The Perils of Working For Friends

[Mike]

exception of the UK,

But not all of them. Traffic in Gibraltar drives on the right :)

[J T]

Mon, Aug 28, 2006, 1:42pm (EDT+5) [e-mail] (woodpassion) doth lament: Said friends didn't even offer to buy my sandwich when they ordered out for lunch on several ocassions while I was slaving away in their basement.

It would be verry, very, tempting to work again, until they repeated that. Then say you were going to get something to eat. And never return. Then when they called, I'm sure they would, tell them you had other commitments - and never, ever, go back. Of course, it would be less tempting if you thought you might have to put in more than part of just one day for them to shaft you on lunch. I think if I could be quite sure I'd only expend part of one day I might well do just that. I'd make damn sure to take any of my tools and whatever when I left. Or, if you don't want to be patty about the whole thing you could always explain your feelings, then leave. I'm not sure which way Id go, but I'd be "extremely" tempted to go for petty.

Like someone else said, whenever my dad or his buddies needed work done, several would show up, work, and "always" be fed. They'd say they were working on something, several would show up if they were availbe, if not it was understood. One might be there one day, not the next. I've seen people working at our place while my dad was at work, they worked different shift. That's the way it was. And should be. Of course, there was always a lot of supervising, involving sitting down while someone else was actually working, and a lot of criticising of the work actually bing done. Then the roles would be reversed

Me, so far I've been able to do all I need by myself, or with my sons' "cheerful" assistance.

JOAT Justice was invented by the innocent. Mercy and lawyers were invented by the guilty.

[LRod]

The only thing that made it worth tuning in to was the discussion on top/bottom posting.

[Peter Huebner]

I thought it was a troll, after the OP just quietly disappeared.

However, I really enjoyed the different stories that came out, and to see different people's views on the topic. Never mind the [troll].

My own experiences are generally fantastic, with one sole exception where friends asked me to build them a two-seater, and we agreed that they would supply the timber and it would cost "350-450 in labour" -- they arrived with the cheque for 350 already written out. Duly noted and the next time they got charged full commercial rates for labour :) and I pay them full rates for the excellent salami they make.

-P.

[Prometheus]

Can't tell you how long it takes you to do any given thing- that's up to your own experience. But I charge $12/hr for friends, $15/hr for useful aquaintances, and $25/hr for strangers. The price goes up for strangers that look like they are going to give me headaches- I call that the asshole tax. Family and close friends pay me whatever they pay me, and I don't worry about it- to a point.

All that being said, it's almost a better idea to just to work for nothing or refuse the work entirely if you want to make sure that you remain friends with some folks. It's getting to that point with my parents- I've remodeled half their house this year for a grand total of $80 and a pallet of used brick, and I've got to say, parents or no, I'd be happier getting nothing than $10 for twenty or thirty hours of work. Even though I know that's all they've got to spare, it's still a slap in the face to think that they could hand me a few bucks for a week of work and call it even. Keep that in mind when you set your prices for your friends- it can get grating after a while, especially if they need a lot of help, and begin to assume that you'll drop everything to do it.

[Prometheus]

Here's a fourth one I learned really early as well-

When you give a friend a discount, make it very clear that your rate is for them only. My standard line is "If I hear that you told anyone what you paid me, any further work will be at three times what I'm charging you now." It might seem like a nasty thing to say to a friend, but if you don't, you WILL discover that they have friends you don't know (and probably don't care for) that will be more than happy to put you to work on the first guy's recommendation, but refuse to pay one penny more than what they were told was the going rate. This sort of thing runs out of control very quickly if you're any good and word-of-mouth gets going. Pretty soon you can't find work that doesn't have a pre-set ceiling on it, and you have to ditch a whole circle of customers.

[Prometheus]

Yep. My little brother got that treatment- I wanted to give him a hand repairing some things around his house, some of which were major problems (ie. leaking toilet, no glass in the front door, electrical outlets sparking, etc.) I paid for the materials and came over to do the repairs- and he was at the bar. The second day, I told him he had to be there, my only payment was that he learn something so that if these things happened again, he'd have a chance at fixing them himself. He wasn't there again, so I opened a few holes in the walls where the new outlets were to be, and his girlfriend came home. She said he was at the bar again, and then yelled at me for setting a clean drywall saw on a thrift-store chair that had been mended with duct tape. I called the little punk (my brother) to see why he wasn't there to lend a hand, and he said "Why would I want to learn to do that crap when I can have someone else do it for free?" So, I opened a few more holes, took the front door off the hinges, removed a couple of windows, packed up the materials and my tools, and went home.

I guess he found out why it's handy to be able to take care of your own house after that. They had blankets over the windows and door for a month until they hired someone who completely butchered the job. Needless to say, we're not getting along so well any more, but you know what they say, with friends like that...

[Upscale]

Been there, done that. Every time my brother had a problem, arrested on outstanding warrants for parking tickets needed to be bailed out of jail in the middle of the night, car towed needed money to get it out of the pound, etcetera, he called me. The one time I asked him for help, he was too busy playing hockey. The last we talked was over ten years ago. I feel bad when family matters come up, but feel a whole lot better not worrying anymore about what kind of crap he's into. It's done, finished, I just don't need the aggravation. Family in the right circumstances is great, sometimes it sucks.

[Joe]

Long philosophy put short:

Your time is worth what your time is worth, no matter who is paying for it. This is especially true if you've a backlog.

jc

[Larry Blanchard]

Been on vacation? That thread's a month old :-).

[sal]

Buddy your way too friendly and your so called "friends " are taking advantage of you. Up here in Central Canada there are very few Carpenters around as most are in Alberta making big bucks . The going rate here is 30$

40$ per hour for Reno's etc. Canada is just screaming for trades people, but of course you can't come here because we have a lot of Terrorists.

Sal

[CW]

It's not just Canada. The US is that way to. Has a lot to do with the push in recent years for everyone to get into "information technology". No one ever explained how a whole country was supposed to survive pushing electrons for a living.

[Prometheus]

Or perhaps the opposite- I've been so busy I haven't had time to putz around on the computer much. Of course, since it was just updated last night, this one showed up as "new" in Agent. :)

[Prometheus]

Lucky tradesmen in your neck of the woods, I guess- around here, you can't toss a stick without hitting a carpenter in the head with it. And this year, almost everyone I know has been laid off more than they've been working. Gotta price accordingly,

[Prometheus]

Not everywhere in the US, at least. We've got plenty of carpenters in Wisconsin, but there is a huge shortage of machinists. Some of the local job shops I've seen have even taken to painting "Machinists Wanted" on the side wall of their shops in huge letters. You know there's a problem when they've got to resort to that.

But I certainly agree- it's a rotten scheme that's been pushed on a lot of people. I've heard "Service sector" more than "information technology", but it amounts to the same thing. Never could figure out how anyone could imagine they'd do that well at selling services when nobody is producing tangible assets to export and make the money in the first place.

[CW]

Same here with the machinists.

Sounds like our shop. We haven't taken down our sign (about ten by fifteen feet) in over a year. It's gotten so bad that I have been trying to train people. Hard to find a good trainee. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty. The average age of the skilled people is getting up their too. Average in our shop is 51. (Makes me feel go though, I'm a young guy at 46 :)). We're not going to be around forever.

Yes, I hear a lot of that service bit too. I guess we're all supposed to buy cheap Chinese crap and sell it to each other.

[Larry Blanchard]

Before retiring, I did some software for a rolling mill to control and = report on some automated roll grinders. I asked if the automated equipment wa= s better than the work the machinists did. The reply was no, the machini= sts did better, but they were retiring and replacements could not be found.=

Seems a shame. It's not a low pay job by any means. I guess the probl= em is just a perception of machining as a low status blue collar job.

--=20 It's turtles, all the way down

[CW]

Seems the majority of the general public don't even know what it is. My own parents had no idea for many years. As machine shops are generally located in some industrial park and they have no contact with the general public, there's no reason anybody would know. People also seem to have little interest in building anything anymore (present company excepted).

[Bill]

I make from a catalog and have a firm price list.

I give friends the next-quantity-up discount and let them know that if word gets out they go back to marked retail. I explain to them that this is how I make my living and that I can't afford / am not willing to give this pricing to strangers.

Bill

[Bill]

You just hit the nail on the head ... shops are reluctant to train. Where do you think machinists come from, anyways? Or carpenters or electricians? Kids coming out of public schools sure aren't (on average) 'much to look at'.

Give 'em some training (sort those screws, take the burr off these parts, measure these pins) and insist that they also attend whatever classes are available locally just to keep their jobs. In their 'free-time' at work, let other employees assign them tasks / teach them how to use tools - select steel - run the saw - weld saw blades - use the hoist - measure accurately - and so on. I learned screw profiles from 'the boss', how to remove burrs and pressurize the Karto sprayer from a 'permanent bench hand', make CNC edits by watching the boss and then sneaking them in when he wasn't around. ;-) (makes you a VERY careful operator!)

Chatting with the DeVlieg 43K72 operator alerted me to spindle drop and rebuilding that stinky-butt machine from a basket of parts woke me up to a WHOLE LOT of alignment issues -- straighness of ways, adjusting gibs and so on and on.

Plan to reimburse them somehow ... either in wages (one raise for an "A", another for a "B" nothing for a "C" and extremely shaky ground for anything less than a "C".[gpa for the semester]) or similar pro-rated tuition / books money if you plan on retaining them after training, though.

Best shop I ever worked at for this paid for the tuition upfront (from a pre-approved list of trade-related classes) ... reimbursed for books on a sliding scale and pegged wages to the final GPA for the school year.