Maybe you’ve seen pictures of U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka “AOC”) modeling an evening gown with “Tax the Rich” scrawled all over it. Now, I’d be real surprised to see someone wearing that when I’m at Home Depot picking up supplies. But I was MORE surprised by where AOC wore it — at a $30,000 per ticket fundraiser for the Metropolitan Opera.
As your humble correspondent, who spends half my waking hours poking my head into toilets, it’s difficult for me to understand how “the rich” think. But, do these rich, $30,000 per ticket attendees really believe that taxing themselves even more is a good idea? If they really LIKE paying taxes so much, shouldn’t they also be attending gala events to contribute $30,000 a ticket to the federal budget?
Maybe it would help us understand this better if, for a moment, we took a deep plunge downward from the lofty world of stretch limos to the base-level world of pickup trucks.
Let’s say your HANDYMAN was doing things that were not in your best interests. And he thinks of YOU as being rich, even though you’re not. And he feels so emboldened that he brags about what he’s doing to you, and even scrawls it all over his overalls. Here’s what his overalls might say:
“Upsell the Rich”
You need a window repaired, but your handyman really does not want to do a job that small. But instead of telling you that, he says, “you know all the windows in your house have been around for awhile, and soon all of them will have this problem.” Then he sells you on replacing ALL your windows. Now there’s something you never have to worry about with Fix St Louis. We actually PREFER small jobs to big jobs. And often, we’re the ONLY contractor that homeowners talk to who offer to REPAIR rather than REPLACE what’s broken.
“Inconvenience the Rich”
When you ask a contractor “when can you start?,” most likely they’ll give you an IDEA of when they can start, in weeks or months, but they won’t commit to specific work dates. “I’ll call you about a week beforehand,” they might say. Now, think about it. Who else in your personal or professional life, other than your immediate family, would you give away that much control of your calendar to? Who else would you allow to leave you in this unsettled state, forcing you to continue to think about it, and make sure it doesn’t fall through the cracks?
Contractors avoid commitments on starting dates for THEIR convenience, not yours. This is their way of reducing their down time to as little as possible, by stringing together the end of one job with the start of the next. Unlike pretty much everyone else, Fix St Louis will give you FIRM starting dates as soon as you agree to the job. Frankly, it makes our job tougher, as it puts us under a lot of pressure to accurately predict how long each job will take, and to place enough padding in our schedule for those jobs that take longer than we thought. But that’s OUR problem not yours — you’ll be able to place our work dates in your calendar, then move on to think about other things.
“Stall the Rich”
This is a more insidious version of “Inconvenience the Rich.” Instead of floating the starting date just to eliminate downtime between jobs, some handymen use this floating period to prioritize and rearrange their jobs, so that they work on bigger ones first, and the small job that you may have last, if ever. This can’t happen with Fix St Louis because we give you firm work dates upfront.
“Ditch the Rich”
This is the worst handyman practice of all, and sometimes morphs into criminal activity. This is “Stall the Rich” on steroids, where the endpoint is that the handyman may NEVER start, or never finish a job they started.
The most innocent, but still irritating, version is when a handyman really, really does not want your small job, but rather than tell you that directly, he chooses to avoid you and never get back to you.
On the other end of the spectrum are handymen who take money upfront, may even start the job, but never come back. Tell-tale signs include having to listen to tall tales, especially those intended to pull your heartstrings, like “I’m going to have to take a few days off next week to attend the out-of-town funeral of a Great Aunt who meant so much to me.” Needless to say, Fix St Louis would not have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau if we ever pulled stunts like these.
So, do you NOW understand how AOC can wear a “Tax the Rich” evening gown, and not have the $30,000 a ticket attendees throw her out the front door and land on her slogan? Me neither. But at least you’ve been warned that if your HANDYMAN shows-up wearing overalls that threaten the rich, it may be time to throw THEM out, and invite Fix St Louis in.
Dr Steve
Fix St Louis