I was talking to one of my best friends on the phone tonight. I’d helped him with a fence last weekend - there’s a group of us who help each other out on our various home repair-type projects now and then and he needed a hand or two.
I knew that his neighbors were chipping in half of the material costs, fence is on the line between their backyards. Seems reasonable.
Friend lets slip that they were also paying him for his labor and evidently paying for ALL the labor. That includes, amongst other things, ME. Friend then mentions that all that money is going to pay for the purchase of a spiffy new power tool he just acquired.
What the holy fuck is going on here? Did I miss something or was I “invited” to be a day laborer, not told that this was the deal, then not getting paid, and then afterwards being told that said money is paying for the responsible party’s new toy?
Jeezus. I’m pretty steamed right now and feel really taken advantage of by my friend. If the request had been “Hey, my neighbor and I are building a fence and we’re paying $x/hr, want to help?” that’d be a completely different situation than “Hey, my fence needs fixing, can you give me a hand?”
Let me get my venting out of the way before I talk to my friend again tomorrow to straighten this out.
I am not the fucking hired hand. I am your friend and am happy to lend a hand once in a while, that’s what friends do. I am under absolutely no fucking obligation to help your neighbors (who I don’t even know) out in a similar situation, where are they in all this? You guys want to build a fence? Do it yourselves or open the goddamn yellow pages to “F”. Friends do not deceive each other and they sure don’t make money off of each other. Assmunch. Shall I ask “Who’s hiring and what are they paying” every time you call up?
Having known him for over 20 years I can almost chalk this up to the most monumental case of cluelessness in recorded history but it still pisses me off no end.
You should definitely take him to small claims court, or something like People’s Court, or Divorce Court -of course, to be on Divorce Court one of you will have to be a strayin’ black man and the other a fat sassy white woman with 4 kids.
Fences aren’t community property. I’m guessing that the neighbors were rightly paying for the entire thing because it’s their fence, and it is on their side of the property line. That story about the neighbors ‘chipping in’ was a complete fabrication.
Talk to the people who were supposedly paying this money. If they believed they had to pay for your labor and he was lying to the both of you, then you and they both have cause to have him charged with Fraud.
Wow, it’s really somewhat disturbing that people today are still shouting “sue, sue!” over something like this.
Especially if he’s been a friend for > 20 years.
Just confront him about it. He’ll probably apologize. It sounds like if it’s lasted 20 years, this isn’t a normal thing. People DO make mistakes, and that’s no reason to string them high.
I’m all for having a rational discussion with your friend about this issue. Something sounds wrong. If he indeed pocket labor money, I’m surprised he’d tell you about it. You were wise to cool off before talking to him again. Get it out in the open, and if the story is actually as you think it is, then it sounds like you have one less friend to share home repair projects with.
My God, I sounded like fucking Ann Landers in that one.
Spoke to my friend today, cleared up what was happening (and what was not) and let him know that in the future if there’s any kind of hint of “business” in a “Can you give me a hand” job he should let me know about it beforehand so everything is in the open. Everything is fine, friendship was never in danger.
As both Civil Defence and John Mace noted this was definitely not a case for lawsuits, frontier justice or risking a long friendship - none of which I had any intention of doing although my OP sure made it sound like it, that’s what happens when you are beat from a long week, tired and grouchy and stewing over something around midnight…
He finished his fence and those of you in a vengeful frame of mind can take some satisfaction in hearing that he managed to ding his expensive, brand-new tool today. I look at that as a learning experience myself
No, he wasn’t pocketing anything. His original bargain with his neighbors was that they’d collectively split all the labor and material costs. Turns out that he was going to pay any of us who helped out our share.
As with all things “do-it-yourself” the amount of labor involved can be expressed by the simple formula:
L(a) = L§ * (2^N)
Where L(a) = actual amount of labor involved, L§ = amount of labor a professional would take to do the job and N = at least 15 if you are a recently-married man.
In other words, what should have been a weekend job and saved money over having a professional do it quickly spiraled out of control due to the hours of work. For a while he thought that he’d be making so much on his labor that he’d be rolling in dough (more than a pro would have earned), but then he realized that there’s no way that would fly with his neighbors so the neighbors agreed to pay for 100% of the materials in return for not doing any actual work.
So what I thought that he said and the actual situation were two slightly different things. His neighbors are out for all the materials, my friend is out his last couple of weekends and I made sure that he understands that the next time he wants some help with a chore to be completely upfront when it involves something that also “belongs” to anyone else - I’m not around to be free labor for his neighbors (it was one afternoon of my time). That was the only remaining issue and as we’ve been friends for so long that’s all smoothed out.
Speaking as a guy who has seen every one of his fences replaced in the past ten years ( falling trees and windstorms ), I can authoritatively say that sometimes fences are community property. In my neighborhood that appears to be the case - all who share the fence line are equally liable for it.
'course I’m also in the SF Bay Area and you know what pinko socialists we are over here ;).
Looks like this got solved before my 2 pennies got here but what the hell -
One thing that wasn’t revealed was whether there was any imbalance in the projects list.
My example: I have a single buddy who has helped me with my projects on many occasions but my weekend kid duties have kept me from helping him on about half of his.
Its OK with me and I wouldn’t think twice about providing free labor for him on a paying job. I owe him.
