Kennedy, Patrick (Heritage Council) wrote:
> during 20 + years of residential work I learned not to get into 
> couples arguments or decison making.
I like when there is an opportunity to work for civilized people.

One time we had a very wealthy client, a milk king, who used an 
intermediary to deal with us. The intermediary, as happens more often 
than not, was somewhat incompetent at their task. Regardless, we never 
got to meet the wealthy client, even though we spent a good deal of time 
working on the exterior of his residence. What we did get was his wife 
would come out during the day and yell at everyone what she wanted done. 
Eventually someone gave in and did what she wanted and rather quickly 
through the intermediary we were informed never to listen to the wife. 
Great.

We have also had clients that were psychotic and we should have had a 
psychiatric examination report before contracting with them. I consider 
more than one or two of these to be evidence of a trend. Sometimes what 
people need done at their residence is indicative of deeper problems.

I found out on another well-to-do residence that if you take a crew that 
is used to hanging off the side of the GM building in Manhattan it is a 
whole lot of changing of gears that has to go on to get the crew not to 
trample the flower beds.

But what gets to me the most is that every single residential job that I 
have taken on that it has meant entering into a discovery process to 
ferret out a unique set of rules, fantasy and weirdness that the 
homeowner has made up about their nest. So for me I no longer look at 
the work to be done, that is the easy part, I look at the person asking 
and try to figure out how much of a whack they are. Then I try to figure 
out how much time to add on for 'transactional costs', or if I want to 
run real quick.

And to go work for a co-op, with a board of whacks (particularly if they 
are architects or lawyers or actors or otherwise not satiated in their 
personal lives), is only a few steps from a family residential job.

][<en


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