09-05-2008, 07:00 AM
quote:
unfortunatly you can't please everyone.
I've written enough to get this out of my system but as I now have a "rebuttal" from Troy, I want to address it.
Saying a client can't be pleased is an easy excuse. It conjures up the image of nitpicking clients who expect the moon. Troy also tried the "you mainland haoles" argument on me. Easy to dismiss for some.
I've owned five properties on this island. I've been involved in renovating all of them, from an old camp house to a Hilo kamaaina house to newer houses that needed facelifts. The same goes for the landscaping, always improved it. I've never had a job I rejected before this one. I've never made a formal complaint. I am not difficult to please.
I require:
Execute the project according to what was proposed.
Discuss major roadblocks and changes with me as they come up.
Civility. Rationality.
I do not hover while a person works.
I am available for consultation.
I check on the job when I'm told a stage of it is ready for me to look at it.
When Troy told me he was within a few hours of completion and I should check it out, I did so. It was not what he had promised. It was necessary to say so. He couldn't handle that, couldn't discuss it, couldn't problem solve it.
Now when you have a serious issue like this with satisfying a client, I expect a professional to discuss the problem calmly. Troy was not willing to make ANY alterations to pull the project into line with what I expected.
If you want to define "can't be pleased" as not willing to accept whatever you pass off on them and expecting you to do what you proposed, then mea culpa.
Proposed job:
A walking path for a person with no special agility.
Switchbacks created for a gradual descent, with minimal steps.
Path to be four feet wide.
Use felled materials like guava as handrails. Safety rope handrail.
Fern roots to be removed so ferns don't grow right back.
Junk trees in the stream clearing to be removed.
Not as proposed, not any of it.
No one can WALK down this. It is a climb on mud.
Refused to do switchbacks. Instead went for about 50 steps, all with wildly uneven spacing, risers, and the step tread not level. All the "steps" are loose dirt that turns to mud with rain. The risers have plastic board held up by rebar that can be pushed in with your hand. Anyone who lost footing and relied on them to hold would be out of luck.
Good part of the "path" is just the pre-existing trail. There is old rope installed on the pre-existing sections so you can see that.
Felled trees are fallen over where they are ugly and can't be easily cut up.
No wooden handrails.
Ferns were hacked, not dug out.
Junk guava still hanging over stream.
Trail is one foot wide to two foot wide in steep places, not four feet.
Correct, I was not pleased with this.
I was even more displeased with absolute refusal to fix it.
Troy does not seem to understand that when a project has an objective, like this one, it doesn't matter if you went out and whacked down a bunch of brush. What has value is if the result was a usable walking path from the top of the land to the stream.
If I don't have that, I have nothing I didn't have before with the pre-existing steep trail, other than a big mess to clean up and a bunch of cut up materials that I paid for scattered down the slope that have to be taken out or fixed so someone doesn't get hurt thinking the "steps" are safe to use.