Unpopular take: that customer who screamed at me was right about the timeline

I was remodeling a kitchen in a 1920s house in Portland last summer. The client wanted custom inset cabinets and I quoted her 6 weeks knowing full well it would probably be 8. When I hit week 7 and still had trim work and hardware to do, she blew up on me. Called me a liar and everything. My crew was all defensive saying she was unreasonable. But honestly I had padded the estimate wrong. I knew those old plaster walls would fight me and I still promised a date I couldn't hit. She had to push her vacation by two weeks and that cost her money. I ended up eating the overtime cost of my guys to finish in 8 days instead of 12 just to make it right. Still stings when I think about it. Has anyone else ever realized mid-job that the customer's anger was actually your own mistake coming back at you?

2 comments

2 Comments

robertgreen17d ago

Used to be on the side of "customer's always overreacting" but man, this one got me. Respect for owning it though, most guys would just blame the plaster and move on lol.

nelson.nancy17d ago

Friend of mine did the same thing, crawled out his own window at 3am to fix it.