Safe Opening: Should You Pay For Failure?
It's not uncommon for me to get a call from someone who wants me to come and open a safe after another company has visited, tried, failed, and left. The safe owners often tell me that the first outfit sent someone who spent anywhere from fifteen minutes to half a day or more in a futile attempt to get their safe open before giving up. It's really none of my business, but sometimes I can't help asking if the first person charged for the failed effort. Surprisingly, plenty of people tell me that they did pay something for the failed effort. When I ask why, a typical answer is, "Well, I had to give him something. He did spend time on it, and he worked sooo hard . . ." Unbelievable . . . did they ever consider that maybe he worked so hard because he didn't know how to do the job and shouldn't have been there in the first place? Worse, far too often the person who tried so valiantly and worked "sooo hard" did something that left the safe ...