doing business with friends
I rank this right up there with loaning money to friends. It's one of those things that can take a decent friendship and just flush it down a toilet. The absolute best thing that can happen when you do business with friends, is your friend will do a fantastic job and charge you an agreed upon price and you're still friends. Just like loaning a friend money, the absolute best thing that can happen is they pay you back...promptly. Alternative endings are countless, and they almost always end with disaster.
I bring this up because we have a friend in the neighborhood who's great with plants and gardening. She knows a lot and her front yard is always picture perfect. We, in the lumberyard, are none of that. I keep the grass cut and bushes trimmed, but that's about it. I have no desire to be a gardener. If I'm not getting nasty letters from the homeowners association, all's right in the Lumberyard world, but I'll never see a "yard of the month" kind of award. The wife would like a picture perfect front yard, but she's not great with plants, and she knows that's not my thing.
Our friend decided to start her own business...doing landscaping. The wife thought it'd be a great idea to turn her loose on our yard...get it going and impart some gardening knowledge, so maybe the wife, too, could maintain a decent flower bed. She called. They talked. The wife told me about how much she thought this would all cost and I was OK with that. The work started.
The woman did a fantastic job. We'd come home from work and see the progress each day, and it just got better and better. The flower bed in front of our house looks like the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. I was sitting there thinking...all this for that much money? Such a deal! I was amazed.
Then the bill came. It was NOT what the wife expected, or such a deal. When you itemized it all out, it was fair. I mean, the woman did put in a lot of time and material, and I couldn't say she didn't earn what she charged. What it wasn't though, was what we expected, or budgeted. When the friend and the wife talked, they came to a price understanding, or so the wife thought. The bill more than doubled that. If we would have known this was the price, we might have scaled back the effort some...or just declined altogether. The wife was floored, and didn't want to tell me how much the bill was, at first. She knew though...I would find out. All our finances are shared and out in the open. She apologized to me and said next time she'll get a firmer estimate if she gets more done. It's not like we won't survive, but we really weren't prepared for that kind of bill.
The thing is, though, now this elephant has entered the room where that friendship is concerned. The wife feels a little taken advantage of, but she doesn't want to (and won't) say anything because she doesn't want to ruin a friendship. Still, it's stuck in her mind, and therefore it affects the friendship whether she wants it to or not. If we never would have "hired" her, this issue would never exist.
Things can just get a little strange when you start mixing friends and money.
I bring this up because we have a friend in the neighborhood who's great with plants and gardening. She knows a lot and her front yard is always picture perfect. We, in the lumberyard, are none of that. I keep the grass cut and bushes trimmed, but that's about it. I have no desire to be a gardener. If I'm not getting nasty letters from the homeowners association, all's right in the Lumberyard world, but I'll never see a "yard of the month" kind of award. The wife would like a picture perfect front yard, but she's not great with plants, and she knows that's not my thing.
Our friend decided to start her own business...doing landscaping. The wife thought it'd be a great idea to turn her loose on our yard...get it going and impart some gardening knowledge, so maybe the wife, too, could maintain a decent flower bed. She called. They talked. The wife told me about how much she thought this would all cost and I was OK with that. The work started.
The woman did a fantastic job. We'd come home from work and see the progress each day, and it just got better and better. The flower bed in front of our house looks like the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. I was sitting there thinking...all this for that much money? Such a deal! I was amazed.
Then the bill came. It was NOT what the wife expected, or such a deal. When you itemized it all out, it was fair. I mean, the woman did put in a lot of time and material, and I couldn't say she didn't earn what she charged. What it wasn't though, was what we expected, or budgeted. When the friend and the wife talked, they came to a price understanding, or so the wife thought. The bill more than doubled that. If we would have known this was the price, we might have scaled back the effort some...or just declined altogether. The wife was floored, and didn't want to tell me how much the bill was, at first. She knew though...I would find out. All our finances are shared and out in the open. She apologized to me and said next time she'll get a firmer estimate if she gets more done. It's not like we won't survive, but we really weren't prepared for that kind of bill.
The thing is, though, now this elephant has entered the room where that friendship is concerned. The wife feels a little taken advantage of, but she doesn't want to (and won't) say anything because she doesn't want to ruin a friendship. Still, it's stuck in her mind, and therefore it affects the friendship whether she wants it to or not. If we never would have "hired" her, this issue would never exist.
Things can just get a little strange when you start mixing friends and money.
Labels: Philosophy
John put this out here at 7:05 AM
1 Comments:
we had our dear friend do the addition on our house. We should talk over beers sometime. :)
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