Why do I always hire the losers??

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Does this go back to not having great social skills and not being a good judge of character?? It seems that no matter who I hire--plumber, carpenter, mechanic, doctor--I always end up with a poor job done and getting screwed.

I hired a carpenter to replace our roof---in 2 years, the roof had to be redone and the carpenter would not return my calls. I ended up hiring a different guy whose worker stepped through the floor of our attic and made a hole in the ceiling of my son's bedroom. That should have been my first clue, I guess, but I rehired him later to put a deck on our house. The deck is warped and discolored and needs to be replaced now.

I have hired plumbers who come to my house with a binder and a calculator and do a "diagnostic" on my pipes. I could do that: that damn things are leaking!! They charge by the parts they have to touch to complete a job. I escorted the man to the door, but not before his "diagnostic" cost me $35.

I went to a knee surgeon last year to repair some torn cartilage in my knee. It took them a whole month to finally do an MRI to find I actually had a torn meniscus and needed arthroscopic surgery. Then they waited a month after the surgery to send me to physical therapy. By that time, the joint was frozen, scar tissue had formed and it was a long and painful road just to be able to walk.

NOW, I have come to find out that the bone in my knee has died, and it needs to be cut off and replaced with metal and plastic.

So is it me??? Or is it just hard to find people who do know how to do their jobs??

Lousy losers topic

Perhaps the worst was the doctor fiasco. Could you have pursued a malpractice suit? You must be in a great deal of pain.

Do you have accident insurance for the worker who feel through the floor?

Sometimes you can learn to do some repairs yourself. If not, ask your neighbours to find out if they have ideas about good contractors/plumbers.

In Canada people write to Mike Holmes who can fix shoddy contractor work. Do you have anything like this in the US?

There are many scam artists who rip people off with home repair jobs. Is there some sort of Better business bureau that can steer you to reputable contractors?

You poor woman. And I thought I had problems.

I have the same problem but i'm in a country town and there are very limited choices in tradesmen and doctors, you have to work with what you've got here. It can be hard to get tradesmen to come from the next nearest towns, they don't like the petrol cost and besides, if you have a problem with their work it's harder to get them to come back to fix the problem.

I think that a lot of so called 'professionals' really don't know what they're doing. I agree about the malpractice suit, provided you have the time and energy.

oh and the other thing I'm finding useful because the tradesemen around here aren't great is that you have to hang around and 'supervise' them, don't just leave them to it. You know your own home better than them and you can sometimes spot problems in what they are doing, like my plumber was putting a new sink in the kitchen, but I could see he hadn't left enough space to fit the washer in beside it. Owners can often see 'commonsense' problems that the tradies don't.
Also a lot of tradesmen expect you to nag them, you have to ring them repeatedly over some issues.

It's important to ask a lot of questions, which is often difficult for aspies, but a lot of the time I find I haven't asked the right questions and that's why problems have arisen.

The world seems to have so many incompetent experts these days that it's really a challenge to keep up with all of them. I think sartresue and Postperson have a good point about your considering a malpractice suit against the treating physician. All the best to you, ngonz.

Regarding contractors/repairmen, I think that is a universal problem. In fact, I've seen comics making fun of exactly how difficult it is to find a responsible repairman. There was a Dilbert comic where the repairman told Dilbert he would give him an estimate and then never show up, and Dilbert hired him because "no one else would even show up for the estimate." I've heard plenty of horror stories from NTs, so I think it is just a very common problem.

Well, I interviewed THOUSANDS of people, and only found about 10 I would hire! SO, assuming that is true for ALL industries, about 99.9% of all people are QUACKS! LUCKILY, MOST jobs are relatively simple, and even some complex ones have people that specialize a LOT. STILL, I doubt ANY industry has even 20% that are really any good.