With an infant taking up our time and my wife's new job bringing in some glorious spending money, we've now broken the benefit vs. cost threshold where it makes sense to hire a maid. We've had maids/maid service companies at various points since we've lived in this house and they've run everywhere from $65 to $100 (full service -- minus the handjobs, jackals -- and coming once every two weeks). After checking her references, we brought in a maid today to look at the house and give us a bid... which was $250. Contingent on our Roomba helping her. And she wouldn't do wash or change sheets (that "costs extra"). As I've mentioned on here before, I conduct a lot of interviews at work, so I'm pretty jaded when it comes to people making ridiculous requests or having a monstrously inflated view as to typical pay rates in the field -- hey, we all make mistakes sometimes. But this lady had me floored. She asked for a counter offer, I stuttered for a bit before I told her that her competitors charge half of what she does (I was generous) and quickly led her out the door. Focus: When have you expected to pay a certain amount only to be shocked by the actual price (either drastically higher, or drastically lower than what you expected)? If you paid it, was it worth it? Alt. Focus: Adventures in the professional world!! When has someone approached you being completely off-base with what they expected? Have you ever been the person asking for what was, in hindsight, too much or too little? (Feel free to disguise details if needed for privacy's sake.)
I do management consulting... so my entire job is managing my clients ridiculous demands and expectations. I'll help build their strategy plan to deliver to the Board or give them feedback on how they want to grow some capital and not hear from them for a month. Then they turn around and demand that I have a final product ready by yesterday. As for cleaning ladies... Yeah they charge a ton more than they're worth. But I'll be god damned if I give up that luxury. In trying to cut costs before our wedding, I canceled my cable last week instead of firing the maid. Bump.
Last 10 years or so I have been doing parts/warehousing/purchasing. So basically I shop for a living. Pricing from dealers still confuses me to this day. And they rip you the hell off, well the parent companies more rip off the dealers then anything. I have friends that work in dealer ships and the parent company has left there invoices on stuff once and a while. Parts they charge the dealer for 300 dollars, cost them 20 sometimes. Worst one is a dipstick for one of our Kalmar reach stackers, this piece is literally a 6 foot piece of metal(maybe 1/4"w by 1/32"thick) with a plastic handle on it and they charge us something like 600 dollars.
I do environmental consulting. I'm responding to an RFP right now that was clearly written by someone in a client procurement department who has no idea what we do. The line items are written like they're ordering bolts or turbine blades instead of consulting services. For example: Item X.1 Disposal of hazardous waste - per drum Disposal from where? To where? How many drums? What kind of waste, as certain types need to be handled/disposed differently? It's incredibly frustrating.
Ive been bouncing around the idea of getting a maid for for awhile. I think that its dumb to do for an 800 sq ft apt, but then I realize that even when I "clean", stuff is still not as clean as I'd like. But that pricing is hilarious. Even in a city like Chicago, you can get a maid to come every other week for an hour for $30-40 plus tip. Part of the reason I was hesitant cause my last two experiences were awful. Moving out of a townhouse, we paid a mother daughter team $150 to clean for a couple hours and we still got nicked on our security deposit because some stuff needed to be cleaned again. Our landlord was a psychotic, anal douchelord, but he had a point. Got a different service at the next apartment I moved into to do a preliminary cleaning cause the previous tenants were slobs, my new landlord was really hands off and didn't care much, so we got cleaners and subtracted it from first month's rent. Similar situation, I'm in my bathroom and the kitchen two days later and find myself scrubbing. That being said, my sister and coworkers all have had good, consistent experiences, so maybe come spring, it's gametime.
My client at my agency is always asking for ridiculous shit. Everything is based off what they paid before. Basically, they used to drive a shitty Pinto they paid $5,000 for. Now they have $20,000 and when we tell them it'll get them a really nice Civic, they freakout. They want to get a Ferrari, because they're paying 4 times as much. They don't understand that just because it's more than what they paid before, that they don't get everything. "Here's $3,000 we need you to make a 2 minute Pixar quality product animation. With music and full HD. Thanks!"
Man we had a Ayi (maid) when we lived in China. It was about 100 bucks a month plus a little extra to have her cook us meals. She came five days a week. It was funny when my brother's anal ABC girlfriend decided she had enough with what she saw as slacking on our maid's part and chewed her out for a few hours. The maid demanded more money for the deep level clean she was asking for but his girlfriend told her it was a standard level most Ayi's were doing for less money than we were paying her. In reality it what she was cleaning was probably overkill for two dudes in a two bedroom apartment. Most days, after the weekend cleanup on Monday, was her just redusting the already clean house. I think my brother cut it down to just a couple days a week after I left to save money. Alt-focus: One of the biggest over estimations I ever made was during an interview for a job when I was in China. It was a very basic web based marketing job for a local University (search engine optimization stuff mostly). The interviewer asked me what I thought an income would be for this position, and he said specifically not to worry about an upper limit. Having not really put a huge amount of thought into this beforehand I mentioned something in the range of 45k US dollars. Man what an idiot I was. It might have been 20k TOPS, still better than most ESL jobs and in China could go a long way, but fuck did I overshoot the worth. The interviewer immediately turned off, said that was way over anything a non Chinese speaking job was going to pay, and the interview was basically dead. I told him I'd take what ever they were willing to give me and reiterated his no upper limit remark. All for not. I never heard from him after that.
Anyone who has ever had "a good idea for an app." They eventually describe an app that would take a small team a few months to build, but their budget would cover a single engineer for maybe six hours.
I work in financial services so I see versions of this all the time. "I think I can get 8%, as a floor, every year on my own" "I want 2 million of whole life insurance for $100 a month. Also, I smoke and am diabetic." "I have $10 to invest, how can I make it a million in three years?" But sometimes it's nice when you get a; "Whoa! I thought it was going to cost WAY more than that! Thank you so much!" Which is a nice validation of sometimes very meticulous planning and juggling.
I feel you, as an environmental attorney/litigator, I've seen way too many of these things. And most clients have no idea how much this shit costs. I've worked on cases that routinely ran into the millions for remediation/disposal of hazardous waste. When clients came to me because they had a small leak in a heating oil tank and I told them 'ok, I'm putting your home owner's insurance on notice immediately if you have not done so already' - they always looked at me and said 'how much could it really cost to dig it up and put a new one in?' To which I replied 'if it hits groundwater, then it can cost tens of thousands, if not more, depending on how much is down there. And testing to find out isn't cheap either.' They never saw it coming.
Focus: Recently I needed some website work done I was too dumb and too intimidated to take on myself. Merging the two sites was going to cost at LEAST $600 done by someone here in the U.S. A buddy recommended a guy in Puerto Rico who had done programming work for him so I contacted him and his price ? $70 I almost shit. He worked his ass off and got it done 8 hours later. I even suggested leaving the sites offline and finish it the next day but he refused. Worked out great, and I paid him a little extra. Apparently a dollar goes a hell of a lot further in Puerto Rico than here.
Every now and then a vendor will try and sell us something at retail when we're buying way beyond wholesale. "Okay, we can sell you these guns at $700 per unit if you commit to buying 3,000 of them. Just send us a PO and we'll get cracking." "Are you sure about 700 bucks? That's retail pricing." "Where are you seeing that price?" "I googled the sku and found multiple sites that are selling the same product for $700. Retail." "Oh. Okay. We'll see if we can sharpen our pencil over here..." "No big deal. We'll go in another direction. Thanks, though. But you're quoting retail on 3,000 units. We're not even close." "Oh. Ohh. Oh. Okay. I see the problem. I quoted the wron price. They're actually $550." "I'm thinking $500. "$525?" "After this? Nah. We'll go with plan B" "We can do $500."
Focus: The first time I had a dress shirt and suit tailored for me, I balked at the price... until afterwards, when I realized it was totally worth it. Alt-focus: "U gotta be fkin kidding me" is the response I got from a person who requested a quote for my custom gunstock making services yesterday. Some people appreciate craftsmanship and are willing to pay for it, but many others like him do not. Or for some reason they assume I always work for pennies (or better yet, free!) because I just do it on the side, and friends and family can be the worst at that. A friend wanted me to make a bed frame and matching table for him out of solid walnut with boards nearly 2" thick without paying for labor last year and seemed offended when I told him it was unreasonable. I held back from saying fucking ridiculous like I wanted to but I think he got it after I explained how much work it'd take, especially because that isn't my specialty.
As a general rule, anything I'm replacing is too expensive. Even little things like batteries and air filters annoy me. However, the last time I had a flat tire, I was stuck taking it to one of those You're-So-Screwed retail tire chains; I fully expected to walk out of there with no less than two new rear tires and maybe a free air freshener. Much to my surprise, my bill was $5.00 + tax*. Instead of trying to guilt the chick driving on three tires and rim - with a car seat! - they merely patched it and I was on my way. * Results not typical. I highly recommend bringing a cranky toddler before nap time - you'd be amazed how quickly they move just to get that noise out of there...
Dancing on the edge of this topic, but one thing I've always hated paying for and always feel like it's too much is cabs/taxis. Before the advent of Uber, it always annoyed me when people wanted to take cabs. I have an usually had an unlimited public transportation pass and it's been pretty effective getting me everywhere. It always annoyed me that every additional person was a dollar, and it annoys the FUCK out of me watching the fare go up as we sit at a red light. I feel like the pricing of UberX should be the pricing for all cabs/taxis but that is just me. Now that shit can get borderline ridiculous given the surge pricing that happens, but still better most of the time.