Do particularly dangerous jobs make you grumpy?

[Slvrmple72]

I think for me what has been worse is when I have goofed up on a tree and the next job has me more tightly wound up than a clock spring. Then you look at another job, all wound up, and the guy says thats too much I am paying cash. I have been so aggravated that I could just punch'em for saying that stupid phrase. Risk your life for less money. Why don't you kiss my arse for twenty bucks and we call it even?

Good analogy to a chess game. Some trees are that complicated but I don't see too many chess games with a lot of physical exertion. I don't care how grumpy I get I love the work, the challenge, and that as well as the respect for trees keeps me at it.

 

[treevet]

I agree with the cash thing. Couple of weeks ago I did a nice job for a wealthy guy. At the end I couldn't find him and when I got him on the phone he kept saying he was going to give me cash (8K) and he was getting it together. 4 days later he had it together and I met him and he handed me a big envelope.
It was 5 hundred short and he said he took some off for giving me cash. Well....doesn't taking 5 hun off take the advantage of getting cash out of the picture. He gave me the difference.

Ofcourse I claimed it on my taxes.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Well....doesn't taking 5 hun off take the advantage of getting cash out of the picture.

depends on how you look at it, if you do not claim it and pay 20% actual for feds and 10% for state then you save a lot more with cheating on your taxes.

If you are just "cheating" on sales tax then 500 is close to 6%.

It would torque me a bit that he would assume to adjust the fee without negotiations. Besides 8k is a lot of dough to have floating around the house/shop, and you cannot pay legitimate bills with it if you are keeping it off the books.
Jobs like that are more of a headache to go cash then they are worth

 

[ropensaddle]

I woke this morning with a very grumpy attitude, got unjustifiaby snide responding to Thillmaine's excellent thread on dueling cranes and OSHA, and in a very general sense was a complete jerk until I got today's job safely on the ground and cut up. It wasn't until I left the job waving at very happy clients that I realized that risking my life makes me downright grumpy.

It was a moderately large dead kellogg oak in the laguna mountains east of here.

Because the tree had a spiderweb of power, phone and cable lines restricting my safe DZ to less than 90 degrees, rigging off the dead tree was a must.

I knew the tree was hollow and full of aged silver hangers and branches that had clearly died 3-4 years brfore this tree died a couple years ago.

It was a case of dead and deader above utility drops. The only advantage this nightmare removal offered me was a lean over the pole and drops I wanted to avoid. That may sound crazy, but it isnt to me.

Knowing I had to rig this tree(no crane access) and wanting to exert the bare minimum of shock loading on it meant the preferred loading stress would be 180 degrees off the lean over the pole, exactly where my 75 degrees of DZ was. This is the direction I speedlined the entire tree that wasn't cut and chucked that way by hand.

When I'm doing dead trees I think of myself as a spider tiptoeing up the tree trying not to jar it whatsoever until serious weight has been removed from the leader that I am tied into, to me that means cutting and chucking in small pieces atleast 3 times my body and gear weight.

In this tree I cut and chucked all the hangers after tying them to the tree. Once this was done the speedlining went smoothly with all dynamic forces applied away from the lean.

Once I had a 70 foot fat stick left in the air, I tied a bull line to it, came down, locked the hubs on my old 84 toy 4X4 climbed up the hill about 90 feet away from the stick, tied my front G eye hitch off to a big ponderosa pine, played my 12K pound winch line off the back of the tooltruck about 30 feet to the bull line.

The stick stood straight up nicely and fell precisely inline with the winch line with me cutting with a 394 husky, and my buddy on my truck's winch control.

And despite being bitten about 20 times by the fire ant colony in the hollow base of the tree, I left the job wondering if potential danger to me as a climber makes me so serious that I turn into a knit picking tyrant who needs to chill out?

I don't think so, I think it has kept me alive for 34 years in this biz. All I can do is apologize after I come out of my trance.

What do you guys think?

Do dangerous trees affect any of you this way?

Are you too tyrants about your means and methods when it's your azzes up there on the end of a line?

I know it makes my dinner and beer taste a little better than usual tonight.

jomoco

Nah I just do it. Are you saying it makes you a neocon bootlicker
What pizzes you off is when your in a impossible contortion and ask your
groundy are you ready no answer look down and he's yapping on a friggin
cell phone absolutely priceless:hmm3grin2orange:

 

[treevet]

depends on how you look at it, if you do not claim it and pay 20% actual for feds and 10% for state then you save a lot more with cheating on your taxes.

If you are just "cheating" on sales tax then 500 is close to 6%.

It would torque me a bit that he would assume to adjust the fee without negotiations. Besides 8k is a lot of dough to have floating around the house/shop, and you cannot pay legitimate bills with it if you are keeping it off the books.
Jobs like that are more of a headache to go cash then they are worth

I have stated my name on AS and for the record I do not cheat. But as you mentioned the assumption to adjust the fee without discussion was a surprise and jeopardized our relationship that was a good one previously. He has a lot of work and can afford it (from my side) and he lives quite a distance away and there are no high level arborists way up where he lives (what he gets out of it).

 

[treevet]

I also think we are more apt to do a real nasty take down without passing if it is a very important client. If you pass on it or try to scare them off with a ridiculous price then someone else will do it and after it is done it is not likely you will get that client back no matter what you say.

Had one of those a couple of months ago. A black locust, robinia, had uprooted and not gone over while many other blow downs were all around it. The root plate was about 45 degrees out of the ground, maybe 100 foot tall at 30" dbh.
It was over the house and had to be rigged and there was nothing opposite to tie it to. Had to tag line every piece.

If it happened today, I would have asked a neighbor a couple of house yards down to let me put my 35" wide dingo in their yard and get some tension on it.

 

[Reg]

Difficult and dangerous jobs never put me in a bad mood, boring and monotonous ones might though. I can switch to high-alert etc without loosing any composure whatsoever....but what truly makes me ANGRY is when the folks around just take it all for granted, instead of raising their game also

Very good thread jomoco!

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I have stated my name on AS and for the record I do not cheat.

I think most of us don't and that it is bad practice to do on a regular basis. Aside from the risks involved, it creates other accounting and security problems, which I thought I should mention.

Most people look at the cash in had value vs taxation, but do not think farther on down the line.

Then there is the image problem of offering work for cash, many see it as a lower order of skill level, sort of handyman type stuff vs skilled trade.

 

[treevet]

We're on a rain day today....

Yeah, I have in particular a Doctor I work for who is always pulling a wad of cash and let's make a deal attitude. It offends me. If he was offered cash for a discounted service wouldn't he be offended. Sometimes you just gotta bite your tongue.

 

[teamtree]

I too get really focused on big removals or jobs along the highways. Some may say grumpy. Whatever.

Rained out here too Treevet.

I agree on the cash thing. I never ask for cash and I think it is somewhat unprofessional to do so. I like to send a bill to the customer but if they offer a check at the end of the job.

I need to run all my sales through the business so I can show a profit and get financing, etc. etc. I also need it on the books to pay the bills.

 

[pdqdl]

:agree2:

...

I agree on the cash thing. I never ask for cash and I think it is somewhat unprofessional to do so. I like to send a bill to the customer but if they offer a check at the end of the job.

I need to run all my sales through the business so I can show a profit and get financing, etc. etc. I also need it on the books to pay the bills.

Yep! Particularly the part about showing a profit. I have no problems making cash go away by paying bills.

 

[Jumper]

Freaked one ex boss/climber right out. He was impossible to deal with on those days, a good guy most of the time. Temper never solved anything IMHO.

 

[ropensaddle]

My grumpy days are not from doing a bad one it is from
not getting paid what they are worth. Some of them are
friggin worth thousands more than you end up getting

 

[OLD CHIPMONK]

Well phrased ! Other job go better than anticipated & we all make a killing ! Equates to " win some - loose some". Glad to see your still out their " ROPE"

 

[ropensaddle]

Well phrased ! Other job go better than anticipated & we all make a killing ! Equates to " win some - loose some". Glad to see your still out their " ROPE"

Heck gotta be ya know, the bills gotta get paid some how
and my wife can't make the bread I do. As long as your truth
holds out on winning some we will be aight

 

[Bigus Termitius]

Define grumpy.

Just flat irritable at anything?

Not me. I'm just fine, focused...serious, but fine....until....

....somebody screws up or isn't focused, or serious.

Then I'm not always the nice boss that I otherwise am 99% of the time.
I tend to bark. However, I do recover well.

My approach, even in dangerous situations, is to be cool, calm, collected, and courteous. The less tension and less nervous I can keep everyone the better. Often times those that are nervous will tend to make mistakes that they otherwise wouldn't.

I like to lead by example and thus if I'm serious, focused, calm, cool, collected, and courteous, then others are more inclined to follow suit. And it works, whether it's a particularly dangerous situation on a daily basis, or at a storm.