How do you guys view keeping to a deal you made with a customer vs. matters of convenience (and profit) for yourselves?
Long story as short as possible: Last Thursday aft we show up to do an $875 job, one take down and a trim six big pines to make room for a new house. We tell the guy two of the pines, about 85' each, will never survive the construction, and they wouldn't. We price the trees at $1200 each down and away. The deal was they have to be gone by Monday night because he has equipment coming into dig Tuesday morning. (Right this moment as I am writing this.)
Enter my boss.
He shows up at the job a few hours after me and my climber and a helper get into it, and says he wants the logs. Fine, but I told him we have a deal with the client that the place has to be clear by Monday night. He says his guy with the trailer and clam will show up Monday morning. So we work Thursday aft, a big Friday, and come Monday morning the guy with the trailer and clam is not on the face of the Earth. I told bossman we were going to fry up those logs into nice thin slices, load 'em into the truck and dump 'em. He says no, he wants the logs and says we wait. The end result is the logs are still on the client's property, though out of the way of the shovel he has coming in this morning to dig the foundation. My bossman says that's fine and the customer can bloody well just wait. I said it's total BS and whether you want the logs or not doesn't matter worth :censored:. Our deal was to get the trees off the property in exchange for a fat paycheck, recuperating the logs has nothing to do with our deal with the client. The bossman says recuperating the logs outweighs a "minor" inconvenience to the customer.
So now, 8:58 am Tuesday morning, raining, and I'm waiting for the bossman to pick me up and we meet the guy with the trailer and clam who finally resurfaced and we go get the logs. (As an aside, me and the bossman had a helluva screaming match on the phone this morning. Good fun!)
Bossman says everything is fine, the customer has to accept delays like this. Me? I'm ******* furious and say we should have just cut the logs up, got them off the property and kept to our end of the deal in exchange for the paycheck which was the client's part of the deal.
What say you?
(Hmm, not so short a story after all.)
Long story as short as possible: Last Thursday aft we show up to do an $875 job, one take down and a trim six big pines to make room for a new house. We tell the guy two of the pines, about 85' each, will never survive the construction, and they wouldn't. We price the trees at $1200 each down and away. The deal was they have to be gone by Monday night because he has equipment coming into dig Tuesday morning. (Right this moment as I am writing this.)
Enter my boss.
He shows up at the job a few hours after me and my climber and a helper get into it, and says he wants the logs. Fine, but I told him we have a deal with the client that the place has to be clear by Monday night. He says his guy with the trailer and clam will show up Monday morning. So we work Thursday aft, a big Friday, and come Monday morning the guy with the trailer and clam is not on the face of the Earth. I told bossman we were going to fry up those logs into nice thin slices, load 'em into the truck and dump 'em. He says no, he wants the logs and says we wait. The end result is the logs are still on the client's property, though out of the way of the shovel he has coming in this morning to dig the foundation. My bossman says that's fine and the customer can bloody well just wait. I said it's total BS and whether you want the logs or not doesn't matter worth :censored:. Our deal was to get the trees off the property in exchange for a fat paycheck, recuperating the logs has nothing to do with our deal with the client. The bossman says recuperating the logs outweighs a "minor" inconvenience to the customer.
So now, 8:58 am Tuesday morning, raining, and I'm waiting for the bossman to pick me up and we meet the guy with the trailer and clam who finally resurfaced and we go get the logs. (As an aside, me and the bossman had a helluva screaming match on the phone this morning. Good fun!)
Bossman says everything is fine, the customer has to accept delays like this. Me? I'm ******* furious and say we should have just cut the logs up, got them off the property and kept to our end of the deal in exchange for the paycheck which was the client's part of the deal.
What say you?
(Hmm, not so short a story after all.)
