My brother contracted this guy to pick up some furniture in AZ at my place and drive it back to his place in Georgia. Not quite sure where he found the guy. The guy shows up on time with a decent truck, everything seems ok. Guy was playing the local christian music station and quoting the bible the whole time he was loading everything. Dude is paid his deposit. Everything's loaded up, all good, guys takes off.
Well a week later my bro gets a call from the dude. He says he won't deliver the furniture unless he's paid double what we agreed to. My brother is like WTF, you said you'd deliver it for so much bla, bla. Dude says nope, if you want to see your furniture again you gotta pay me. I tell my bro, you agree to pay in a couple days. I'll get on a plane and head out, and when he shows up, we tell him if he wants his truck back give us a full refund. And all the furniture. But no, my brother just paid him. Oh well, I was kind of looking forward to beating scaring the shit out of the fucker - what a lying cheating piece of crap.
Reminds of this one time, at band camp, there I was, bustin my ass
My friends dad was a General Contractor. I was young and trying to make a name for myself. He would hire me to do all sorts of stuff for his projects. Occasionally I'd hire on to be part of one of his crews for a while if things were too slow for me to pay the bills.
He hands me a job to build a deck on a house he had built a few years before for a (trigger word) lawyer. Big fancy home on one of the greens at the cunt ree club. No drawings, no real plan at all. I discuss and sketch and shit and we come to an agreement. I have him go pay for the material and I will take half pay about half way and final when all the stuff is cleaned out if his yard. I'm working all by myself.
Once I start putting the redwood down, his wife (VERY nice lady, genuinely sweet) would compliment the work every day. He would meet me in the mornings and was all impressed with the workmanship.
I work late on the last day. I've been cleaning up every day so there isn't anything like that to do. I have like a dozen screws to drive when the dickhead comes home and right away comes to see what's up. I'm like, hi sir, see that I only have this little bit to do, you can go ahead and write that check and I'll be out of your way. He says, oh, well, there is this problem. What? See how the Phillips screw heads aren't all facing the same direction. I tell him that is called clocking the screws and is not standard practice for exterior construction such as a redwood deck. He says that either I clock every screw or take a couple hundred off the price.
I put my cordless in reverse and started pulling screws out as fast as I could. He asks what I am doing. I tell him that it took me about 4 days to get this far but I can have it all taken apart by about 10PM. Fuck off.
He sorta freaks, goes and gets his check book and writes me the check. I take the check, grab my battery charger and start to leave. So he asks what I'm doing now and I tell him that my tasks are done, I've been paid and I am going home. He gets PISSED. He wants to get up in my face and I am desiring this, too. I tell him that I can stay to finish and replace what I took off while he was trying to fuck me but it will cost him a couple hundred extra. He agrees. So I say, upfront, in cash. He disappears, comes back, hands me a couple of bills and disappears.
I was at his bank when they opened for business in the morning. Told my friends dad and that really pissed him off.
Several years later, I get a call to bid a job. I arrive to the same house. I meet the same very nice lady but she doesn't recognize me. I look it all over and give an estimate a day or two later. They want to give me the work, mainly because I did some work for their friend. I draw up a contract (back then I usually just shook hands) where I am paid in full prior to work starting and meet them in their kitchen to get it all signed. Oh, that is just unheard of. So I look out their door and point to the deck and tell them I built that deck. You could have heard a pin drop. HAHAHAHA!!!! Pregnant pause. But you know what, that guy agreed, signed the contract and wrote me a check (which I promptly deposited and waited to clear before I did anything) No issues at all and he was very polite every day.
