No Good Deeding Nice Guys finish first, or go unpunsihed

[mightymike]

Warning: This is a long, off topic rant with mispelled words, bad gramar, and it's a downer to boot.


Don't Mix business with pleasure
Truer words were hardly ever spoken.
I could be the frigin poster child
for these slogans.

Lessen learned the hard way.
I can't go into all the details
for legal reasons. Sufice to say,
that it cost me $20,000 over the
course of 6 months. The guy blew up my motor,
wrecked my hydrolics, trailer leans now,.. I could go on.
A frigin Nightmare.


I will never hire a friend, or
go into a partnership with a friend
again.

It would have been cheaper to park the rig,
for 6 month and go fishing with the friend.

I think I showed extreme loyalty to him.
I didn't look at him as just an employee.
He was paid a higher rate, because he was a friend.
300 sign on Bonus, paid Holidays (after 1 week!), pay increases,
health, dental, comp.I even restored his rental house
that he was trying to sell, FREE OF CHARGE!

(I have a trucking business and Live in Florida, but I'm also a licenced
California General Contractor. I pay $150 every 4 years to keep it
legal in case I ever move back.) So I know a little about building houses.
When I used to build houses I took a lot of pride in my work.
You've seen some of the amps I've built, I still take pride
in my work.


His house that I fixed up, had been trashed by renters.
I R&R his front door with a beautiful Stainglass on White door, replaced electrical fixtures,repaired drywall, textured, repaired stocco, and put in new casings. The house was built shoddy, even though it looked new.
So every task I did for him, was twice as hard.
For example:

- Both sides of the door were out of plane, and the header was too high.

Instead of fixing it at the framing stage by furring it down, and usinging a
long level and/or line to make it right, the builder just mixed a bag of morter (he probably had laying around), and just poured a mound of it
at the threshold, and the set the door's threshold on the mound.
I wasn't sealed right and huge ant/termites? were liveing under the treshold that was wobbly and leaning at a 45 Degree angle.

It was a bitch. I had to chisle out the treshold, fur down the header,
drywall and texture,repair stucco, replace the casing, and paint.
I told him I had a masonary blade, and that I could snap a line and
cut the stucco to the new opening before hand, but Mr. Know it all wanted the casing to be bent to the old. Becasue he didn't listen to me, I had to chisle it out later,when he realized what I had tried to explain to him. I went to home Depot, got a new casing, and fixed it. I even paid for the frigin casing.
(I never told him that I paid for a new one, because I wanted
him to think I removed and reused the old one with out a scratch.
Plus I didn;t want him to feel bad. He SAID he used to be a carpenter, so I thought I'd play this trick on him) I never told him I paid for them, but he found the old ones in my garage later.

- Most Switch Plates were loose, sticking out, and or mismatched

I replaced all the plates that were off white, with matching white ones
and fixed the way the boxes were mounted. All gaps were fixed.

- Electrical fixtures weren't even mouted on the boxes, and wiring was suspect.

I know those over mirror lights are lightweight, but they put
that metal box in the wall behind it for a reason. I properly
grounded and mounted everything. Incuding all new celing
fans for the whole house, and fixed his GFI circuit.

I also fixed the laundry, and refrgerator hook ups, and
repaired and retextured the drywall around it for painting.

If he wasn't a friend, I could have easily charged
around 1500, to 2,000 dollars for what I did.
Instead, I did as an act of friendship, free of charge.

When I was done with his house, he raised his asking price
$5000 dollars, and got his asking price within a week.
When I was done, that house looked better than new, like a model home.
It was the hot property in that area according some kind of
ranking system used by the local Real Estate Salespeople.
(That's what his realtor told him anyway)

Even though the offer was accepted, it took a month for it to close.
The party he was going to throw (for selling the house), was postponed.
I was invited to that party, of course.

but then..

Our neighbor accross the street says He'll throw the party, but
I'm not invited because some friend of his doesn't like me. If it
was any other party I wouldn't have cared, but after doing all
that work for free, I felt betrayed, and humiliated.
BTW - He thinks all the work I did was only worth about 200.00
So add unappreciated to that list.

I think if you do too much for people, it must be a little overwhelming.
It sure as hell didn't instill much loyalty.

As soon as the truck came back from Cummins, ($8300 later)
He advises me that he will be taking a month off. He had only worked for me for 6 months at this point.

I told him I couldn't afford, and He quit. I had three amps to finish,
and worked the night and day dworking 2 jobs until they were done.
It was exhausting.

Amp building is now only a hobby, because I'm back in the truck.
But now that he lost all my gravy runs, I'm not making as much and
had to take a 2nd mortgage on my house.

I'm looking to sell my rig, and find a company driving job.

Maybe there's someone out there looking for an Intelligent, honest person, who extremly loyal, who has a CDL with all endorsements, knows how to build a house, and Can build a kick ass Marshal Clone, and not a half bad player either. I don't know what job out there combines those skills, if there is one.

There's good news. I now know who my true firends are,
and because of the loss, I'll qualify for the EIC for the first time.
WOOHOO!

Rant Over

[Billy Batz]

That dude needs a good reality check ass kickin. You cant paint a fuckin closet for $200.

[Necrovore]

MightyMike, sorry to hear that bro. I agree with you regarding the doing nice things for people gets you shoved further back in line. I just recently painted the house of a family member and got similar treatment. The house is a 3500 sqft single story brick house with wood soffet and facia. I went and bought the paint on a Thursday night ($500), went Friday evening after work to power wash the facia so I could start early Saturday morning. I asked to get reimbursed for the paint which I was. Saturday rolls around and I realize that I have about 30' worth of facia to replace which I do on my dime. the facia is 2x8 with the soffet sitting in a 3/8"x1/2"channel about an inch from the inside bottom edge. I went and picked up the lumber, cut the channels for it all and R/R old and new. Total time about 3 hours. Now I start painting. I worked until dark Saturday night. Sunday, I started about 7:30am and worked finishing everything up and cleaning up about 8:30pm. The job was immaculate. Looked brand new. Oh I forgot to mention it was a drastic color change, which requires minimum 2 coats and in places 3 coats.
When I asked to get paid the family member offered me $200. I balked a bit at what they were offering to which I was told that I only worked 2 days painting and they already gave me $500. I explained about the board replacement, and was told that I did not inform them that I replaced the boards and werent going to pay for something that was not needed. I showed them the dry rotted old facia. I got the same reply. SO I just gathered my things and left without payment. I didn't want to deal with stubborn family. I decided that I will never speak to them again.
I was called by them Tuesday that they now want me to paint their detached garage the same color. I asked about getting paid for the first job and they insisted that $500 is decent enough payment for the job I already did. Explaining to them that they reimbursed me the cost of materials minus the boards so I still have yet to get paid. I hung up after that.

Really pisses you off trying to do nice things for others and you get shit on.

[Necrovore]

Yeah thats on the low side. The guy I work with has an uncle who just got the bid to paint the Toyota plant once its done being built here. $425k plus materials. I wouldn't want to do that job though as too many OSHA buttheads would be walking around all the time.

[tonejones]

Now we know why there's death metal!!!!!

It's shit like that that makes me churn out those last few reps lifting weights at the gym.......

[mightymike]

They say the best way to have someone hate you; is to make them indebted to you. The funny thing is that the person I did these nice things for, has been pretty generous with other people , who have taken advantage of him in the same way. So you would think that he would understand and appreciate being on the receiving end of good treatment for a change. Some people just can handle acts of kindness, maybe he thought I was desperate for his friendship. Maybe he thought he was doing a favor for me driving my rig. Boy was he wrong.
My attitude while doing this was, "I hope you realize, I consider you family, a brother, and I'm there for you."

Hey that's the kind of friend I am. Loyal to a fault.
Mafia, go into battle, risk my life for you type loyalty.
Shut my mouth, rather go to jail for something
I didn't do, type loyalty. Stupid Loyalty!

With close frinds, I've allways been this way.
I don't know where it comes from, and I'm lucky to still
be alive, looking back at some of the brawls of my youth.
I've been shot at, had people pull knives on me,
and one time this guy I tracked down that beat up a
friend of mine at a party, him and 5 friends brought
baseball bats. I escaped with bashed winshield and rear window on my 65 Nova, to beat his ass at a New Years Eve Party later that year.
Happy New Year! It was sweet revenge.
When I was young, I was a crazy MOFO, and played
in dangerous places. I'm not out there fighting anymore.
I'm 39, have a wife, 2 kids, a mortgage, and work so many hours
I just want sleep when I get home..
But I'm still extremely loyal. That hasn't changed.

I now know how my wife's ex boyfriend feels. He bought her
all kinds of stuff, flowers every Friday, and never argued with her.
Who does she marry? My broke ass, the dutch dater, who she had to buy a burger for at Jack N the Box every once in a while, and stole off her plate when she went to the little girls room. (Hey I was young and poor back then, 14 years ago.) She got flowers only on special occasions from me (when it meant something), and broke into tears everytime- it was so rare.

What I've learned about friendships, is that it's not that different from
a romantic relationships, in that it has to be a give and take relationship of equals. If one side is giving or taking too much it becomes unbalanced, and one side gets taken for granted. What took me so long?

At least with a woman, she has that wonderful piece of anatomy you get to play with, that helps you put up with the bullshit and honey-do lists.
I refuse to go through this for a friend, unless she's a female, and I'm
not married, and we have some kind of barter agreement.
Wouldn't be the first time I worked for some "tang."

[tonejones]

Mightymike,

Friends like you are hard to come by in this day and age brother.

I think I speak for about everybody here when I say it's definitely that stupid fucker's loss man.......

Hold your head up high, walk down the street, and continue to give people a good look at what it's like to be the stone-cold-shit when it comes to being a man instead of just being stone-cold......


Peace.....

[mightymike]

Thanks for the kind words.