just fired a client.
banker guy i know who finances a bunch of small scale commercial stuff turns this guy my way- he wants to get a loan and put an RV park on some acreage he has.?ÿ title company wants- obviously- a title survey to insure against the loan.?ÿ i spent a decent amount of time over the past couple of weeks to ultimately conclude he could do what he wanted without platting (he has to subdivide to make all the development stuff work), thereby saving him about 10-12K and 6 months right off the top.?ÿ he's been calling daily for weeks, despite me telling him it'd be at least a month before i could get on the ground.?ÿ so we had a slight window and i sent a crew out yesterday.?ÿ they were met with a shotgun.?ÿ "y'all ain't supposed to be out here yet."?ÿ that phone call, in hindsight, shoulda been the end of it, but i calmed down and he calmed down and apologized and the guys went searching corners the rest of the day.?ÿ second clue shoulda been that ZERO corners were in place from the two surveys where he sold of pieces to his siblings.?ÿ plus, the place looks like sanford and sons supercenter.?ÿ today he emails me at 5:30 a.m. asking where all the flagging and stakes are.?ÿ my second chance to pull the chute came and i instead asked him to be patient, it's not a quickie dickie exercise.?ÿ?ÿ
crew calls about an hour ago says somebody let the maneater canine out and it... came looking for men to eat.?ÿ so i told them to pull up and call it a day.?ÿ JUST as i hung up i get the call "so how much is this survey gonna cost me?"?ÿ i lined out what i already had in it in donated time, research, and boundary recovery, and that based upon the mountain of crap on his property, the dogs and shotguns, and the mountain of crap he's gonna need to get his refi done and new deeds, probably somewhere on the southern boundary of 10K.?ÿ then he called me a crook.
most of the time i learn my lesson the first time.?ÿ this time it took a little extra.?ÿ "sorry we can't help you.?ÿ good luck."
holy crap: bullet dodged (figuratively, perhaps literally).?ÿ just googled the guy and- i swear- this is the first hit:
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then he called me a crook.
Really??ÿ People actually say this sort of thing right to your face?
I mean... I've had plenty of instances where I was shopping for something and I thought the price was not reasonable, but it never occurred to me to insult the employee standing there.
It makes me wonder what the end game is if someone says that.?ÿ Do they consider the deal over with and they're just burning the bridge for good measure, or do they think it's a legitimate way to negotiate a fee?
People see in others what they know about themselves.
Boy, that is true. ?ÿI told my wife today that if I was the receptionist at a dental office I would have the same bitchy attitude, too. ?ÿShe told me that I already do anyway.
One of my many character flaws is I take everybody at face value even if gossip suggests they're less than honorable.?ÿ I promise myself I'll be vigilant and disengage when signs are turning sour, but somehow I'll still have faith and let the situation become manipulative because of their golden tongue.
What p!sses me off is situations where it's all about the money on their part.?ÿ What about relationships; aren't they more important than the bottom line??ÿ I've roughly lost $40,000 in my life to bad business deals and heart tugging gold-digger relationships. I guess that's a cheap education.
On more than one occasion while looking for a used car, I've had a very strong urge to say to the salesman, or post a review online: "you are a grubby little man".
"A man is known by the company he keeps."?ÿ
Had a meeting with an older surveyor friend earlier this week to discuss contracting out an upcoming job we have to stake something on the order of 60,000' of right of way. We go back to my earliest days when I first got into surveying and he'd hired me as a field helper before I'd gone back to school. He was telling me about one of the only clients he'd ever fired, a developer with a lot of money that was asking him to do some unscrupulous things. He said the final straw was when he found out the client was in the mob and he had to make a decision. Money was tight and the client promised him a lot of work, but the catch was he had to play by their rules. Finally he concluded that these just were not the kind of people he wanted to be associated with and he told me he never regretted for a second telling them to find go find somebody else. Said he took a big hit on getting paid for a bunch of work he'd already done but he never regretted that decision for a second.?ÿ
My son introduced me to the concept of the type of fun...
Type I fun is enjoyable as it happens - 'good craick' as the Irish would say
Type II fun is enjoyable in retrospect - but miserable as it happens
Type II fun is not fun at all - miserable at the time, horrific in retrospect
?ÿ
A toddler tumbles down a step or two and everyone laughs
Grandma tumbles down a step or two and all the air in the room is immediately sucked into the viewers' lungs as they anticipate making a 911 call.
Not at all to belittle they man??s experience as I??m sure it was unpleasant but for some reason with that story I get images of Joe Pesci??s character from Goodfellas (for the mob guy) meets Clint Eastwood??s character from Gran Torino (your older surveyor friend) for one epic show down
lmao, guess who just emailed me ala george costanza showing up the next morning after quitting his job.
People see in others what they know about themselves.
Boy, that is true. ?ÿI told my wife today that if I was the receptionist at a dental office I would have the same bitchy attitude, too. ?ÿShe told me that I already do anyway.
Risking physical damage you could have replied, "I learned how from you". ?????ÿ
