Inevitably, we run into the same problem every spring within our landscaping company. Everyone wants their patios and outdoor fireplaces and retaining walls built immediately. They are excited about the upcoming season and want to put their exciting plans for an outdoor living space in motion as soon as possible.
But here’s the problem: hardscaping is a job that requires skill and education, and so we only have a handful of men qualified in this company to take a job from start to finish. We have divided them into two crews. That means that we can only work on two projects at a time. As we are well-known and trusted in the area, we usually end up with a pretty long waiting list for installs. We try to tell people we are worth the wait, but, occasionally, some of them get impatient and won’t wait. I can understand their frustration. But that frustration can lead to a big mistake.
They call a guy who is just getting started (or an old guy who is starting a new business with a new name for the 5th time!) and hire him. These guys do not generally have a waiting list and can often start jobs immediately. Now, let me preface all of this by saying that a few of these guys are good, honest guys who do quality work to the best of their ability. But that is not the norm. Many of them are uneducated without proper insurance at best and complete shysters at worst.
As my husband always says: If someone can be there right away (or even in two weeks) in the springtime, they are probably not a very quality company.
Ironically, this decision has often ended up causing people great stress and, most times, even more frustration than they started with.
Take, for example, two recent situations where Eric was approached for a price to fix the shoddy work of these types of incompetent contractors. In both cases, the customers are also out quite a bit of money and one is looking at a lawsuit to try and retrieve at least some of it. These are not the first jobs that we have entered midstream because of this reason.
You see, patience sometimes is necessary in order to get a beautiful product that will last for a lifetime. There is so much more to hardscaping than throwing down pavers. There is great care needed in laying the proper base, great importance in using the right materials and tools, and careful precision needed in making the right cuts. Does the person you want to hire have specific training for this job and the proper insurances and equipment? These are critical questions before hiring a contractor.
So why am I writing about this on a devotional blog? Or do you already see the correlation?
We live in a world that wants everything right away. We do not want to wait for anything. And so we make mistakes.
Sometimes they are home-related –like hiring a shyster who can start right away instead of waiting for a respected and trust-worthy contractor.
Sometimes our mistakes are financial –like wasting hundreds of dollars at a casino or on lottery tickets trying to make quick, easy money instead of working hard and investing wisely.
Sometimes these mistakes are made by young singles –like marrying an unbeliever instead of waiting for a godly spouse.
And sometimes they are made as families –like settling for the first, comfortable {and compromising} church we visit rather than carrying out a thorough search for a church that is teaching sound biblical doctrine.
But all of these mistakes are also spiritual. How come?
I guess what I see as a common thread here is self-centeredness driven by feelings. When we aren’t willing to wait on an outcome, even though that outcome would be better and yield much higher dividends and rewards in the long run, then we are operating on feelings. And feelings are just never good things on which to base decisions.
Don’t get me wrong, feelings hold some weight. But when faced with a decision, it is best to look at all of the possible options with all of the possible outcomes. And then, pushing the impatient feelings aside, we make the wisest decision we can with the information we have.
There is no doubt that decision-making can be excruciatingly hard. But we should never base any decision on our feelings of impatience and frustration.