On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:56:18 -0400, Tom Watson
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Jun 2005 00:40:10 GMT, Lew Hodgett
wrote:

I got sick and tired of having to go to the bathroom and hold
everybody's wiener every time they wanted to take a leak.

I understood.

Lew


Hiring good people is the hardest thing that you can do in a business
- as far as I know.

That was my experience as well. I never had an employee that lasted
until the end of the day- I tossed most of them out backwards before
lunch. Even had to fire my wife back when we were dating, and she
thought it might be fun to do cleanup jobs. It's awfully hard to
maintain a word-of-mouth reputation if you've got some jackass working
harder at trying to figure out a reason not to do anything than they'd
have had to work at just doing the job in the first place.

I got out of the construction business, which I was doing pretty well
in, to go into the shop and work by myself. I was real tired of the
people problems.

Swingman seems to have a handle on it and maybe he'll chime in. Seems
like he just builds a little bit each year and keeps some time out to
do those things that he enjoys.

He must have damned good subs that he's worked with for a good bit of
time.

A buddy of mine always says, "Hell, the making is easy - it's the
people that make it hard."

Fits with the hardest thing as well as the second hardest- convincing
the customer to get what they need, rather than what they think they
might want. I don't know how many times I had to argue with people
about the stupidest things- for example "Can you tile my shower? Oh
good- but I don't think I want to pay for concrete backer board...
can't you just use this plywood the roofers left?"

Of course, I made a major error in thinking that working for someone
else was bound to be easier. Now I wish I just would have stuck with
being a small-time independant- even with all the social bumps and
warts that go with it.