What would you think if your gardener sent this message to all their clients?

[DoggyDooDooDoo]

"Hi all, just to let you know a new service I'm offering -

Poo picking - Happy to clean up after your dog before I start work
£15 first 1-15min
£1per min after that

Thanks!"

This follows an incident on Monday where they got dog poo sprayed all over them whilst strimming a garden that hadn't been poo-picked (as previously requested) before they started work. They had to leave work to go home and shower as it was splattered over their face.

YABU - dog poo is an occupational hazard of gardening and that's an outrageous price to charge for clearing it up

YANBU - fair enough, dog poo is rank and that's a reasonable price to charge for dealing with it before starting work

I would think that's another reason why I don't have a dog!

The gardener has had a good think about it, and decided that £60/hour is the sum of money that would make them feel something approaching "happy" (or at least not outright resentful) about doing the poo pick!

Kids toys too.Met a gardener that spends time picking up toys before he cuts a large lawn.I said tell them to pick up the toys aswell as the poo.He just shrugged his shoulders.Both working at home too, so lazy.

Yes, fair enough, I'd say.

After all, the gardener has already had his face sprayed with faeces. They'd have to pay me a lot to go picking up the dog turds after that, I can tell you!

I have a dog and I love him, so I'm not anti-dog, but it's disgusting leaving it all over the garden.

To me the message sounds like the gardener is willing to clear poop, but for a price.

This would be my concern. To some people £15 is nothing and they might even think, great I don’t have to poo pick today as the gardener is coming!

I think the message needs to be clearer that poos should be cleared by the client and the cost is more of a fine for not doing it rather than a service gardener is happy to provide - like the suggested “Gordon the Gardener” message above.

Yes!!!!

Also a gardener, also strimmed shit. Cleaning it off a mower deck is awful too.

I leave site for more than one poo. I charge the full cost of the job. If they’re home, I’ll knock and give them the option to pick it up - usually they’ll do it out of embarrassment. If they don’t, I look to find new clients.

I’m a professional gardener and thankfully I don’t have this problem - I obviously have a classy clientele :) Not unreasonable, and this is likely to embarrass customers into picking up beforehand I think. By the way, I’m also a woman (to those pp assuming the gardener is male).

Where I live 2/3 of all the professional gardeners are women. NJ

My partner drop a client because of not picked up poo in the garden.

We've got dogs but they can't get onto our back garden, just a bit of concreted area (the rest if fenced off). So if we had a gardener (when we get one) this will not be a problem. I absolutely don't think the gardener is being unreasonable and should charge more if the clients can't be bothered.

In general I would say its no ones business if theres dog poo in their own garden HOWEVER an employee has the right to work safely in an acceptable environment.

No other job in a domestic home would it be acceptable to expect a person to work in feces.

If anyone doesn't want to pick the dog poo up then they should do their own gardening.

yes. this is exactly what I was going to say. Don't offer it proactively. It's a fine if he has to do it.

God on your gardener. Dog poo is rank 🤢 and those that expect others to pick it up for them are mingers.
Interesting that everyone just assumes the gardener is a man. 🤣

People who let their dogs shit in the garden and can't be arsed to clean it up are gross. If I were the gardener I wouldn't be going back to that property.

This.

This, or at least on a daily basis.

A friend of mine only does hers before her gardener is due - she doesn't have the garden done regularly so basically in between it's just a poo mine-field and very unpleasant. (She's not disabled, just can't be bothered to do it).

I can't imagine being grim enough to have a garden and not pick up my dogs poo.

We have gardeners. Never had this problem. Go round our garden every morning and pick up any stray poos (including the neighbourhood cats poo) and bin it. TBF there's not usually many as our dogs get three walks a day. We're not grim b*stards, actually exercise out pets and don't like living in squalor.

Your gardener friend needs less grotty clients.

I always check the garden before someone does work in it. I don’t blame you (or whoever) to charge to clear it up.

Fine by me.

he would need to buy tools/bags/disinfectant etc to do the poo picking up and unless he is disposing in a clients bin he has to pay for disposal of poo so £15 is pretty cheap and if there’s a lot of shite £1 per minute after is reasonable.

ideally customers should be doing it themselves and a reasonable dog owner would know this and if possible encourage dogs to poop in a specific area (bottom of the garden for example) and/or follow their dog to clean it up quickly.

dog poop picking is why I don’t have any pets. I can’t be arsed to pick up shite every day.

My gardner had a similar incident at our house. I was mortified.

In my defence, we clear up regularly. It's a big garden, it was autumn and there were lots of leaves on the ground so any poo can be hard to see. I'd asked him to let us know when he was coming so that I could go out right at the last minute and double check we hadn't missed any.

He just turned up and didn't tell us.

He was not happy and didn't return!

Fair enough. I'm a dog owner and would never expect a gardner to pick up poo. You'd ensure it was clean first. The high charge is clearly to put people off taking up the offer and ensure they do it themsevles first!

Poor man.

That's on him.

We have a huge garden. Because of that we don't poo pick every time or even daily tbf. We'd need warning!

I think he should just tell them it must be cleared before he starts work, otherwise he will not work and they will still be charged.

The problem with offering it as a service like this, is that it may tempt people to just leave the poo for him to do, after all they are paying for it. From a customer pov: they can pay £15 for him to clear one poo, or £15 for him to clear a dozen of them, so it would make sense to leave them all for him.

So, instead of having to pick up one poo, he finds himself faced with a whole garden of it - which is still less than 15mins work.

Who are these people with gardens full of dog shit? What the fuck? Is this a thing? You just let it build up, day after day?! What about your kids going to play in the garden?

The place must fucking stink!

'Dog people' are weird as fuck.

Totally reasonable. The price he charges for picking up dog shit needs to be high enough to deter people from leaving it all over their gardens, so that seems fine to me!

I can't believe people don't pick it up regularly! I grew up with dogs and the whole family was constantly being sent out to clean up after them; it's part of owning a dog!!