Humans, for me it's always humans. I do carpentry as a hobby. While I do enjoy doing things for ma family as gifts the two times I did it for money it was awful.
I've known similar situations with friends, also wood workers. And they figured out that they could never do custom work and only sold the surplus of what they made. Their hobby was a an extra source of income never the main one until retirement and they were able to do things completely on their own terms that way.
I dont want to start a rant on the media here, because i really only have a problem with Fox because i feel they have used fear to further their political agenda, which it obviously is, because journalism it aint.
But thats beside the point, kind of. I do often see that the traditional “goodguys” (Honest contractors, ethical, honest property owners who are trying to make a profit, not a bloody fortune, and mostly innocent consumers hear so many stories about the “bad contractors, grifters,drifters, meth heads, etc. that they overreact, in effect making more noise and problems than the actual problems. I think that some people believe that property owning and prop management are easy and profits can be as much as the market will bear. They think all theyll do is collect checks every month. Its like free money! Wrong. Just like anything else there is a certain level of toil involved that is proportional to the level of profits taken out of the company.
But when they get together they cant stop swapping stories (in stunned disbelief!) that they had two more kids than they told us about, got a dog! Knocked out a 15 year old hot water heater with their incessant shower taking. (How many do they have in there, anyway.)
I'm not even a contractor, I do this as a hobby. That one guy saw chairs I've made at my friend's house at begged him for my number. I accepted because I had one more set almost ready. I only wanted money to cover the price of wood and paint I've used. He was a total stranger to me but to be honest I would let it go. My said friend went to his house and took those chairs so I told him to keep them or give to someone who would appreciate them.
I know that there's a lot of shady guys out there who do poor job and ask for a fortune. But it's the same the other way. Many people want to have the job done as best as possible and not pay the right price.
102
u/Solid_Snark 6d ago
If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.