I occasionally hire a guy “Bobby” to do some manual work, usually yard work that is too heavy for me or that I just don’t have time to do. Bobby is a friend of my neighbor; he’s a real nice guy, and he works hard and usually does good work, but he’s not a professional:
[ul]
[li]It usually takes him longer to do a job than it would take a professional.[/li][li]The quality of his work is mostly good, but not at a professional level.[/li][li]He usually uses my tools and equipment. If anything special is needed (tools or chemicals), I buy it.[/li][li]He requires quite a bit of supervision and has made some mistakes, such as mowing over a water hose and weed whacking my flowering shrubs.[/li][/ul]
I don’t know Bobby’s circumstances in detail, but apparently he is currenlty unemployed. He has a wife and two teenaged boys. He seems pretty anxious for any work I send his way.
Bobby will not quote me a price for his work, and I really don’t know what is fair. Usually I wind up paying him $100 in cash for about 6 hours work, and he’s never complained. It doesn’t seem like a lot of money for a day’s work for a guy with a family, but it’s a big hit to my tight budget.
I’d like some opinions about what is reasonable to pay this guy. I don’t want to take advantage of him. The next job I want him to do is to clean up some BIG branches that got knocked down in a storm (a limb about 18" in diameter and 20’ long fell 40’ and took down a lot of 10-12’ branches with it).
Doesn’t seem unfair at all to me. $100 for 6 hours work (with no tax) sounds pretty good for manual labor. I bet it’s more than he was expecting when he first started working for you.
When I had a yard I paid about $20 per hour to a professional service who worked 2 hours and brought all of their own equipment and the work included weeding, sculpting, blowing, pretty much everything, and this was a large hilly yard. $100 for 6 hours when he doesn’ t have to supply anything of his own is very good and unless he specifically tells you he wants more I’d stay with that. If it’s agreeable to you and agreeable to him then capitalism is working (and if it’s not agreeable to him he should say so).
I’m relieved that no one, so far at least, thinks I’m taking advantage of the guy. What bothers me is that I don’t see how a man can support a wife and two kids on $100 a day. Maybe he’s collecting unemployment, or maybe his wife works.
CynicalGabe, Around here at least you can’t get a teenage boy to mow lawns or do yard work for any money. [hijacking my own thread] There are a lot of families around here who seem to have trouble paying their mortgage and bills, but yet their kids have everything: satellite dishes, P.C.s with AOL accounts, Gameboys, cell phones, clothes from the Gap, every electronic toy that comes out. The kids have no motivation whatsoever to earn their own money. [/hijack]
It’s $16+ dollars an hour. And tax free at that! SO that puts it closer to $20/hour if you were paying taxes on it.
A good fair rate. If it was a 40hr/week, 50wks/yr that would translate to a 32,000 salary. (40hrsX50wks=2000hrs, 2000*16=32,000) Certainly fair. If he does good work, give him more work!
I’d also bet it’s more than the guys that would be working are getting paid, if you were to call in a “professional company”.
Unemployment sucks, when I was unemployed, I jumped at this sort of opportunity. You can’t make a living with it, but it might help him keep his house/family intact.
Not to hijack the thread or abuse the forum, but (a) I agree, and (b) there are many posters here who have suggested that any person willing to work hard is entitled to a certain wage, regardless of how the market values his work. That proposition is probably GD material.
You do not have to feel responsible to pay him a wage to support his family, you just need to pay him for the work he is doing. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you and he are happy with his pay for the amount of work he does, then what he can and cannot afford with it are not your problem. Would you pay him less if he was a single guy? Would you pay him more if he had 10 kids? What if his wife makes $50,000 a year? He deserves to get what the work is worth (although it is kind of you to consider his family and good of you to send work his way.)
I think you are very generous, btw. Especially for someone who weed-whacked your shrubs and wrecked a hose! High school and college kids in our area often do yard work in the summer and get paid about $10-12 an hour.
Ah yes…the fallen limb. We just got one cleaned up (for free) by a guy who uses the wood to heat his house :eek: It was a good 30 feet long.
You offered a fair wage by suburban Chicago standards. I would make it clear that you want all the little twiglettes cleaned up (unless you don’t care). We spent a good 2 days burning the twiglette fallout from ours.
And the freeking thing landed on my husband’s car, to boot. HATING the fallen limb.
This is a bit of a red flag for me. Does the guy not know what his labour is worth? If he won’t suggest an hourly wage, I suggest you do. Or you could use a per project wage - he gets X amount of agreed-on dollars for a job, and how long he takes to do the job is up to him. Not having an agreed-on wage is just asking for trouble, however. I wouldn’t pay him cash, either - I would pay him by cheque, making a note of it in a receipt book signed by him, so he can’t come back to you and say he didn’t get paid, or he wants more money, or whatever.
I don’t want to suggest that he’s untrustworthy, but an ounce of covering your ass is worth a pound of “I wish I hadn’t done that.” These are business transactions, and should be treated as such.
There’s a local artist that I’ve commissioned a few works from (you’ve seen his work - TRUST me, you’ve seen his work) and he refuses to give me prices or hugely lowballs me. Finally, I questioned him about it (I paid for a paiting and gave him double what he had said the price was - he objected and I brought the subject up) - he really DIDN’T know what his work was worth - as a collector I have a better idea of what market prices are - double was still quite a bit lower than market. I’m not sure if he’s adjusted his prices to reflect that or not - I hope so, because he’s hugely tallented, and it would be a shame for him to be unable to do his art because he can’t support himself on what he charges.
It’s possible that the guy just really has no clue, or is afraid that if he quotes a number too high, he won’t get the job.
Thanks, Bosda. That makes me feel kinda good about myself. I’m probably obsessing way too much about the whole issue, but I don’t think it’s right to take advantage of someone just because they’re desperate. And whatever I pay him, he still doesn’t get benefits like heath insurance or paid vacation.
alice_in_wonderland, I think you’re right: the reason the guy doesn’t quote me a price is because he is a very shy, hesitant guy, and I don’t think he himself knows what his labor is worth. I’ve known him through my neighbor for several years, and he’s a very moral, ethical person and was very upset when he screwed up. He didn’t offer to buy me a new hose – I don’t think he had the money – but he did fix my lawn mower for free, which would’ve otherwise cost me as much as the hose.
It’s very difficult to get a professional to do the kind of things this guy does for me. The professionals aren’t interested in small jobs, and they are terrible about returning phone calls. I’d say I pay Bobby a little less than what I’d pay a professional, but it takes Bobby so damn long to do the job that I start feeling guilty.
Well, it sounds like nobody’s taking advantage of anybody. I’m probably a little pissy on this subject because as we speak I have any number of friends/family members who have volunteered to do stuff for us falling down on the job. I’ve decided to keep business and personal completely separate - no more favours for or from friends or family. It just gets too complicated.