Why is there so much disdain towards tradesmen on MN?

[Enfys1982]

I’m genuinely baffled by it. Most of the men in my family are in trade. including my dad and brother. They are not lazy cowboys or crooks, my dad has worked since he started his apprenticeship when he was fifteen and has never been out of work since (he’s now semi retired) and barely had a day off sick either. He pays all his taxes and his is a registered Limited company with companies house. All are as honest as the day is long. No tax dodging or cash in hand jobs.

Please also be assured that none of them are ‘thick’ as posters are implying on one thread. You won’t see a ‘thick’ plumber or electrician as they need good GCSE grades, particularly in Maths, English and Science, to get a place at college to train. It’s very, very competitive and anything less than a B is pushing it for a place. They’re not going to let ‘thick people’ install gas boilers or rewire peoples homes ffs🙄

Rant over!

It's not always about holding a credit account with a business but to cover the tradesperson the cost of the materials if the client doesn't pay at the end of the job which happens a lot.

I'm in Ireland and it's routine to pay for materials before starting the smaller jobs or staged payments for the bigger jobs. Having watched the likes of Cowboy Builders on tv I haven't heard of anything like that here probably due to being a small country where most recommendations are word of mouth and if someone did such shoddy work it would be common knowledge very quickly.

It's not just construction that look for some money upfront here, I've a routine hygienist appointment next week and the norm is to phone patients a week in advance to confirm the appointment and pay in advance so the dental practice is not out of pocket if I fail to turn up.

As someone mentioned ordering a cake and not paying for the ingredients before getting the cake I've yet to come across a baker or supermarket where you order a made to order cake not charge when accepting the order. These cakes are different to the regular off the shelf cakes.

Fortunately I've only had positive experiences with tradespeople when having work done, nearly all turned up when they said they would or phoned to let me know if they were running late or if any materials hadn't arrived from the building merchants.

The problem now is finding a tradeperson as there's a massive shortage of them since a generation of them emigrated after the 2008 crash. The remaining ones are mostly in their 50's. There's also the points race for college where schools want the prestige of a high percentage of pupils going on to college so discourage trades.

One of my sons is a chartered accountant with one of the big 4 and top 5% in college has commented he wouldn't have minded training to be an electrician so may go back and retrain at some stage.

Honeyrider, agree wholeheartedly with your last 2 paragraphs. When I left school, 8% of our cohort went to university. Of the others, many of the boys especially went into a trade via the apprenticeship route - apprenticed to local firms, day or block release to college. These were people who would probably now be pushed down the university route. Fine, if you end up with a good career, but so many graduates seem to end up in jobs that 50 years ago you would have been able to walk into straight out of school. Plus, we no longer have enough good tradespeople.

The main issue I've had with tradesmen is that they are, as a rule, poor communicators.

They generally cannot be bothered to let you know if they are running behind on another job until they're a few hours late. I think the reason they work this way is because they know that the clients aren't going to be able to find someone else quickly.

Delaying or changing a job due to an emergency is understandable but often it is down to poor communication and forward planning. I don't think they consider or care about the fact that their client may have had to book time off or schedule WFH day/s to accomodate them for instance.

That said, we have worked with some brilliant tradesmen too. It's just hit and miss.

Yep started with the abolition of grammar schools, and conversion of all schools into "comps" which were more geared up for the needs of the more academically able students, and tossed aside the ones who were more practical. The old style "sec moderns" were actually really good at preparing their pupils for manual work! Rather than scrapping the old two tier system, they should have found ways of enabling more movement of pupils between them, rather than a pass/fail at the far too young age of 10 to decide your future route!

Similar happened with the conversion of Polys into Unis and then Blair's crazy plan to get 50% of pupils into universities! (Even though 50% of jobs don't need degrees). That's also caused some of the housing shortage as we now have huge numbers of Uni students living in student accommodation (often residential homes or conversions), as they've moved away for Uni when a couple of decades earlier, they'd have been going to a more local college/Uni or getting a local apprentice job and living at home for the duration.

That's sadly nothing new. We now phone several times ahead of jobs that need us to do lots of room emptying etc, as we've been caught out far too many times by spending hours (or in one case, an entire weekend), moving furniture out of a room, moving furnishings, putting down cover cloths, etc., only for them not to bother turning up!

The worst was when we replaced our old boiler with a combi boiling which meant floors up in a bedroom and landing for the new pipework - it took an entire weekend as they wanted the bedroom completely empty to get the floor up (wardrobes, bed, drawer units, etc) which took ages to move around into other rooms and we had to dismantle the wardrobes to move them. We'd checked mid-week the week before that they will still on target for coming first thing Monday morning - they said yes. Come Monday morning and no sign of them. We phoned mid-morning, phone went to answerphone, we kept phoning all day, but they never picked up nor answered messages. They must have had my number on caller display as my OH eventually tried ringing them from his phone and they picked up straight away! Cue excuses and lies - they claimed they'd left a message on our answerphone to say they'd be delayed (lie, as there was no message), they lied that they hadn't received my messages nor phone calls. Then they promised to be there first thing Tuesday morning, guess what - they didn't show up! Trouble was that we had to bear with them as the room was empty and we knew we couldn't get anyone else in quickly to do the job, so they knew they had us over a barrel. When they didn't turn up on Wednesday morning either, we'd had enough and put everything back in the room as we were fed up sleeping on the sofa bed in the lounge surrounded by boxes and clothes! Funny thing was that they were seriously miffed when they finally showed up on Thursday morning and we told them where they could stuff their boiler! They just complained bitterly that "we" had wasted their time and caused them a couple of days of lost work as they had no other work planned that day or the day after. Well Tough! You should have thought about that when we took time off work to wait in for you Monday and Tuesday!

I would like to raise you all one.

Booked in a local plumber, a firm that does 24-hr callout at short notice, recommended by a neighbour, can't be bad. They weren't. Showed up on time, worked hard to fix the central heating which was old and knackered, it was winter with an elderly dad in the house, plumber was normal and courteous!

It was draining the water tank for a pre-arranged job that did it. It needed cleaning. Lads who turned up a bit more lairy, a bit over familiar. (But for context, I'm a bloke). Took from 11am to 6pm, longer than I'd been lead to believe. After they left, the hot water didn't work. So I called them up, another one came out, more taciturn. Seemed to fix it, all good.

It was some months down the line when I tried to get a quote off them for radiator valves and wasn't mad about what they quoted or had to offer, so we tried an alternative. He offered much the same quote but we were given a choice of valves. He did also notice - get this - that the immersion heater was on and did we know?

So basically, the guy they'd sent out to fix the problem of the hot water had 'solved' it by simply putting the immersion heater on!

When I queried this with the firm I got the thing about how they pride themselves on top service and would send someone out. But it seems they must have had a think on the quiet and realised that this would be tantamount to an admission so instead they asked for a call-out fee of £80 to look at it! Given it was how they left it, and another plumber had noticed the problem, I took umbrage! This played into their hands as they could then claim another plumber had interacted with the situation so it wasn't their fault.

We got someone in to have a look at it - they were the old school local plumber who puts in a shift but doesn't charge by the hour - and after taking up the floorboards to no avail realised it was because the last but one plumber hadn't opened the gate valve (small metal circular dial) under the boiler after the job.

We take our energy bills out of Dad's direct debit savings account so it got swallowed up, so thankfully I don't know how much it cost to heat our water via the immersion for months on end.

The firm had polish but as it employed a stable of recruits they had a tendency to victim-blame or pass the buck because if they couldn't fix it, it reflected poorly on them with the firm. Otherwise, it would most likely be okay because they had a lot of employees who tbf were available to be called out at short notice, and did so because they weren't their own boss, ie they were accountable (unless their mistake would make the firm liable for a lot of money, as in this case).

I think it's usually outdated stereotypes about 'white van men' and working class which go unchallenged as its generally middle class people and students calling people out.

It's odd because the average trade salary is now £10k higher than the average office salary. In fact, maybe that's why. People getting annoyed that a bricklayer earns £45k.

I think another key point is that a lot of decent tradespeople will be working commercial instead - newbuilds etc. It's ongoing, steady work where you, don't have to deal with the general public.

'people' don't get annoyed at a bricklayer earning £45k. They get annoyed at a crap bricklayer letting them down and doing a rubbish job. As for tradesmen working commercial jobs, have you seen the amount of complaints about newbuilds. Shoddy workmanship, cutting corners, dangerous work.

I know a few gas fitters, most are in their 50's now and are sick of working for the general public. They can now make do with a couple of boiler installs a week.

They can't be bothered with the small stuff and when they finally give up nobody is coming on behind them so there will be less tradespeople.

Someone was complaining on here the other day about their builders eating some crisps that were the homeowners that were laying around. Now I am sure a couple of pounds in crisps is better than the builders going to the local shop for an hour.

People only whinge when they get ripped of

I've never seen the disdain you speak of, but then I'm a bit oblivious generally! I haven't had any real problem with tradesmen, but do tend to research the best ones (asking for recommendations on local FB groups, etc).
Your dad sounds great and I wish they were all like him! Maybe it's the difference between old-school and modern.

I wouldnf touch my own electrics etc. We have found a great lad and although we've only ever used qualified electricians , the new lad has definitely found shoddy work. Before he found it he actually was saying he wouldn't trust others .
I have no snobbery about trades. I'd be more than happy if our ds went into a trade rather than uni and I know that all of our family and most (if not all) of our friends would feel the same.

As for tradesmen working commercial jobs, have you seen the amount of complaints about newbuilds. Shoddy workmanship, cutting corners, dangerous work.

Well, I work for a aggregates company that delivers to a lot of the biggest housebuilders so I spend a lot of time on newbuild estates. The main issue is the rush rush rush mentality as they're building hundreds.

However, it doesn't invalidate my point that most tradesmen will go for the bigger lengthier contracts, leaving the less experienced to pick up the domestic bits and bobs.

We have had quite a few different tradesmen in over the last few years. Bathrooms and kitchen refurbished, house decoraters inside and out, roofers, we had our conservatory rebuilt and reroofed, and we had our fireplace ripped out and replaced at short nitice. Without exception all the workers turned up early and worked constantly. The conservatory guy worked from 8.00am and was often still working after 9.00pm. All did a good job, and came back for any snagging. The problems we had were getting the roofers to come round to give a quote in the first place, and the 2 different decorators had gold medals in talking, once they started it was hard to get away! The electrician was brilliant, turned up at short notice three times for different smallish jobs, and did the work to suit the other trades. So we have loads of respect for tradesmen, usually skilled and hard working.

Our roofer had a portaloo in the back of his van, which I thought was a good idea as he may well have been working on locked houses with no access to a toilet. And it saved him having to disturb us whenever he needed a pee.

Given your family are tradesmen who appear to be the professional ones, I imagine you have a pool of people to draw from you need a tradesman. They would at least recommend someone good.

You are unlikely to meet the bad ones and there your view will be biased. Just like someone who has experienced bad workmanship will be biased the other way.

The difficulty is knowing who is good. Word of mouth to me has always been the best recimmendation.

I've had an extension done after seeing the builders work on another house in our street - really happy with it and recommended him on several times.

Same with a painter we know and everyone I've recommended him to has been happy.

We have a guy who fixes white goods, also brilliant.

I've also seen some shocking work where jobs gave been left half done.

I don't think people think tradesmen are thick or lazy, but having a job poorly completed or having yiur house left in a mess is annoying.

Because they’re snobs. These are the same women who would only consider dating someone with a similar degree to theirs (regardless of whether they make fuck all money). They have something they think makes them better than other people and they can’t be told otherwise.
of course they’ll deny that’s the cause but it a hunge is.

Trades are just like any other job, some people are just not as good as others. This applies on all levels not just domestic, I worked on a 6 floor apartment block where the quality of one of the trades was so bad they had to be sacked off and another company brought in to fix and finish.

A PP said not all sole traders know how to run their business and this is very true, I had an excellent electrician about 3 weeks ago who still hasn't sent me their invoice.

Because they’re snobs. These are the same women who would only consider dating someone with a similar degree to theirs (regardless of whether they make fuck all money). They have something they think makes them better than other people and they can’t be told otherwise.
of course they’ll deny that’s the cause but it a hunge is.
You're right, it really is snobbery to expect a skilled professional to behave professionally and do the job they're paid for to a safe and acceptable standard.

Expecting your house not to be ruined, expecting work to be done to a safe standard, and expecting a contractor to show up when they say they will has everything to do with a silly conspiracy about dating people with a certain degree.

😂

I disagree. I saw that thread, posted on that thread, and others. Many of the men in my family are trade, my bil is a builder. He's fabulous, replies, booked up for ages.

But if you don't know that many many people have been either ripped off massively, which 3 of my friends have. Or more irritating is that they just don't respond, don't turn up. You must know that many many people face that. So the criticism of them is fair. So I don't know what you are complaining about.

IME (after a year+ long house refurbishment) - no, they're not thick. But they're lazy, sloppy, and don't seem to give a shit about the standard of work they produce. We've had a whole house refurb, top to toe. The only trades I'd have back is the joiner who made my kitchen. He was conscientious, keen, and so proud of his work - rightly so. As for the rest, apart from one labourer that worked like a dog doing all the shit jobs, I'd not have one of them anywhere near my house again.

Article on being ghosted by tradesmen in today's Sunday Times - though I guess that might provoke the whole 'Ooh, la-di-dah, they get the Sunday Times, bet they shop in Waitrose and have a log burner' type response.

When in the UK, the tradesmen we employed were without exception excellent. In Australia, where we've had significantly more work done, only one was utterly shite and one meh. The rest have been very good, and punctual.

On thing I still do though is to make first contact using both my and my late husband's names. I never let on I'm widowed.

It's odd because the average office salary in the UK is only £35k. Average trade salary is £45k.

Having gone from a corporate environment to trades/construction I'd say that a lot of young tradespeople have their heads screwed on better than many of the young graduates I've encountered. I often think this is because they're working at 18yo when most similarly aged graduates are out drinking and partying with several years left before they enter the work world.

A lot of graduates are moving back to their parents' at the age young tradespeople are already in their own place.