​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

Paving pitfalls

I had a friend, I’ll call him Jeff, who was very entrepreneurial.  He delivered newspapers throughout grade school, and had attempted many other money-making ventures by the time he finished college.  In nearly all of these businesses, he employed his friends (lackeys) at minimum wage, probably because no one else would be crazy enough to work for him. 

Since I always looked to pick up extra summer cash, I was easily drawn into his schemes.  One involved a contract he undertook to create a landscaped entrance to a new cemetery.  Of course, he had no idea what he was doing, but the money sounded good to him.  We dug hundreds of holes to plant individual hedges alongside an entrance path.  When we were finished, all you could see was a sad lineup of about 600 carefully spaced sticks lining a walkway of white gravel, with no guarantee that these sticks would ever grow into a hedge, or for that matter, that they would even survive.  I went back there years later to see the same sad army of stick figures. 

A more memorable adventure was a contract Jeff accepted to repave an aged driveway.  Over time, the surface had become somewhat cracked, and the owners felt that it should have a new asphalt layer added rather than a simple sealant.  He reasoned that all he needed to make money was to rent a dump truck, pick up the asphalt, rent a heavy roller, bring some rakes, shovels and tamping tools, and hire his usual cheap laborers.  Again, Jeff had no idea what he was doing. 

On the appointed day, he picked up the dump truck.  When he got to the asphalt supplier, the first problem was that the business was closed that day!  Jeff had lowballed the bid and was operating on a very low profit margin, and didn’t want to waste the money he had already sunk into the truck rental. And so rather than reschedule the paving, he desperately searched for another supplier.  He finally found one who charged more for a load.  Worse, he had to drive almost an hour to get it, with the problem that the asphalt now had an hour to cool off before getting back to the job!