[woofa.express]

Making my working life easier.

Unprincipled and/or deceitful people. I’ve dealt with them and I’m sure we all have. Here is the case which established a principle I adopted and have stayed with.
In 1984 I used old handmade bricks to build a house. An enterprising fellow had bought the remains of an old and historic homestead that had burnt to the ground some years before. The mortar used was lime not cement as used today and that made cleaning them much easier. The agreed price was $300 per 1,000 with an additional 10% given to accommodate broken or poor quality. Agreed minimum amount was 25k and I’d take all the additional. Well the deal seemed to have changed and there was no additional 10% and I felt he had cheated on the number delivered. I had the brickie make the judgement on the amount and put the money in a trust account.
Well he called me a thief and took me to court. The legal fellows representing myself and him intimidated me and said it would be better for me to pay as compared to fight and face a large legal bill. This is called commercial realism. Well I took their advice, paid and drove home. I was bitter. I made the decision that in the future I would deal only with people I was comfortable with.
I did so and I have never had a dispute since. I also applied that to people I worked (contracted to) for. I simply told them they were difficult and I had competitors that would do their work.
People I employed couldn’t take the working hours so I fixed that too. I employed only people who had come off farms or had worked on farms. Bingo. No further problems.

I had a contractor who did my mechanical repairs. I could make an agreement with him that got chucked out the window if he later decided it didn’t suit him. One could even shake hands with him on reaching an agreement which proved worthless if he changed his mind. This fellow lost a significant customer when I hired my own mechanic. He couldn’t understand why I gave him the flick.