Why I have to fire my lawnman.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

[QUOTE=kittenblue]
There are no “neighborhood kids” any more. They don’t play outside any more, and they certainly don’t go door to door looking for odd jobs. They don’t babysit, and they don’t mow grass.
[/QUOTE]

Up until a couple of years ago there were still neighborhood kids in my area that would come by and offer to cut the grass. Once I let one of them do it then the others would try to under bid the last one the next week. I was getting the grass cut for $5 there for awhile. Didn’t last long though. I guess they found out about girls, or cars, or got real jobs.

22

[QUOTE=kittenblue]
There are no “neighborhood kids” any more. They don’t play outside any more, and they certainly don’t go door to door looking for odd jobs. They don’t babysit, and they don’t mow grass.
[/QUOTE]

:confused: Maybe not in your neighborhood. The kids in this neighborhood go around all the time asking if they can mow lawns or shovel snow to make a little extra money. And they are constantly playing outside.

23

I tried to get a neighborhood kid to come mow my lawy when my riding mower was broken. He promised to come and I tacked a check on the iside of my wellhouse doorhouse. He never bothered to come.

I want to get someone to come bushhog my pastures, but my (adult) neighbor charges $100/hr to get out his tractor, with a 2 hour guaranteed minimum. I asked the mother of another person if her daughter would do it for $20/hr plus gas for the mower. That’s more than I make in my job. The kid never got back with me.

I wish I could get someone to do farmwork for me!

StG

24

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
The disdain is that:

a) You’ve got a guy contracted out to cut your lawn.
b) Which you can’t be bothered to do yourself.
c) Gas prices are through the roof.
d) The guy is asking for a little help.
e) You fire him 'cause, you know, that’s not the original agreed-to price.
f) Then you feel the need to tell us all about it on here!!!

I think item “F” speaks volumes. Why would you even feel the need to inform us of your decision on here? Frankly, I read your post and thought “What an arrogant shit!” But that’s just me.
[/QUOTE]

Not a single one of your points makes a bit of sense. Quite to the contrary. Let’s see.

a) You’ve got a guy contracted out to cut your lawn.

This is incredibly common in the U.S. and gives opportunity to people with few skills.

b) Which you can’t be bothered to do yourself.

**Right. Think about all the things you can’t be “bothered” to do yourself and pay someone else for whether it is to change the oil in your car or get a haircut. Completely incoherent point on your part. **

c) Gas prices are through the roof.

Your powers of observation are astute. What does that have to do with a mutually agreed upon price though?

d) The guy is asking for a little help.

And we are asking for a little help from you to figure out your thought process. How about it?

e) You fire him 'cause, you know, that’s not the original agreed-to price.

If bait and switch and deception aren’t good reasons to fire someone, I don’t know what is.

f) Then you feel the need to tell us all about it on here!!!

The name of this forum is MPSIMS. Do you care to think carefully about what that stands for?

25

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
The disdain is that:

a) You’ve got a guy contracted out to cut your lawn.
b) Which you can’t be bothered to do yourself.
c) Gas prices are through the roof.
d) The guy is asking for a little help.
e) You fire him 'cause, you know, that’s not the original agreed-to price.
f) Then you feel the need to tell us all about it on here!!!

I think item “F” speaks volumes. Why would you even feel the need to inform us of your decision on here? Frankly, I read your post and thought “What an arrogant shit!” But that’s just me.
[/QUOTE]
Holy shit. We’ve actually hired a woman to clean our house. That must be causing you to lose sleep, too. That she only comes every other week and does things that allow my full-time working, pregnant wife and I a little extra time to be together must be beyond your comprehension.

We all see the “F” item quoted a lot, except that I’ve always thought about that.

If you wonder so much about his need to talk about it, WTF would you comment on it? That speaks more volumes about you, than him.

26

My lawn guy blows, too. He doesn’t edge, prunes only once a year and last year he reseeded some bald spots with the wrong species of grass so now the front lawn is all… splotchy.

Unfortunately, MrsChief says I’ll do it until I get it right.

27

The OP didn’t fire him. He fired himself. They had an agreement which he violated, thereby ending it.

28

I dearly hope, when he returns, you shake your fist at him and yell at him to get off your lawn.

I’m in sort of a similar situation, although no services are included. I have a friend who I know fairly well who got into a bit of a financial scrape this month. I got my tax refunds so I was able to lend him a few bucks to help him cover a shortfall on his rent. Then a few days later something else came up and, still feeling generous, I was able to throw a few more bucks his way. Then every time I talked to him it was something else where he needed more money and more money and more money. I finally went off on him the other night, explaining very loudly and firmly that the ATM is closed. We had agreed from the start that he would pay me back on May 5, so I guess I’ll find out in about a week whether I’m a sucker or not.

29

[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
Maybe it’s just me, but the first thought that popped into my head after reading the OP was this Charles fellow might have some substance abuse issues. Better to keep this dude away from your home and your wife if he seems shifty and constantly hassling for money. Look in the phone book under lawn care and contract one of those places that sends a truck with a couple of guys instead.
[/QUOTE]

That was my first though, too. Very unprofessional of him at any rate.

30

[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
I have never had any luck with hiring gardeners. Every single one of them just stopped showing up.
[/QUOTE]
After they looked in your windows, they decided you didn’t have anything worth stealing, so they didn’t bother coming back.

31

[QUOTE=kittenblue]
There are no “neighborhood kids” any more. They don’t play outside any more, and they certainly don’t go door to door looking for odd jobs. They don’t babysit, and they don’t mow grass.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe not in your neighborhood, but in mine, there’s one teenage boy who mows lawns and trims edges for some of the residents. He does an excellent job and is very polite. Part of his good service is that he knows he’s competing with landscaping services in the area for business. Other than that, many of the kids in our neighborhood recognize us and our dog and are friendly with us.

I agree with Cluricaun that this guy seems to be behaving in a manner that might be related to substance abuse, and keeping him away from your household would probably be a good idea. If there are any neighborhood kids in the area who do lawn mowing, see if they’ll quote you a fair price and do a good job. It’s worth a try.

32

Fourth-ed on the notion that the guy’s likely a substance abuser.

33

Unfortunately, the Integrity of the Field leaves a lot to be desired. The Incredible Changing Price seems to be extremely common, along with the “pay me in advance (and I may or may not do the work)”.

My father is having similar problems with the service they hired for their townhouse association. They can’t be bothered to follow the rules spelled out in the contract, they’re always asking for payment in advance, they keep pushing for more money than agreed upon, and they don’t do the job properly. Just today he was telling me that they power-raked the property (over 100 townhouses), but didn’t bother to clean up the stuff afterwards, so it’s sitting all over their lawns and if they don’t come get it, it is just going to settle back down, thus defeating the entire purpose of the power-raking. Ah, but you know, they need extra money to actually PICK UP the stuff, just like they demanded extra money to remove the snow when the piles got too high to keep pushing on, just like they demanded that the townhouse association pay to buy them a bobcat and quoted a price twice what my father could buy it for. (Refused! Buy your own damned equipment!)

34

You might try calling your local high school to see if they have a program for matching kids with jobs. Or maybe the town hall can tell you that. Around here there’s a woman who runs such a thing, where she keeps track of kids who want jobs and people call her when they need somebody. It seems to be a little safer all around than waiting for the guy to come to the door.

35

As KittenBlue said, good luck finding neighborhood kids to cut the grass or do other work for that matter. And I’m not cheap, I pay more than the going rate for this area.

Some enterprising young man came through the subdivision after an ice storm with a Bobcat last December offering to clear the 3 inches of ice on my driveway. I was so grateful that I paid him 5 dollars extra on top of the 30 dollars that he quoted me.

Good help is hard to find.

36

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Frankly, I read your post and thought “What an arrogant shit!” But that’s just me.
[/QUOTE]

MPSIMS doesn’t require everyone to agree, but we don’t allow insults outside the Pit. Please do not do this again.

37

Leaffan, I’m sorry to have to tell you that some of us make more money than you do and hire people to do stuff we don’t have time to do/don’t want to do around our house. There is nothing wrong with that.

Not only does it seem that there no high school/college-aged kids willing to come round and cut your lawn anymore, but I have to say that I’m a little reluctant to have someone working on my property without their own professional insurance unless I knew the kid or his parents or something like that.

38

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Not only does it seem that there no high school/college-aged kids willing to come round and cut your lawn anymore, but I have to say that I’m a little reluctant to have someone working on my property without their own professional insurance unless I knew the kid or his parents or something like that.
[/QUOTE]

Ding ding ding!

There you go. My son is 15, and can’t, legally, mow a lawn in this town without being bonded and insured and whatnot. And, since the landscaping companies are bound to be on the same block and they ARE insured, they have every incentive to report him and then accidentally drop a brochure on the lawn he was mowing.

39

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with hiring people to do stuff, for sure. You obviously have no insight into how much I make, but I probably fall into the middle, or even upper-to-middle class category. Hiring someone to cut your lawn, in my income bracket in Canada, is essentially unheard of. Of course our lawn cutting season is only like 4 or 5 months long.

The OP title “Why I have to fire My Lawnman” seemed to reflect ownership and perhaps racial overtones. Convince me otherwise.

40

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
The OP title “Why I have to fire My Lawnman” seemed to reflect ownership and perhaps racial overtones. Convince me otherwise.
[/QUOTE]

Oh boy, here we go again. You are making less and less sense as time goes on. Quit while you are ahead.

Similar examples:

  1. Should I report my postal carrier for this?
  2. My mechanic says that I need a new clutch. Does this sound reasonable?
  3. My waiter delivered delivered my soup lukewarm. Should I have complained?

These constructions are just standard English and common constructions. You seem to be determined to get us to validate some obviously flawed and whacked out thought patterns.

Why don’t you tell US why the lawn guy in question can’t be just a plain, shady white guy based on the OP and just how many such service personnel are mistakenly believed to be owned by the people they do services for?

Something is very, very wrong. I am serious when I say that I would love to know your whole thought process on this thread and I am sure that other people are too. Many of us just hire the kid down the street to do our lawn. That doesn’t mean that we are convinced that we own the person. It also doesn’t mean that we think they are a slave if they are part of an ethnic minority. People of all colors do bad things and give crappy service. That has to be dealt with.

You are making no sense whatsoever and nobody in this thread can figure out what you are talking about.