Dax and I have been looking into a new addition to the house to make room for the alien in my expanding belly. We had a designer over here yesterday to take a look at our plans and start working on something that the engineers can work with once we choose a contractor.
The guy was nice enough - we asked him to come in at 8:00 to talk and we ended up hiring him and he stayed for a few hours to work on his design. In true Laura style, when it came time to hand over the dough, I asked him if we needed a contract. See, at the beginning, he mentioned his hourly rate in the context of clients constantly changing their designs and that he needed to be fair and charge for his hours of iterations. He said we didn't need a contract and that I could fire him whenever I wanted. Fair enough.
So, I finally ask how much I owe him. His answer: "Well, I was here for 5 hours, that would be $375," to which I reply, "Well technically, you WERE here at 8 a.m., but my husband and I didn't actually hire you until 8:30 and you worked until 1 pm." And it's true, he talked for about 30 minutes about his life story and why we should hire him. I did not mention to him that he took about 5 smoke breaks in between work on MY TIME.
His reply, "Well if it makes you feel better you can give me $337.50."
YES that does make me feel better, thank you very much. If he's padding time right under my nose, I can't imagine what our bill will be like when we get the final design.
