Got a call from Jiffy Lube on Sunday. Showed up to find out they wanted to take me to a customers house. Turns out they didn’t tighten something down and the home owners car left a puddle of oil.
They said the tried everything to get the oil out. I could tell. They etched the concrete with a pressure washer and I told them the only thing they can do is call a concrete company. She said she wanted to see what it’s like under the oil. I said, that’s silly, but ok.
My only job was to soak up the oil and my “Sunday” rate is $500. After 20 minutes or so of grinding in Oil Dri with my boots and sweeping it in, I hosed it off to show her the concrete was damaged. Got cash. Went home. This business can be weird sometimes, but if I can make $500/hour dancing on cat litter I’ll take weird every day.
Sometimes I envy you guys in the bigger cities. If I tried to get $500 for spreading oil sorb, I would still be able to hear the person laughing even after they hung up. Then they would run all over Mayberry and tell everyone how I tried to rip them off.
In your case the citified lady will probably tell her friends that she had a friendly professional cleaning contractor who only charged her $500 to come out on a Sunday and perform an oil remediation process using specialized granular material and some spreading equipment and then disposed of said granular material off-site. No wonder she thinks its a bargain, lol.
Once I had a wheel seal leak gear oil on a customer’s driveway while we were there cleaning out some gutters. When we drove off the tire tracked the oil all down the drive. I used this the same day and it came out great. Customer was completely happy with the result.
I’ve wondered about that stuff. It wasn’t the homeowner who paid. It was the regional manager for jiffy lube. I couldn’t get $500 from a homeowner if I washed it, removed oil, and sealed it probably.
Classic. The only thing funnier would be if they had given you the oil sorb from their own supply, lol. They probably wanted a legit cleaning contractor to show that they made a reasonable effort to handle the problem by hiring a professional to come out immediately to handle the issue. Pretty good on their part actually.
You should have told her that by grinding up the oil sorb you were creating potential ignition hazard from the dust/oil reaction, which could create a fireball and burn you both to death. I’ll bet she would have moved then.
noted for future use.
