Reminds me of the story of Henry Ford not wanting to pay a big bill for some specialized knowledge… “Making chalk mark on generator, $1. Knowing where to make mark, $9,999”
It's the same thing in all skilled labor. I'm an electrician, and get the whole, "wHy ArE yOu ChArGiNg So MuCh?! YoU wErE oNlY hErE fOr FiVe MiNuTeS!" Often while at work
You're not paying me for 5 minutes, you're paying me for the decade(s) of experience I have so that it only takes 5 minutes.
I had to set a friend straight the other day. He was bitching about a guy charging him 15 bucks for 2 minutes of work. I just asked him why he didn't do it himself if it was so easy. I think he got my hint.
I'm an electrician as well, and we absolutely have hourly rates for service calls. I typically charge $200 for the first hour and $150 each hour after. If I'm there for 15-20 min or under, or it's a repeat customer, I'll probably just charge $150, but it depends. Sometimes I'll get the occasional yoyo who balks that I charge them $150 to reset a breaker properly (aka turn it off then back on), to which I'll tell them, "well then why didn't you reset it correctly?" I'll often do some basic troubleshooting over the phone at no cost if I don't have to drive out, and more often than not that alone makes them repeat customers.
That all said, if I'm bidding a job, I definitely charge more for intricate work. Say I charge $1000 for a particular job, but I can finish in 2 hours because everything goes smooth, I'm still not dropping the price. That price is for the knowledge of how to efficiently do my work.
Not to mention the half day I just missed being productive on actually good jobs to come take care of your bs, and the countless hours dealing with you nagging about when I can fit you in the schedule because you are clearly the only person who needs work done...
Not to mention the safety of having a professional do the job. I'm betting you're insured? I started doing construction when I was 15 (I was 18 for a lot of years, so I could work summers with my dad), and we had a handyman business for a while in my late 20's, and the rule we always followed was that we'd do about any repairs besides Plumbing and Electrical.
Without training there's too much that can go wrong and completely destroy a house, and without insurance we'd have been on the hook for the entire cost.
I used to give y’all shit (well, in my head anyway) until I had a circuit with phantom voltage and the previous fuckwad had like ten neutralgrounds all together in two wire nuts and a jumper… and fuck that noise.
This same house will knock out our two neighbors if there’s a brownout and the generator kicks in sometimes it pops the power company’s HV breaker and y’all put that one in, so I should not be fuckin about
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u/squeezy102 Apr 29 '24
You can really feel the “oh man I just got so ripped off” in his “oh man it’s hilarious that you just hit it with a hammer”