What’s a guy to do when there is a potential murderer in his backyard?
Shoot (or chop) first! Surely it can’t be that frickin’ hard…
“Okay, FINE, I’ll pony up the amount of the original quote–$3200–but not a penny more!”
I pressed end on the call, sat down, and promptly wrote a check out to J&D Tree pros, more relieved than anything else to wash my hands of The Saga of the Killer Trees that had been stretching on for almost 4 months.
If I’m honest, I was still a least a wee bit miffed about getting stiffed on my promised 10% discount. You see, in the process of negotiating a price for the imminent and imperative arboreal removal that I was so desperate for, I had hatched a scheme with one of the tree guys in which if roped any of my neighbors into getting tree work done while the tree amigos were in our hood, then I could earn a 10-20% discount off my work.
I mean, I had debased myself and gone door-to-door, pleading with “neighbors” who obviously didn’t recognize me to cut down any pain-in-the-ass trees they might have had on their property. Anticipating the lack of familiarity with those residing more than 2 doors down from us, I had similar thoughts to those of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite:
However, instead of wearing a laminated name tag to lend myself an air of legitimacy, I had come up with a much better plan: our youngest daughter had just been born only a few months earlier,so I dragged her stroller along with me on my quest for that 600-dollar-discount, with her napping peacefully inside. You would have figured that would have bought me a little bit of trust from my skeptical neighbors, at least demonstrating that I was a local family man and not some skeezy door-to-door salesman, right?
Sadly, not so much. Despite hitting up all houses within a 8-unit radius–that’s a space spanning 17 homes if you count ours in the middle–only one neighbor (ironically, a former Park Ranger who was something of a tree expert himself) decided to take me up on my too-good-to-be-true offer.
Well, maybe the real reason was that almost everyone had the same reaction to the discounted quote they received:
“Over a grand per tree?!? You must be ----- crazy, Tree Dude. Naw, bro, I think I’ll just keeping raking leaves if it’s gonna cost that much!“
–(Almost) Every Single One Of My Neighbors
It actually put me in awkward situation, where I dang near was arguing with those who were complaining about the price, in attempt to contextualize the situation–I mean, those ----- idiots didn’t realize what a deal they would be getting!
Trust me. I would know. And that’s what this little tale is all about. But before stepping too far back in time, I’ll least explain why I ended up getting at least some of the discount I was promised for doubling their business. The guy who came and quoted our work? I guess he was new to the company, and somehow, that contributed to him missing this key detail on the backside of one of the two trees we had removed:
The dude had totally missed the most important detail about our tree removal needs: the structural unsoundness of the behemoth of a tree looming ominously in our backyard. For more context, here’s a picture of it creepily stalking our back porch, waiting for the right moment to come crashing down on us–or worse, or neighbor!
Oh, did I mention the “Behemoth” part? Did I? But really, did I? Let me give you a shot of looking straight up the trunk of this punk:
So now that you understand the situation, maybe you can better appreciate when the boss of the estimator guy, when pressed as to why I didn’t get a discount, responded accordingly:
“For how dangerous this tree was and for what we ended up having to do we have already lost money doing it for the quoted price…that tree alone should’ve been about 4500 to 5000 for that tree alone and the amount of risk we had to take…”
Yeah, buddy, just because your boy thought your little chainsaw monkeys could climb these beasts in a traditional manner instead of…well, what you ended up doing, that’s not my problem…
“Excuse me?!? Exactly where is the comma in that number? Wait–nevermind it doesn’t matter. Thanks anyways…”
I pressed end on the call, and just kept on walking to work. I had thought that I could find a more reasonable price than J&D’s $3200 by getting multiple quotes. I was wrong.
I didn’t even remember which tree company I had just been talking to–I was in too in shock with the price they had quoted me. Now, I was walking briskly down a semi-busy street trying to get to work on time, so we weren’t having the clearest of conversations to begin with, but I swear the person on the end of the line said they could take care of my trees for the low-low price of…$48,000? Or was it $4800? Honestly, neither of those two numbers made sense. On one hand, $4800 would seem the more reasonable of the two, but…the way they delivered the news–like somebody in the family had died–in addition to some comments thrown in there about “insurance making only a small dent in the overall cost” and “how good is your credit, cuz you almost assuredly don’t have that kind of cash just sitting around,” made me doubtful that the could actually do it for less than $5k. At that point the second best quote I had heard was somewhere around $7500–most of which was going to be sunk into a crane big enough to sit in our front yard and reach the trees in the back. (I forgot one detail: the spaces separating all the surrounding homes weren’t wide enough for anything girthier than a cherry-picker (bucket truck) to squeeze through, and there was no way in hell that one of those shorties would be able to get the job done.
I had even suggested to the neighbor whose house was in imminent danger of being crushed by this tree–the guy who were about to go into massive amounts of debt just to protect–that I pay to have his A/C unit temporarily moved so we could get some equipment bigger than a cherry-picker but cheaper than a massive crane into our backyard, then have it replaced afterwards. He was not pleased about this idea.
Which I kinda of thought to be an asshole move, considering it was for his benefit. Even if it would have cost $1k to do that, it would have been a clever and economic move, for at that particularly point in time we hadn’t been able to get any company to even give us a quote. The most concrete we had then was some guy casually throwing around the words “twenty thousand, if you’re lucky”.
So oh, what’s that, you say? “Oh but surely the quote you’re currently talking about simply couldn’t have been $48,000!”
Well, my friend, let’s take a step even further back in time, even before the informal threat–er, I mean, “quote”–of twenty thousand buckaronis…
“Hmmm…yup…uh huh…interesting…”
I stood there next to the very first tree expert to come give me a quote, waiting for his expert assessment.
Oh, how sweet and naive I was in those moments leading up to when reality came crashing down on me like a 70-foot tree onto a neighbor’s house. I honestly was expecting him to fairly quickly spit out a number around $500–but I would have been happy with anything at $800 or less.
I mean, I would have even been unsurprised–unhappy, yes, surprised, no–with a number between $1k and $2k. I was new to the whole cutting-down-massive-tree scene, after all.
My first surprise was how long it took to get any answer out of him. Once we got back there to the trees in question, he just sat there for 5-10 minutes looking the tree up and down, all while making pontificating noises such as “huh, that’s interesting”, *deep heavy sigh*, “mmm-hmmm, okay then”, *low whistle*, *stroking of beard*, “I don’t know about this…” and other things you never want to hear in such a situation.
Eventually, he turned to me with a face that was way more serious than the occasion called for.
“Son, I gotta tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a situation quite like yours. This tree is just massive, has significant structural damage–and I mean significant–and worst of all, is virtually inaccessible. I mean, your house backs up to 180 feet of woods before hitting Highway 64, and nothing is getting in between the houses…”
“Can you at least give me a ballpark figure?” I asked, bracing for the initial sticker shock of such a project.
“Um, I don’t think you understand…I don’t think it’s even possible for me and my crew to do.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure we don’t have any means to actually get that tree down. I don’t even know if there is a crane that is small enough to fit on your street but big enough to get back here…”
“Now what are you trying to say?!?” I said, getting even more confused, and clearly not appreciating the emotional roller coaster I found myself on.
“…however…there might be one option…” he said, clearly digging deep to give me some sort of real information.
“Yes…?” I said with bated breath.
“What I’ve seen done in extreme situations like this is…well, you’re not going to like it…”
“Out with it already–one way or another this tree has got to come down before it kills somebody!”
…
…
…
“…I said, ‘Good luck finding someone out there who will do that for you’. Again, I apologize for not being able to help you out.”
He was mid-sentence when I came-to moments late, after having–according to him–blacked out in shock upon hearing what appeared to be the only option for keeping my family and neighbors safe.
“Cheeses ducking heist. I don’t think I heard you right. Just for the record, could repeat again what you said?”
“Well, there’s no other way to put it: son, it looks like you’re going to need to rent a helicopter…”
Content created on: 13 September 2024 (Friday)
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