water was sitting. Then he said: "Gee, it would have been so easy to have it done right the first time."
 
Right said:
I know that you're trying to be cute here but I've had that experience with many contractors, both professionally and working on my own house. If they can save themselves 5 seconds by doing something wrong and hiding it, they don't care that it will cost me an hour or more to uncover it, find it and fix it right.

Let's say to do a job right takes an hour. If you do it wrong but only take 45 minutes most contractors will see that as a win. Now to re-do the job takes at least twe the original hour, because you have to demolish what was done, clean up, then do the original job.

That's why when you find a good contractor you do whatever you can to keep him. Joe used to be that guy, at least 90% or so. He's degraded badly the last few years and I don't think that he even realizes it.
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I have had a few similar experiences but know I do a good check (Angie's list, yelp, etc)..
 
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On Saturday I washed the garage entrance door, since Joe had been cutting wood in that area earlier in the week and sawdust was all over the glass and mullions. I had intended to do that small job all week but was waiting for Joe to do it, since painting that door was part of his scope. After I washed it, I discovered that he had already primed the door. But he failed to sand out two obvious areas where the previous paint had lost adhesion, and what was worse, there was sawdust and dirt under the mullions that had been prime-painted. That was the last straw.

On Sunday afternoon I called him and he didn't pick up his phone, and I left him a message. I told him that I had inspected the door, didn't like what I saw so that he needed to stop by Monday or later during the week and pick up his last check.
 
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