I’m going to post a couple of tales. Feel free to add your own.
~
Exhibit 1 is a male, about age 40, very heavyset and mustachioed, looking pretty much like a “contractor” ought to look. For the purpose of this story, I will call him “Dave.”
We observe him as he enters the house and is told that I wish to have a flight of stairs built to connect the second finished story with the third unfinished story. At hearing this Dave wrinkles his brow and starts to look concerned, as if I’ve just asked him to compute up a few Eigenvectors, or perhaps whip up a quick 5-course Cordon Bleu-quality meal for lunch. Dave says that in all his 20 years of working as a carpenter, he has never, ever even contemplated building a flight of stairs to connect two stories of a house.
“But”, I say, “your advertisement says you specialize in stairs?”
“Yes…mostly railings and trim.”
“O…K, when I spoke with you on the phone, and told you that in fact I needed a flight of stairs built, that wasn’t a warning to you? That somehow a flight of stairs did not consist of just a railing hanging Escher-like in space with two pieces of trim alongside, but actual stairs that people can stand upon?”
“Well…let me see what we have here. Do you have a tape measure I can borrow?”
Now I know what you’re thinking - a carpenter without a tape measure. That that was the point at which I should have taken my Glock out of my purse and escorted him to the door. And upon reflection that would have yielded a better result in the end, true. However, at this point I figured that I had already missed work, and he was there, so I’d give him a chance. I handed him a tape measure, and he looked at it as if I’d handed him a Rubik’s Cube. Then he went about leaning and staring at the space I wanted the stairs in, the tape measure totally forgotten.
“Um…is there any structure behind this wall?”
“You mean, like…the wall?”
“Yeah. Is there anything I should know about behind this?”
“Well gosh, I don’t know, I left my wall-penetrating radar at work, I thought you would, you know, go up in the attic and take a look?”
“Um…no, I don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s hard.”
“I…see.” At this point I start to notice that Dave is probably a serious trencherman, as he appears to wear about a 55-inch belt. Thinking to the small access hole into the attic at the current time, I quickly foresaw that the solution to Dave + Attic Hole = Paramedics.
“Well, there is a furnace duct not too far away, and some plumbing about here, and a giant piece of composite wood about 2 feet high by 4 inches thick that could be structural unless the builders were just bored and wanted to see how high they could stack 2 by 4’s, but you’ll be able to clear that, right?”
“Hmmm.”
Dave then starts to thump on the wall, around in circles. This goes on for a minute and accomplishes nothing whatsoever. He hands me back the still-virgin tape measure, and says “Um, about $1000.”
“That’s it? About $1000?”
“Yup.”
“How many steps will there be?”
“Don’t know.”
“Um…O…K, how will the steps be put together?”
“You know, like normal.”
“Well, I want them glued, screwed, counter-bored, and filled with plugs, and sanded to be finished.”
“You want what?”
I repeated.
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, with so many things going strange in this topsy-turvey world we live in, I decided I wanted stairs that were done right.”
“Oh they’ll be done right.”
“Will they be done like I want?”
“Why do you want that?”
“SO THE STAIRS WILL BE SOLID AND NOT SQUEAK.”
“Oh don’t worry, they won’t.”
“Why, because you’re going to glue and screw them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t usually do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well it costs extra.”
“Fine, tell me how much.”
“I don’t know…you don’t want to do that, really.”
“WHY NOT?”
“It’ll be fine, trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been in the business.”
“But you said you’d never built stairs like this before.”
“Well, they’re stairs, you know. Not that hard. Standard stuff.”
“Right…tell me about the stringers and risers?”
“Risers?”
“Yes, most stairs have them - see, like these right here (pointing to the flight nearby from the 1st story).”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to use any.”
“W-hy not? Aren’t they required by code?” (they are, FTR)
“You don’t need them. Besides”, he says, wiping his brow (it’s 75F in my house and the man is already sweating like a proverbial pig), “when we work on finishing the upper floor we’ll trash the stairs.”
“I’m sorry, I must have had a mild stroke. Why would you trash the stairs you just built?”
“Because they always get trashed when you work on things.”
“I…see. And the stairs leading up to this story, I can expect them to be ‘trashed’ as well?”
“No, we’ll protect those.”
“Then why for heaven’s sake won’t you protect the new stairs you’ll build?”
“Because they’ll be temporary.”
“WHY?”
“Because they’ll just get trashed. Don’t worry, the second time we do it, it’ll be for good.”
I quickly see that I’ve stumbled into a game of “who’s on first”, and drop it there, as if he can’t figure it out by now, he never will. And at this point I’ve pretty much decided he’s a loss and so it really doesn’t matter what he says. However, I tempt fate by asking another question, one which I know the answer to already:
“And your people, you have insurance coverage? Worker’s comp?”
“Oh yeah, got all that.”
“And you’ll show me the certificate of insurance?”
“Well, my insurance company says I can’t. It’s pro-prie-tary.”
“What? An insurer who won’t admit to insuring someone? Isn’t that sort of, well, illegal?”
“Not so far.”
At this point I usher Dave out of the house, with him swearing on a stack of New Testaments that he will be sending me a formal quote “tomorrow.” (FTR, it took 4 weeks) I then our a large glass of pinot noir, collapse into a chair, and think about tweaking fate by calling the next person on my list of potential contractors.
(Of course, since we were on a budget, we got to patch it again ourselves.)
