BUILDERS

Hello lads and ladies!

Well, as some of you know Amy B and I are getting a flat together. No, ye bastards, this is not Hendri and Erica MK2. We are just friends.

But once again my mind wanders, the point of this post is actually on how to deal with builders!
Shoot them. Seriously though, shoot them. I'm not kidding around, shoot them.

As a person in the building industry this post may very well come back to bite me in the ass, so I'm probably going to delete it soon.

Context: We made the choices and the landlords [amy's parents] paid. We would, everything going according to schedule, have moved in on the 1st of Feb this year. Our new time to move in is Thursday. Now, because i work in the industry, you might have expected me to know better. Sadly, my first experience with a builder was actually very pleasant. Should anyone ever have the pleasure of working with Mr Dickie G (Actual name) I highly recommend him, however, he is completely atypical. I do learn from my mistakes though, and as such I have decided to present:

Conrad's Guide to Dealing with Builders

Step One:

Shoot them, have a ready made method of disposing the body and an alibi. I recommend dumping off Chapman's Peak.

Step Two:

Realise that you procured a builder for a reason, i.e. you needed building done. Procure more builders.

Step Three:

In the industry it is standard to have 3 builders tender on a job, do your best to find three and start an impromptu bidding war. Try get the most expensive and highly recommended one down to the price of the cheapest and the cheapest to offer to do the work for free and give you a pork chop.

Step Four:

Your builder will give you an estimate for the amount of time the project will take. You will point and laugh cynically, saying "I know how these things go, I read The Guide!".

Step Five:

Renegotiation! This is the most important step. Your builder has quoted to do the work for R50,000 excluding materials. You tell him that you will pay him R45000 for the job but, if he completes on schedule, you will pay him R55000. I know this seems silly to everyone in almost every other industry. Pay him extra to meet a deadline? Surely not! But remember, this is not IT. This is the building industry!

Step Six:

Visit the building site frequently and unexpectedly. Do not be surprised to find the builders a) sleeping b) drinking c) not there. When you confront the builder about this he will claim that it is because his people were victims of the "dop stelsel", you will remark that this is unlikely as he is white and he will ask you if you are a racist. They love that line, there is no coming back from it so don't bother. The idea is that at some point the guy may get a clue... well... maybe.

Step Seven:

Shock and awe! Its the due date and the builder isn't finished building. The fact of the matter is that he's not going to be done for another month after the original due date but think of the upside: The R5000 that you saved will buy lovely lawn furniture (well, the table anyway) because luckily the Rands in the builders eyes at the renegotiation phase blinded him to the obvious fact that he never finishes on time. Mwahahaha!

Step Eight:

Sit around with the appropriate genitals in hand while issuing threats to the builder who is now three months late. Finally shoot him and resolve that next time you will hire an architect so that he can handle all this shit

BTW, spellchecker wasn't working and its late, no spelling checks for this blog pls, I still want comments though!