Customer: “I need you to clear the bank down the side of my garden.”

The bank is tall and overgrown and must have been a good fifty metres long and about five metres tall. It had a flat area that ran along the top of about one-and-a-half metres in width with really steep sides. Getting up and down was a feat all by itself.

We’ve been slogging away on this area for some time when suddenly, clouds come over and the heavens open up. The weather goes from zero to an absolute deluge in literally seconds and we we’re on top of the bank when it begins.

Our client sits in his conservatory watching us as we try to scramble down, run right past his conservatory, down his garden path to the street to shelter in our car from the rain, getting absolutely drenched in the process.

We finally finish for this day (of potentially many more) with this client and present our bill for the day. We’re happy to get out of there because this man makes miserable seem positively ecstatic.

Customer: “I don’t want to pay this much! I don’t think I should be charged for the time you spent not working in the rain.”

Me: “You mean the time we were sheltering from the rain? That’s a difference of about 10€.”

Customer: “I’m not paying it.”

Unbelievably, he got less and less pleasant to do work for and we told him to find someone else to finish his landscaping. Actually, we were far less eloquent and told him where to shove his work!

We have a “No Solicitation” sticker at our doorbell. However, we have noticed quite some people ignore it or try to be witty and say, “I didn’t ring the doorbell.” This guy took the cake, though. 

A guy knocks on the window and, considering his outfit, I have a gut feeling about what this is about. 

Man: “Hello, ma’am. I hope I didn’t startle you.”

Me: “Yes, you did.”

Man: “I am a gardener, and I saw your trees—”

Me: “I know, and we are not interested. We—”

Man: “I love trees, as well! And I would like to offer my services—”

Me: “And we are still not interested.”

Man: “Yes, but your trees—”

Me: “We are not interested. That’s why we have this sticker here.” *Points at the sticker* 

Man: *Glances at the sticker* “I would really—”

Me: “I would like to end the conversation now. We have a ‘No Solicitation’ sticker for a reason.”

Man: “But—”

Me: “I wish you a good day. Goodbye.”

I accidentally close the door louder than intended, and the guy leaves. But still, I considered myself polite enough for someone so disrespectful. 

Husband: “Did you really have to tell him three times before he left?”

Me: “I’m surprised he left at all!”

I then leave for groceries. When I come home, my husband jumps up to greet me. 

Husband: “You’ll never believe this!”

Me: “Believe what?”

Husband: “That gardener returned!”

Me: “What?!”

Husband: “He admitted that he saw you leave and wanted to know my opinion.” 

Me: “And?”

I’m slightly worried because my husband doesn’t know tact at all, even though that gardener does not deserve tact.

Husband: “I said that I would never disrespect my wife and that he had five seconds to buzz off. He tried to talk back, so I just started counting down. Did you know that your counting-down trick does not only work with cats?”

Me: “What would you have done if he had stayed?”

Husband: “Well, the ice machine was just done with a batch of ice cubes…”

It’s nice to know my husband has my back.

Back in 1998, I moved from Michigan to Virginia and took a job as an irrigation tech for a large regional landscape company. Within six months, I learned my mistake: working as an irrigation tech for landscapers sucks. You are treated as a necessary evil and always get the s***ty end of the stick.

I heard through the grapevine that some area managers had screwed up a couple of big maintenance contracts and that, somehow, they were going to try and make me the scapegoat. I promptly went to the second contractor I had interviewed for originally, got a job there, and put in a one-week notice with [Company].

My manager was really pressuring me to give them more notice until I told him:

Me: “If you ask me one more time for more notice, you will notice the following morning that I don’t work here anymore.”

At the end of the week, I turned in my uniforms plus my reimbursement slip for $38 petty cash. I was told that I was getting nothing back on my uniforms and they weren’t going to pay my $38. I was pissed but just moved on.

The following week, I contacted my local labor board and filed a complaint saying that the entire time I had worked for [Company], I was being paid a salary rather than an hourly while I was a non-exempt employee. I asked to be paid all of my overtime.

A few weeks went by, it worked its way through the system, and I got a call from the corporation’s Controller. We had a meeting and went over everything with a bunch of back and forth. He kept trying to justify that I was really exempt and that they didn’t owe me anything until I’d really had enough of his s***.

I told him straight-up that we might disagree on how much they owed me, but I’d guarantee they owed me something. On top of that, I would make a point on every payday going from branch to branch of the company with a sign, standing outside the gate, and telling every single non-exempt employee that they were being screwed out of overtime and how they could sue the company.

I ended up signing an NDA agreeing that I wouldn’t share any of the information on overtime with other employees, and I got a check for $5,000 the following day. Within two months, [Company] and several others in the area began paying with a new overtime method. They took your weekly salary and divided it by forty for an hourly rate, and for every hour of overtime you worked, you got half your rate. If you worked your way through the math and whatnot and how the labor board determined your overtime in this case, it pretty much worked out correctly.

So, in summary, my employer tried to screw me out of $38 and I made them pay me $5,000.

[Company] has long, long, long since been sold out to a national competitor.

This happened during my first year working in landscaping. A lady stopped me while I was mowing a park.

Lady: “You need to mow this part, too!”

Me: “My boss already mowed the outline of the area I’m supposed to mow. I’m just filling in the outline. But I’ll call him to check.”

I called him.

Boss: “Nah, that’s lady’s crazy. That’s her yard. I believed her and mowed her yard for a few weeks before my bosses showed me where the property lines are.”

I have a job as a gardener/yard maintenance person. I have just finished a job cutting a lawn, edging the driveway and flower bed, weeding, and pruning.

The property owner is very persnickety, and I always explain in detail what has been done.

Property Owner: “Did you pull up all the weeds?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, at least the ones I could see.”

Property Owner: “Well, what about the ones you can’t see?”