How Much the Second Time?

We’ve heard Himself’s reason for stiffing contractors: he wasn’t satisfied with their work.

Whether you’re an architect, a cabinet maker, and undocumented Polish worker sleeping on site and pooping in a bucket, if you sign on with Team Self, your work had better be top notch, bucko, because Himself settles for nothing but the best and, by gum, if you don’t measure up, don’t come sniveling around Self Tower looking for dough.

Now, we all suspect the “unsatisfactory work” line is bullshit, but how would you know for sure? Maybe the architect really did draw the cupola on the clubhouse upside down or the undocumented workers chiseled the statues off the Bonwit Teller building too slowly.

The experience of hiring someone to do something and being disappointed by the result is familiar to just about any business or home owner. And it’s doubly frustrating, because not only are you out the time and dough, but you’ve still got to find and pay someone to rip out the shoddy work and do it right. Anyone who’s ever been through it will gladly bend your ear about the added time and expense.

But for all the stories of tradesmen and professionals not getting paid when Himself declared their product below exacting Self standard, I’ve never heard anyone ask him the next question:

“How much did it cost to redo it?"