March 30th, 2009 → 10:15 pm @ terry
Never in a million years would I have thought I would send work out of this country. It’s almost 11:00 pm and I should be heading to bed and out of nowhere my Yahoo! Messenger pops up with an inquiry from a programmer in India. I hired him to do some work on some sites. I just do not have enough time to do everything I want to do. So, I’m hiring help. I will have to admit though that I do like the idea of him just getting up and starting to work on my site and here I am getting ready to go get my four hours!
I tried to hire American. I really did. I put ads on Craig’s List and some of the tech job sites. One respondent from the Craig’s List was here in town and came by two times. We discussed what I wanted done and agreed on a fee. Haven’t seen him since! The people that responded by e-mail from the techie sites put a lot of letters behind their names. Sorry, I’ve seen what most of them can do. Very little. And, most think I’m going to give them $85 an hour and up. Yea, right. This stuff just ain’t that difficult, guys!
Yea, I might be a little cranky but I guess that happens when you just got so much to do. And keeping these screwball companies happy is quite a challenge too. My Yahoo! messenger just popped up again. The team lead for the company I hired in Pakistan just signed on and said “Hi”. He’s starting on another site I need some changes to.
Got several phone calls today. Not a happy face in the crowd. Seems there’s trouble brewing in some of the field service companies. People are looking for their work. Some are looking for their checks.
Look! Let me let you in on a little secret. Just about every one of these companies will hire the cheapest inspector they can find. Why? Because when that poor guy folds up, we’re still in the system. One click on the computer and we get the work again – until the next Johnny-come-lately comes in town. We’re still doing rechecks on the properties the last get-rich kid did here in town. From the looks of what we’ve seen so far, he got all his pictures from Google Earth and never left the house. Pure profit!
You know what’s so bad? The companies know this is going on. The only way it will change is when we see the work falling off drastically in an area, we need to honor our contracts and send notice that we’re withdrawing our service for that area. They will eventually need us back because the other guy is going to debtor’s prison. When they need us again, it will be time to renegotiate fees.
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March 19th, 2009 → 7:29 pm @ terry
Just had to pass along the instructions included with an occupancy inspection we received yesterday:
Please give us as much information as you can on the property. Note any personal property? What needs to be done to protect the property? Provide your estimate of any needed repairs. NO CONTACT! MORTGAGOR ARMED. GET POLICE ESCORT IF AT PROPERTY.
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