Had the pleasure of meeting the richest man in the county

The other day at the lumberyard I work at a man walked in at about 11am. He asked for a 3' stick of moulding. (We only sell full or half lengths of moulding) I went out brought back in an 8' piece and said "This is the shortest piece I have, will this work?" He said "but I only want 3' of it". I said "Well sir we don't sell moulding less than 8' but I will cut it for you if you like." "Nope, see what else you have out there" he said. I went out, came back in with a couple different pieces that were about 5' and 6' but didn't match what he wanted. He said "thank you" and left, not taking anything. I knew then I really made him mad. I would have cut the moulding he wanted if he hadn't have left just so he wouldn't be mad. My boss then came over and said "good job buddy, you just ticked off the richest man in the county" jokingly. A few minutes later my boss left for lunch. I felt bad for making the guy mad. An hour later the same customer came back in, tooth pick in his mouth. I knew he had lunch with my boss. Me tried to avoid me but when he realized I was the only one that could help him he did the biggest eye roll I have ever seen. Then said "YOU GOT THAT MOULDING CUT AND READY TO GO FOR ME?" I said "no sir I don't". "Well I just talked to your boss and he said he called down here and told you I was coming to get my molding" I never took the call but I went and cut his moulding, took his money and smiled the whole time and said thank you at the end. He mad me fell like the smallest person in the world. Ok rant over.

He must have inherited, I know several self made millionaires and they are good guys, it's usually the ones that got it handed to them who are smart mouths and think everyone should bow down.

And their wife is even worse. Nuff said!

I would have just given him the price for the 8' stick. Then added a couple of bucks to the price and told him that wasthe price of the 3' piece. His choice?

Steven

Ya, you might have felt like the smallest person in the world, but just remember, you are a better man than he will ever be.

When i was 13 my parents built a new home and i was there the day they started to dig the basement with a Bucyers Eire 22B I found a good spot to watch from while the started the sewer line and water line . The shovel operator was digging away and as the ditch got deeper the two other guys got down in the ditch and started digging with shovles looking for the sewer line and water line , one of them yelled at the shovel operator to get the probe out of the one truck and as he was getting down out of the shovel he yelled at me to get the probe Thinking i had no idea what he was talking about . Well i was about five feet from the truck and i got up and looked over the side and saw the Tee handled probe and pull iot out then walked over to the ditch and handed it down to the one guy . From that moment on i became the Go For over the next day and half . when they were done and loading up the one guy told me that if i had nothing to do that i could come out to the shop when they were there . Well that Guy ended up being my boss and his boss the owner of the company came in one day and i was watching the men work on a D7 Cat and i was getting tools or what ever they needed He sota of came unglude with me being there when Jon told him to pipe down the kid is learning something and is stayen out of trouble . The owner walked over to the time card rack pulled out a time card asked me my name and wrote it down and said HERE GO PUNCH IN , if your going to hang around here your going to work Back then this man owned not one but three large construction companys and two strip mines He paid vary well and my first Christmas there he came in the shop just before Christmas and started handing out plain white envelopes to everybody and i was the last one to get one as he went out the door sayen MARRY MHRISTMAS AND GOT IN HIS RED CADDY CONVERTABLE and backed away from the shop and dropped it in drive and floored it and out the lot he went hammer down. When i opened the envelope there was a brand new crisp 100 dollar bill in it . At 13 years old i was rollen in the money . As time went on you got a birthday gift (money) a bonus around the end of Aug. a turkey for thanks giving and with each year you were there that Christmas envelope got thicker and not by a little bit HE paid me a mans wage and i worked like the men . When i started driving and playing with cars he let me have one of the smaller bays in the Huge shop for working on my car. I had everything there to work with . He also owned one of THE NICEST farms anywhere around he ran a dairy herd on the main farm and beef at #2 farm when haying season came in the local kids would darn near get in fist fights to be the first there to help with hay as he paid 2.00 bucks and hour and his wife would put on a spread the likens you have never seen . There would be between 28-30 kids between both farms . He had more tractors then i can remember he ran two old Deerborn balers with V4 wisc. engines and there was three kids on the wagon in the field and at the barns there were no less them five in the mow and two unloading just as fast as they could get the bales on the elevator two to three tractors moving wagons between the field and the barns . And the best part of working for him was the fact when payday came you did not have to go to the bank to cash your check , it did not matter if you worked at the farm or you worked out on the job he would bring everybody pay in a white envelope with you deduction on a slip along with you weeks time and pay scale in CASH . It did not matter if we were doing a small job with five -ten guys or if there was 300 . When we were building part of I 75 he would go to the bank at 6 AM friday morning and get everybodys pay and jump in his Red Caddy eldordo convertable and it was hammer down from one end of the state to the other to be there at 4 PM . He had to have the best and money was no object . He bought the vary first 806 that was ever see and paid cash for it on the spot He bought me my own company truck as soon as i had a driver license and equiped that truck with every tool that was in the Mac tool catologe along with all the pullers and track pin press from OTC , John and i built the bed to go on the 1963 Ford F350 4x4 added i the PTO drive welder and a big PTO driven air compressor that would run a 100 lb jack hammer plus fuel and oil tanks. The truck came in Red and we had to paint the top half white (company colors) . Thinking back on that truck and compairing it to todays trucks , all i can say was she was one rough riding SOB. 352 V8 with a 4 speed , no P/S No P/W, NO A/C , no P/B but i did have a Am radio. and a company radio. Yea we had company radios and they were on repeters for when we were over a 100 miles from base. HE ran two of the companys from my town with the other on the wetern side of the state. Never had to go to any of the strip mines but they were about 70-100 miles south. During the summer i would work on the away jobs and when school started i would work around the area in the afternoons , I might be runnig a pan moving dirt or on a Dozed or i might be on the 15B or the 22B digging a basement for a new home . Set in on one new street and started digging basements and dug 21 down one side walked across the street and dug 19 up that side a day and a half each, kept me out of troubel.

Nope, he might have the most money in the county, but that bozo sure ain't the richest!!

Vet, I love reading your stories. Thank You!!

This is exactly why I did whatever I had to do to not be an employee. The boss was "joking"? I assume he made the rules in the first place? And he expects you to know when, and for whom to break the rules? I put up with that for 12 years, and I HATED it.

He made you feel like the smallest person in the world? Why? He was the small one. TDF

The Tractor vet; You got to work for a "real" man. The trouble is in today's world he would have been driven out of business by the "educated" MBAs and Government bean counters. At the college level they teach that you should not be "emotionally attached" to your employees. In other words treat them like slaves and any of them can be replaced by the next idiot walking down the street. Plus we all know that if you do not have a college degree these days your nothing. That thinking is part of the reason we have a country full of educated idiots that think they are "owed" a plush living for little work.

Tractor Vet: Thanks for the good story. Wish I had ever had a guy like that to work for. Hard to find another one like that.

My first real job was at 15. I walked to the local filling station and got on. There were three on the intersection and mine was a Mobil. Boss found out I could wrench a little so we started doing minor repairs, including lawnmowers. One Saturday morning I was finishing up putting a carburetor back on a mower, the customer comes in with the boss and are standing on the other side of the mower waiting on me to finish. Boss comes around and gets the wrench and says he'll finish up. I'm surprised because he is an idiot. He bends down and twists off the bolt and without missing a beat just tells the customer it will be after lunch before it will be done. I've worked for a lot of those kind of guys.

yea see if quite often its just goes with dealing with public if you own operate any kind business. trying to collect warranty is biggest scam you will ever see a lot of. they bring in starters, belts, even engines and want to be replaced with new by warranty. coarse all items being brought in are not even from the mower actually but they sure think so. we could right books on happenings with the public. this is common also come back to shop to pick up there unit but want to actually go back out with someone elses new unit. oh yea its very common.

My wife has an older friend that used to sell eggs and milk off the farm when she was young. Her dad told her that if you have a bad customer you can have a fist in your pocket but you better have a smile on your face!

(quoted from post at 03:57:34 12/12/15) The other day at the lumberyard I work at a man walked in at about 11am. He asked for a 3' stick of moulding. (We only sell full or half lengths of moulding) I went out brought back in an 8' piece and said "This is the shortest piece I have, will this work?" He said "but I only want 3' of it". I said "Well sir we don't sell moulding less than 8' but I will cut it for you if you like." "Nope, see what else you have out there" he said. I went out, came back in with a couple different pieces that were about 5' and 6' but didn't match what he wanted. He said "thank you" and left, not taking anything. I knew then I really made him mad. I would have cut the moulding he wanted if he hadn't have left just so he wouldn't be mad. My boss then came over and said "good job buddy, you just ticked off the richest man in the county" jokingly. A few minutes later my boss left for lunch. I felt bad for making the guy mad. An hour later the same customer came back in, tooth pick in his mouth. I knew he had lunch with my boss. Me tried to avoid me but when he realized I was the only one that could help him he did the biggest eye roll I have ever seen. Then said "YOU GOT THAT MOULDING CUT AND READY TO GO FOR ME?" I said "no sir I don't". "Well I just talked to your boss and he said he called down here and told you I was coming to get my molding" I never took the call but I went and cut his moulding, took his money and smiled the whole time and said thank you at the end. He mad me fell like the smallest person in the world. Ok rant over.

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My Children used to deliver papers in the RICHEST neighborhood in the county. Lawers, Doctors. Politicians...ETC. When they would collect once a month the fee was $9.95. Most of the people would habe them a TEN dollar bill and then wait for their nickel back!!!

My wife worked for the richest man in this area after she graduated from High school as his secretary. He also had a giant automobile collection. We actually became good friends with this man and visited him and he gave us a tour of his vast automobile collection. There were many unique and rare cars there. It was housed in several buildings around his estate in the country. She quit after we got married to raise our children. Many years later he retired from his business, sold his huge country estate, down sized his collection and purchased an old dealership building in town to tinker with his cars. I stopped by one day to visit him and he, knowing that I had been working as a mechanic for 30 years, said he needed someone to work on his cars. He had Pierce Arrows, Dusenburgs, Stutz Bearcats, Lincolns, and a whole lot more. Maybe thirty cars in all. This was about 1999 and his offer was $15.00 and hour!!!!! I guess that why he was worth MILLIONS!!!!!

It is amazing how one person can determine your future. When I got out of school I got a job in a printed circuit board factory. (Farming was out of the question back then for me. The small farms were being sold to developers, along with Dad's farm). It was just a job. The maintenance foreman was a bus driver, and picked me up at our farm. He knew I must have some mechanical skills. He approached me one day, and wanted to know if I wanted to work in the maintenance dept. I said sure. I went on to stay in the maintenance business at several factories I worked at. I ended retiring from the Unisys (Burrows) computer co. after 36 years. Stan

Well THE BOSS - Owner of my first place of employment was self made millionaire and he only had a 9th grade education . He had a bum leg and hobbled around like a wild man . If he liked you you were in but never cross him . He had a strange way of hiring people . Say we were going to start a ne3w job and we needed laborers . And we needed three he would hire five . The first morning of the job he would be there with his pick up and he would have five brand new #2 spade shovels and give each new hire a shovel they all had the same job to do that day and at the end of the day he would return and then have each guy bring him the new shovel . If any of the shovels still had paper on the blade he would thank that man for his work and tell him that he did NOT NEED him any more . So out of five guys on the first day we would be lucky to keep the three we needed and if we did not then we would start all over the next day . And those guys that would ware the paper off the face of a shovel would have a JOB for the season. And he paid better then the rest for labors. Now as for me John, Jessey , willis and Jim we were the main full timers same went with operators out of the hall , the old man wanted to see dirt moving so if you were on a dozer it had best be rollen dirt and being worked to the max , if you were on a pan and you were making a cut between you and the push cat you had best fill it till it is running off all four sides and in th3e shortest distance posable and when you were full you best mash the pedal and start shifting gears up and moving . If you were running a shovel then you best be making cycle every thirtyfive to forty seconds . A fifteen min break was a fifteen min break a half hour luch was a half hour . At the start of the day you had best have your machine warming up a good twenty min. before start time. At the end of the day you fueled up greased up clean tracks and checked your machine over and if it had a problem the you best tell the mechanics about it then or fixed it yourself , If it was a major repair then you went and got one of the spare machine ready for the next day . Every job we had back up machines for every piece on the job.

You were never in the military were you ?

I drove a delivery truck for a large wholesale hardware, foe a few years, starting in 1959. The president of the company told myself to give the COD customers a 2% cash discount, if they asked for it. Sales tax in In. was 2%, so everybody I collected from got the cash discount.

I would have had a talk with my boss about that,and he would pay for the 8',if that was policy.Mark

JD,I agree with you 1000%. We do not need everyone going to college,when some sort of trade training would be sufficient. And most of the college educated are of the 'entitled' mentality.Our kids are saddled with debt for having gone to college,and no great job prospects,not any better than if they had not gone.Mark

Hi LAA
I got a lot of smaller guys come to my shop I fix for. I'm on my own a lot and can get pretty busy with my farming to. All of the small guys will wait for me Or I will just say I wouldn't be offended if someone else did the job if it's real urgent. in the last year only one regular guy took 1 job to a dealer I did the rest of them.
I got a couple of real big farmers round here and one tried to get me from the town where my girlfriend lives, that are known for the"Big I have money attitude", They yell jump you yell back How high sir type guys!!!!. I kinda told them I was busy and I couldn't do there jobs for a month due to other customers. 2 came with the we are so and so we come first. I kinda said I don't care who you are or how much money you think you got. you don't come here regular, If i'm busy everybody gets the same poor service from 2nd to 20th on the list, your place will be 21, or go someplace else.
A lot of my regular customers hate these few guys, I told them if my regulars start thinking I dumped their jobs for them they won't be back. These smaller guys feed me constantly all year, not just when these rich guys have some piece of junk the farms own mechanic or the dealers won't touch. Then guess who don't pay the bills for months, it sure aint the small guys if you happen to work for the others at anytime L.O.L. There are dealers worship those rich guys here. I heard of a smaller guy needing a part to finish harvest, that was on a month back order He could see the part sitting on the shelf . But was told nope its here if so and so happens to need it before he's done.Basically nobody wanted it, it was there just in case this big guy needed it if his machine went down. After 2 days and a call to head office, "promising" to change his entire fleet color he did get it in the end . These guys attitudes just tick a guy right off somedays
regards Robert