Many of the jobs my company does are quoted, that means that the jobs we do are at a set and fixed pre-determined price. The customer comes in and says what they want moved and we give them a price based on what they said they want. But rather than giving a dollar amount, the customer is given an hourly rate, and told how many hours there are to do it. So a customer comes in and says they want 20 desks, 30 cabinets, and 200 boxes moved, they're told that it's 5 hours at $100 an hour for four guys (or whatever the time and rate are). But the catch is that we are only allowed to move exactly what was quoted, exactly 20 desks, 30 cabinets, and 200 boxes (or less). They can't add things on, they can't get us to do something else, we are hired to move exactly what's on the move list and no other work whatsoever. The customer is fully advised of this fact. Life would be much easier if they'd just tell them a flat $500, but that's a separate MiM post and not the point of this thread.
So this comes from comes from my file room job which was grossly under-quoted (link). The quote was 12 guys and 12 hours. The job was a total clusterfuck mess so I really had no idea what was required, but the bottom line was that she considered our part of the job to be completed at around the 7 or 8 hour mark. Okay, well the only thing I'm clear on as to what we're supposed to be doing, is to follow her instructions, so if she says we've done it all, we're done, beer time fellas.
But no, even though we're done, she's got us booked for 12 hours so she's going to use for those full 12 hours. (Let's not even get into the argument as to how the 12 hour shift is illegal, particularly considering that with our travel time factored in, it's a 14 hour shift). She wants to send a crew to another jobsite, she wants some work done at this one, she wants guys to organize the storage room, she wants us to do any menial task she can come up with to get her 12 hours of blood, sweat and tears. Uh no, we're here to move the file room, NOTHING ELSE, considering that this is a repeated problem with her, there's no way she doesn't know this. I mean she's a valuable client, so I can bend the rules a bit for her, but not to the extent that she's looking for. So she hmm's and hah's this for a bit, and decides that rather than getting her staff to box up the offsite storage files, she'll get us to do it. Okay, at least we're still in the file room, I have no idea if we're supposed to do this, but according to her, we were supposed to move the whole room so I guess I can still consider this to be part of the quote. We get to work on that and I carefully managed the time to make sure that it was done by the 11:45 mark so that she couldn't pull any more of that add-on crap.
She just expected us to do anything and everything for 12 hours, like she owned us for the time she was paying for us to be there. Never mind that this is something that is specifically dis-allowed by the contract, it's just a damn rude treatment of people.
So this comes from comes from my file room job which was grossly under-quoted (link). The quote was 12 guys and 12 hours. The job was a total clusterfuck mess so I really had no idea what was required, but the bottom line was that she considered our part of the job to be completed at around the 7 or 8 hour mark. Okay, well the only thing I'm clear on as to what we're supposed to be doing, is to follow her instructions, so if she says we've done it all, we're done, beer time fellas.
But no, even though we're done, she's got us booked for 12 hours so she's going to use for those full 12 hours. (Let's not even get into the argument as to how the 12 hour shift is illegal, particularly considering that with our travel time factored in, it's a 14 hour shift). She wants to send a crew to another jobsite, she wants some work done at this one, she wants guys to organize the storage room, she wants us to do any menial task she can come up with to get her 12 hours of blood, sweat and tears. Uh no, we're here to move the file room, NOTHING ELSE, considering that this is a repeated problem with her, there's no way she doesn't know this. I mean she's a valuable client, so I can bend the rules a bit for her, but not to the extent that she's looking for. So she hmm's and hah's this for a bit, and decides that rather than getting her staff to box up the offsite storage files, she'll get us to do it. Okay, at least we're still in the file room, I have no idea if we're supposed to do this, but according to her, we were supposed to move the whole room so I guess I can still consider this to be part of the quote. We get to work on that and I carefully managed the time to make sure that it was done by the 11:45 mark so that she couldn't pull any more of that add-on crap.
She just expected us to do anything and everything for 12 hours, like she owned us for the time she was paying for us to be there. Never mind that this is something that is specifically dis-allowed by the contract, it's just a damn rude treatment of people.
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