Got an electrician in today to install some extra sockets in a bedroom.

We’ve cleared half the room to give him space to work, lift the floorboards etc, and from his reaction you’d think we’d given him a lifetimes supply of C&H.

I get that some folk are physically unable to move furniture or whatever, but it can’t be that unusual to make space and protect your furniture?

I’d always move stuff out the way. Probably wouldn’t lift the floor boards as I’m not sure know where they need them lifting. But to be honest, if you like your stuff you should alys move it yourself.

We’re having all our downstair floring replaced soon and I’ll pretty much be moving everything I can to the garage so they can just come in a get it done.

My customers are generally pretty good about clearing a space for me ahead of time, and it is much appreciated.

When it doesn’t happen I have learned to charge for my time clearing a spot as working around their clutter gives me a headache and makes it almost impossible to clean up properly.

I follow a tradesman page on facebook and some of the stories they tell are unbelievable. A very common one is customers that are getting loft conversions and the builders turn up to find the loft is still full to the brim with crap

Doing electrical rewires for the local council in the 1990’s.
We saw it all, some houses like palaces others like a squat.
We would pre warn the tenants would be in there house the following day.
If they didn’t bother tidying up that was their problem.
We would just lift the carpets and fold them over all the crap they left lying.

Other highlights include trying to move a cooker on the greasiest floor ever and a dog doing a turd in my tool box, halcyon days!

Other highlights include trying to move a cooker on the greasiest floor ever and a dog doing a turd in my tool box, halcyon days!

Shouldn’t laugh but it reminds me of a tiem a mate invited me back to his new house share. Telling me it was really cheap, but a bit dirty. He said keep your shoes as there might be poo on the floor, I thought from the cats that were roaming around but no, some of it was human shit apparently…

There’s nowt so queer as folk,etc,etc.

In 1961 my dad was an electrician. He went to a house to install a power socket in one of the bedrooms. First he had to move out all the heavy furniture in the way, then he lifted the carpet. Under which he found another carpet. Having lifted that he found lino. That too was lifted and after putting the socket in and putting everything back the day was gone. Totally fed up on his way home he walked into Blackpool Fire Station and applied for a job. He retired 30 years later as County Fire Officer for East Sussex and last year celebrated getting his pension for as long as he’d served.
He still has a section of the pole that Lancashire Fire Brigade gave him when he retired.

Might have all been different if he’d arrived to find the room ready to work 🙂

Back in the 70s and early 80s my dad had a sideline business repairing electrical goods (TVs mainly). I once went to help him collect a TV and put my hand on the light beige wall. When I peeled my hand back off, there was a nice white handprint where my palm had lifted off the thick layer of nicotine. The TV was also a write-off as the same nicotine had rotted through lots of the wiring having seen a huge build-up due to the static electricity old TVs used to create.

We’ve cleared half the room to give him space to work, lift the floorboards etc,

You’ve done 95% of the work, should have just added the sockets yourself whilst your’re there!

from his reaction you’d think we’d given him a lifetimes supply of C&H.

Is this good or bad?

Is he pleased at what you had done, or irritated at the half you hadnt cleared

I used to see a lot of guff on facebook “on the tools”, where a painter has just painted around a sheet of plasterboard that had been left in a room, along the theme of “not my job mate”, but to be fair a lot of them (50%?) were pretty valid.

Youre working on a an estate of 100+ houses, and the trades before you cant be arsed to clear up properly, i imagine that gets pretty tiresome pretty quickly. I know i get a bit dramatic when i get stressed or irriated.

sure, it isnt that hard to move a sheet of plasterboard downstairs and out to a skip, but at the end of the day, it ISNT his job.

and its little bit of nothing laziness like that that mean that new build housing stock is crap.

I think whoever fitted that window at about three mins into that video fitted all the exterior doors here. None of them close/open properly. Grr.

Ex painter and decorator here. You’d be amazed how many people don’t. In the end it did me a favour as I stopped giving prices for work for my regulars as even they would rather I moved stuff. I remember one day in particular when my father and I turned up to do a bedroom for one lady (30s ,well spoken in a decent job) all her dirty clothes were still strewn about, even used underwear with stained panty liners still attached. No words were spoken,we just walked out.

That video above exemplifies exactly why I came off the tools. I worked with too many idiotic morons (many of them racist bigots, more than one were Combat18 members) who had no interest in doing a decent job. The longer they could sit in the van/cafe/McDonalds and get away with it the better. Note this was in pre-mobile phone days so they couldn’t be easily monitored.
One of them, while I was an apprentice, would often leave me working downstairs as soon as the tenants left for work (social housing rewires) and go upstairs to rummage through underwear drawers & laundry baskets and would take great delight when he used to find dirty knickers, sex toys etc.
Truly horrible experience working with him, but he genuinely couldn’t see any issues with it and would brag about his finds with the rest of the idiots. I didn’t stay much longer with that company as I couldn’t even look at him without feeling repulsed.
I don’t think incidents like that are uncommon either.