So, why did I sack Mark?

 They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Then, if that is the case, glaze over this photo and tell me what you see?

This, ladies and gents, is a piece of 5mm plate. It has been cut and shaped somewhat haphazardly to somehow reflect the shape of the front of the 1956 F100 chassis rail. The part that runs from the stabiliser bar down to the firewall on the outside. It was cut using a 9" grinder. The person who cut it took two days to do so. Cut it and shape it, mind you.

Unfortunately, the shape does not really reflect the chassis at all. It looks more like a giant steel SS (shit stirrer) paddle. And because it has been so weirdly and loving and longingly crafted, it made it really hard to line the horizontal piece up against it for later welding. 

Mark, resident welder (who never produced an actual welder) and who stayed with us, sleeping in our spare room, while my wife diligently cooked for him while his dogs peed on the carpet and shit on the grass, spent two solid days cutting and shaping this piece of metal.

One wonders whether he used a Dremel? 

But, no, he used a 9" grinder. 

And he took two days to cut and shape this one piece out. In fact, while he was here (four days) he managed to cut and shape two pieces of steel and cut a couple of brackets off the chassis and lay a lick of primer on a couple of panels. Not bad for a guy asking $300 a day. 

I could not and STILL don't believe anyone can take this amount of time to do a simple job like this.  But that is the truth. 

So, I hear you ask, why didn't I just do it myself? Well, I would have except that Mark was dead keen to bring his grinder down and get into it. Me, believing that the cutting of some plate was only going to take a couple of hours at most, could not comprehend what I was seeing.

He arrived at our place late Monday night. Stayed overnight. Next morning we both  got stuck into things. I noticed after a couple of hours that progress on one piece of plate was taking an extraordinary amount of time, but I left him to it as I went up top to do other things. During the following few hours all I could hear was the grinder going full steam, and I thought he must have nearly cut all the steel plate needed for the project (4 plates in all), but when I went back in the afternoon, he was still working on the one piece of plate. 

That night I went back to the garage and spent a lot of time just trying to comprehend what he had done in a day, and I couldn't get it in my head. I made a decision then that his time here was very limited.

The next day I asked Mark how long was he planning on staying and he said about a week before he went to the next job. I realised then that that was simply out of the question. Besides, we were planning on a weekend away, so I said he'd have to head out a few days earlier, like, on the Friday night.

Like a fool, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, wrongly thinking that he would rev up and get into cutting the plates out and tacking them into place by Tuesday. 

That didn't happen, either. Instead, more of the same. Sometime mid Wednesday he'd decided he had done enough sculpting of one piece and made a start on the second. 

I had to work Thursday and Friday, and on Thursday I sent a msg to him asking if he could get the plates tacked onto the chassis today. He replied that he still had a lot to do. When I arrived home from work Thursday night he was grinding down the second plate. It was nearly 6pm. When I got inside my wife told me to tell him to stop working as he has been grinding all day, so I went out there fifteen minutes later and he was still grinding the same spot! 

So, at this stage, three solid days and at $300 a day I had a bill for $900 for two plates! That ain't workin'! 

No, not for one minute was I going to hand over that kind of cash. I may be gullible, but I am not an idiot and am not made of money.

Back at work on Friday, and early in the morning I sent another msg to him (he never gave me his phone number- it was always through Facebook) asking again whether he could have the plates at least tack welded on, and he rudely told me I had no idea how long it took to cut metal and drill a dozen holes. 

Well, after all that we did for him, and the hospitality that we showed to him and his two stinky dogs, that was the last straw. I did not explode as I was two hours away and my wife was alone with him and I did not trust him to storm out and take stuff from the garage, so I played it cool until the evening.

By the time I got home, he had packed up and gone. 

All I can say is good riddance to the con artist! 

Just for a comparison; I took the other two plates that he didn't get around to cutting to Xpiggy fabrications in Unanderra and Brendan cut them out on his plasma table and charged me the grand sum of fifty bucks each and it was done basically while I waited. Just to put it all into perspective...