When contractors work at your house, what is ok, and what is rude?
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Anonymous
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OP, I feel your pain! We just finished a five-month reno where everything you mentioned happened constantly except for dining at the table (they ate on our porch, generally). There was no table b/c the kitchen was being renovated.
The thing that irritated us the most was the toilet b/c it seemed like they would make a beeline for it every single morning, like they stored everything up for a massive dump at our house that would at times take the better part of :20. Not kidding. The things that powder room saw! They brought their own plunger is how bad it got. Ugh. Price of doing business - pardon the pun! |
Anonymous
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Music is normal- I always like my contractors to feel comfortable working in our home. They are free to use the toilet and I do a quick clean of bathroom regularly. My guys typically don't eat at our table but eat on patio table or somewhere outside. I always let them know they are free to use the kitchen table. The talking on the phone for extended periods is the only thing that would bother me and it's ok to say something about it. Your house is their workplace for this period of time and the workplace needs to make reasonable accommodations. |
Anonymous
| They are fine. You need to go work in an appropriate office, not at a construction site. |
Anonymous
| OP, get a WeWork subscription and go there every day so you won't be so bothered. Some of this - lack of providing a Porta Potty, and directing them to a patio table or whatever for breaks - is on you. |
Anonymous
OMG |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| This seems fairly normal. I would probably want to listen to music too if I were doing work like tiling. The phone argument is the one thing I would be annoyed about, but probably wouldn’t say anything if it was a one time occurrence. Using the table wouldn’t bother me at all. It’s a table, it’s made for eating. But we have a pretty sturdy farm house wooden table. And yeah the bathroom thing is gross, but that is sort of what happens when you have a bunch of dudes using your bathroom day in and day out. We had them all use our basement bathroom, which isn’t as nice as the main level powder room. I could also better avoid being near it during business time. |
Anonymous
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My husband is a contractor and all of these would be a big no and unacceptable.
The man doesn’t even pee in peoples homes. He has a work truck and if he really needs to pee he does it in a bottle in the back of the truck. He would leave a job site if he needed to poop. |
Anonymous
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Listening to music w/o headphones and using speakerphone: completely normal and expected.
Using dining table. Provide a table that they can use. Using toilet: if you have more than one toilet, designate an easily accessible toilet for their use. |
Anonymous
| If you wfh and you need to have work done, you have to go to the library or a coffee shop or a rental office or something. |
Anonymous
And he's probably a high-end contractor, too. |
Anonymous
We had a team of insulation contractors who repeatedly left clogs and gross messes in the powder room over the 3 days they were in our home. It was nasty and they made no attempts to clean it up or even let us know, "hey, sorry, toilet's clogged." They were very young guys who - surprise! - also did a crappy, messy job with the insulation and it all had to be redone. The second team did not blow up the bathroom - in fact, I'm not sure they even used it. |
Anonymous
| These are all normal. My contractors also hung out at my outdoor table and chain smoked. I was polite and had friendly conversations with them but I did not provide any snacks/lunch like some people here insist is necessary. Let their boss do that. |
Anonymous
| It's good to establish ground rules up front. I've made sure that they don't use our tools (after damaging them or returning them in a completely filthy state), that they don't smoke on the premises (my spouse is very sensitive to this, it's also nasty to have to pick up their cigarette butts around the yard), and clean up the workspace each day if possible. We've had instances where a contractor has dumped demo from another job on our property, left demo for weeks without removing it, and generally been inconsiderate of the yard/beds (leaving plastic shavings from PVC everywhere). If you're working from home, it's good to keep an eye on things to make sure to flag them when they happen. |
Anonymous
WTF is wrong with you? You can't dare to share a toilet with the lower class? Get over yourself. We just set up our main level half bath for our contractors. Meaning, a roll of paper towels to dry their hands, lots of hand soap, lots of toilet paper and a bottle of air freshener. I didn't leave hand towels in there, or anything I was worried about getting "messed up" so nothing decorative. Contractors will only be in your house for a short bit, I think it's ok to suck up some more annoying habits. |