April 13th, 2009 → 9:01 pm @ terry
I spent most of the day wrapping up the taxes for our business. The accountant requested a little more information and I have that ready to go. I hate doing the taxes every year but it really does give you the opportunity to look at some numbers that we all seldom pay enough attention to during the year.
The largest part of our gross income goes out to the sub-contractors we have in the field and I usually find transportation costs as the second largest expenditure. Not this year, though. This year our expenses for technology and communications far out-stripped the transportation costs. But, one of the servers we purchased costs nearly as much as a nice used car!
After taking a real hard look at the numbers, I can still recommend a field service career as a good endeavor. There certainly are some situations that are difficult to deal with but any business person knows that is always going to be the case. There is one caveat though: you still have to drop the companies that are so difficult to deal with and replace that income with other opportunities.
April 12th, 2009 → 4:14 pm @ terry
This won’t hurt a bit. You won’t feel a thing. It’s good for you. You’re going to like it. Pick any one of these saying. The closer it is to the top of written correspondence or the sooner it is spoken in conversation, the more likely it is that it’s a big, big lie.
It seems that the better a company is to work for, the less you hear from them. We work for all kinds of companies. Some we talk to about once a year - usually at Christmastime.  Some companies call sixteen times a day to let us know how important they are and let us know that we would starve to death without them. These companies are usually owned or run by direct descendents of medieval dungeon guards.
We work for one company that is so egotistical and obnoxious that we created a simple self-defense mechanism to deal with them. Every time the caller ID indicates we are getting a call from that company, one of us will say “if his lips are moving, he’s lying”. This kind of gives us a psychological boost and enhances our fight or flight hormones.
During a recent communication with our rep from this company, the rep went to some trouble to ensure us that changes underway in their dealings with field reps was going to be good for us. It was in the first paragraph. Sorry, but his lips are moving.
After dissecting the communicatioin and seeking verification of the so-called facts, all we were able to determine was that this was not going to be good for us. Knowing the selfishness of this company, we called all of our field reps that would be effected by these new changes. We were quite honest and told them that we felt sure the company would give us their famous “take it all or get nothing”  ultimatum.
It’s absolutely amazing that one company can be so despised that every field rep we talked with was actually happy to be rid of them – even though it means a financial loss to each and every one.
My earlier post “Regurgitated Greed” was about this company. One step closer to the toilet!
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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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