There is one thing I notice about people

and it's that some of them become so detail oriented they lose the big picture.

I recall a time when I had the shingles off of a house and I was busy replacing them and wondering about the dark cloud on the horizon and how much time I had before the skies unzipped.

A piece of tissue paper blew into the front yard and the homeowner got pretty upset.

The guy I was working for, the homeowner, had a leg in a cast and didn't get around very well, so he brought the entire process to a screeching halt, had me climb off of the roof, pick up the paper and put it in the trash can and securely fasten the lid.

"It only takes a second," he said.

Yeah, right. It probably cost an entire fifteen minutes or more when you add all things up, including having to pick up where you left off. An annoying interruption like that can ruin the verry rhythm of a job.

First of all, that lousy piece of tissue paper probably would have kept moving in the breeze and if it didn't, it was no big deal. Nobody was going to come and steal it. It could have easily been gotten to during the pick up phase of the job.

In fact, it probably would have melted to nothing in the ensuing downpour.

Throughout the day, I had a few other little 'only takes a second' things to do.

Anyway, If I recall, I had to cover the unfinished part of the roof with a tarp or two until the squall passed, but there was some leakage. I remember having to repaint a ceiling.

It probably could have been worse.

Still, had the idiot of a homeowner simply focused on the issue at hand, he'd have saved himself a pretty good sized chunk of change, and a lot of grief.

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The butler blog has been posted:

http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/


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