This week I headed back home to the nest to sample the delights of mothers cooking and to check that the old man was doing alright and the gramps was fine and dandy. The real news I wanted to know was whether the new fence paneling was complete and there was finally a boundary between their house and the neighbours.
Now my parents being kind folk decided to let the tree surgeon who they employ once a year attempt the task. Bearing in mind the chap had never done a job like this and had never done a proper estimate. It was set to go wrong.
Firstly he miscalculated the amount of man hours it would take leaving himself two days to finish the job which should have taken two 2 man days. My parents where laughing due to the savings they where clearly going to make!
Then he attempted the job, now jobs like this need to be planned and the ground needs either to be leveled properly or to have a kind of raised blocks put it to give the fence that raising whilst level effect.
After 4 days and the job nearly finished the old man and the neighbour went and had a word with the chap that they were not happy with the job (it wasn’t level). The chap agreed and asked what they wanted him to do, they asked could he just take it down and go. The poor chap apparently looked like he was going to cry and who can blame him. He had just lost 4 days work and had no money as a consequence.
As my lovely grandpa summed up that evening.
If the Jobs not a good’un, there’s no point in keeping it, you will always look at it and think its wrong.
In many ways the lesson this guy learned that day will have impact on him directly i.e financially etc but the real lesson is that planning always trumps pure intuition.