Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Back on the contractor rodeo.

I wouldn't necessarily pick right now to do a project. It's one of those things that if I don't do it now I have to wait until next summer because it involves my fireplace. I'm kinda forced into it because of that. I'm pretty handy, but this is completely out of my comfort zone. And I know my limits.  So, with my contractor tolerance barely repaired - I'm jumping in.

This is the thing about contractors, and I've lost count how many I've known - they are all a little bit crazy. They are salt of the earth kinda guys. Except for the robbing part. Oh! They will rob you if you don't keep an eye on them. But they are generally good guys. They are mostly sort of extreme guys who are at the fringes of normal. They are savage conspiracy theorists. The stuff these guys come up with... I just shake my head at. And it takes a lot of work untangling the logic. And they tell you this stuff with the deepest conviction. Contractor logic is really fuzzy logic. And they don't use Google at all. Because even Google is like - yeah...we've never heard of that one. And then Google chuckles.

The other thing about contractors is - for dudes they sure act a lot like chicks. Contractors are hens of the highest order. They talk non stop. They gossip. Which is probably how these silly stories they tell me get passed around like a game of telephone.

And this is all the crap before they start tearing my shit apart.

Lastly, I think, they are all a little bit racists. The target switches, but they are constantly upset that some demographic is trying to take their jobs. And so they spread silly stuff about how they are getting an advantage over them. Like my guy was trying to convince me that employers get a tax break for hiring h1b visa workers. Now, the world is not the same as it always was in the before times - but it used to be really expensive to hire visa workers. The company has to foot the cost of the visa and all the taxes. Tech companies have been hiring people from all over on Visas the whole time I've been of working age. But under PMB's world, maybe they are giving companies tax breaks now, I think. A Google search away turned out it isn't actually true. But I bet every single contractor I talk to will tell me that meme. Because they all reinforce their fuzzy logic. Clucking like hens the whole time.

What does any of this have to do with my fireplace? Well, hiring a contractor is a journey. You put up with a lot of their quirks to get your shit fixed. I mean, they are funny guys. I learn a lot of stuff from them. But you constantly are trying to resolve how they can be so brilliant in one area, and think the craziest things. One contractor a while back was trying to convince me they were going to launch a death star into the sky. I was like - that's mathematically impossible.

No comments:

Post a Comment