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.