It's not Personal -- It's Business

Colin told me a story about when work was being done to his flat back in Edinburgh. Colin's dad, kind and generous father that he is, organized the work while Colin was at work. This was no convenient task, as his dad lives two hours from Edinburgh and had to make the drive there and back on a regular basis to oversee the work.

One morning Colin's dad rearranged some appointments to accomodate the painters. But when they buzzed to be let in over an hour past schedule, Colin's dad told them they could just go home. In other words, they could get lost. He preferred to find new painters for the job, rather then have to work with ones that were late and did not have the courtesy to call in advance. While it may seem harsh, that's business. It's nothing personal.

And so that brings me to our decision on a painter.

As things were looking bleak at the end of last week in regard to who we would get in to paint, I contacted an additional painter that was recommended via the brownstoner. Someone on the post receommended the two-man operation of Greg and Koji a.k.a. www.paintyourapt.com. When I called on Thursday, Greg wasn't optimistic that they could take on a job this week because they were waiting to confirm another job. We agreed that if that job fell through, he would be back in touch. Saturday morning he contacted me to say that he had not heard back on the other job and that he was happy to come by and take a look at our place and give us a quote. Unfortunately, because the floors were still wet we waited to arrange it for Sunday morning.

In the meantime, since Thursday I had left a couple of messages for Painter #1 to confirm that should we move forward he would be available to start on Monday. I also e-mailed him. But I did not hear back from him until mid-day on Saturday to say yes he could start on Monday and for him to apologize for not getting back to me sooner. At that point I was debating whether we should just go ahead with Painter #1 or wait until we gave Greg and Koji an opportunity to submit a bid. We decided to wait.

Greg and Koji were on time and professional. As a small operation they would be doing all the work. They would not have a hired crew. Greg and Koji would be accountable for their own work -- if anything came up, we could go directly to them. That seemed like a plus to me. When their bid came back at the same price at Painter #1, we were torn. As much as we wanted to give Painter #1 the business (we really liked him as a person), we were concerned we could have problems reaching him. We want the job done well and by professionals. We feel confident that Greg and Koji will fulfill those expectations.

Greg came back on Sunday evening to drop off some of the materials and for us to pay him the materials deposit and the first half of the fee. We signed the contract and so here we go...