Locksmiths
Dec
15
I recently had an interesting meeting with a locksmith:
As I mention in the video, what’s really interesting is that this locksmith was penalized for getting better at his profession. He was tipped better when he was an apprentice and it took him longer to pick a lock, even though he would often break the lock! Now that it takes him only a moment, his customers complain that he is overcharging and they don’t tip him. What this reveals is that consumers don’t value goods and services solely by their utility, benefit from the service, but also a sense of fairness relating to how much effort was exerted.
Now imagine how much more people would pay if they knew the effort that goes into all kinds of products and services?
My latest book, The Upside of Irrationality, explores some positive and some negative ways that irrationality plays out in our lives.
Hey,
Maybe the locksmith is just more grumpy now, maybe his manner of dealing with people has just changed. Maybe the way he looks has changed and he looks more ‘cunning’ and people may be less willing to give money to someone who isn’t young. Maybe the inefficiency, was cute. Maybe he just interacts less with his customers, now that his job has become routine and easy. Maybe the nervousness of the job earlier pushed him into conversation which engaged and entertained the customer. While there is little doubt that the customer is not functioning out of a sense of direct utility, what actually governs his behavior is almost impossible to determine. Isn’t it?
So in this case rather than a sense of fairness driving the customer’s sense of utility, maybe its just his perception of the person.
You are questioning the detail of the anecdote Dan uses to setup the description of the experiment. You are right that the anecdote doesn’t prove anything, but the experiment isolates the “time-effort” factor and shows the effect is real.
Quite Informatics Article will surely follow your advise.
I think about the relationship between pricing and food a lot now after a trip to Costa Rica this year. After learning that it takes 9 months to grow a pineapple, I wonder why I’m not paying more. When I consider the labor intensity of banana and coffee bean picking, it seems wrong to not be paying more.
Because you’re paying the pineapple farmer, not the pineapple.
Put another way, it takes the farmer 9 months to grow one pineapple; it takes the same nine months to grow a whole field of pineapples. The total cost in terms of farmer’s labor is constant; but the labor cost per pineapple goes down with every one he plants.
I think we take into account how much effort something takes all the time. I’d value a painting that took a week more than one that took 5 minutes. It’s hard to value a painting but we can estimate it on some dimension by how long it took.
The locksmith might be similar, in that fundamentally it’s not rocket science, it’s a known technology, and on some level we can do his job, but we pay him to do it for us. There’s also a power dynamic by my hiring him. I’m the boss, I hired him. He shouldn’t make more than me. He shouldn’t get paid more for 5 minutes than I get.
Finally, who likes a man that a) knows where you live b) can apparently break into your house in 30 seconds. In the back of your head, do you tip a lot so he doesn’t rob you, or do you tip a little so he doesn’t think you’re rich
I’m not sure that we can put this time effect into all things. You mentioned that you’d value a painting that took a week more than one that took five minutes but is that right? I’ve seen some of my friends do some pretty awesome paintings in an hour and I’m still impressed. I see the process and think to myself “why do others take so long?”
Hm… so if you “hire” a doctor, you think he shouldn’t make more than you do for the time he spends?
The problem isn’t that simple. At the heart of the problem is the mistaken perception most people have that other people’s jobs aren’t that hard, and we could do better. Never mind that learning to pick a lock is a skill that no doubt took him months or years to learn, given the variety of locks out there; we think that if it took him 5 minutes, it can’t be that hard, because after all, he’s just a locksmith, not a lawyer or doctor.
Speed isn’t my primary concern in most situations. I pay for convenience, skill/talent, pleasure, accuracy, quality, etc. Above all else I pay for outcomes and their value to me.
Anyone who has ever attempted to break into their own home or vehicle can appreciate the professional locksmith’s investment in tools and training.
Anecdotally I can completely agree with this. The one time my brother hired a locksmith for a lockout of his car, we were shocked how quickly and painlessly he defeated the lock. I think that feeling of surprise leads to a much lower valuation of the services provided. We tend to think in terms of $/hr too, so we feel ripped off for paying him an effective rate of $3000/hr for his services. Of course that fails to account for his travel time there and back, training, equipment, etc. But yes it’s funny because normally we’re happier when a job is finished in less time.
I’m interested in the “do it yourself” mentality and its effect on these experiments. For example, I can probably pick a few types of locks with credit cards and I could probably recover files on my computer after a few google searches and some trial & error.
The less time an expert takes to perform an act, the more likely someone is to think that they could have done the job themselves with a minimal learning curve.
As a takeaway, if I owned a computer repair shop, should I tell everyone 5 days to increase their perceived utility even if a fix could potentially take two hours?
You get this a fair amount in the art and craft market. Some people don’t respect the amount of time you spend learning your profession. For instance, as a glassblower or jewelry maker, I’ve heard people make comments about the price of the materials and how they thought the price was expensive relative to that – as if they even have any idea what the base material cost is for anything else they buy, or as if that is the main input into creation. However, when I would do glassblowing demos people would be surprised at how fast it was to make something, but then be impressed enough by the process and skill involved to not complain about the prices.
As a visual artist, I experience this everyday, since drawing is something everyone can do to a certain extent. And of course, it is impossible to explain clients the whole training path I had to undertake (and still is undertaking) to be able to achieve the work skillfully and quickly. Our teachers in school were often reminding us of the legend about Picasso and the lady asking him for a portrait, so we wouldn’t get intimidated and charge the right price.
@Bob: I’d say so. Being in the computer industry, I see these kind of issues all the time. Better to triple your time estimate than to work your hands to the bone for less customer satisfaction. I call it the McDonald’s effect.
I locked myself out once. The locksmith took all of ten seconds to let me in. I did think it was an easy job for the locksmith, but since I wasn’t getting in any other way (apartment not house) I was very happy to pay the price.
The reminds me exactly of the experience conveyed by Richard Feynman about his experience “cracking” safes at Los Alamos. He said it wasn’t as impressive that he had memorized the combinations after “cracking” them, so when he was called in to open a safe he would open it in the first minute, then read a magazine until an appropriate amount of time has passed. The entire premise is based up paying for a skill, the skill is worth more the more difficult it is to replicate; it is far too easy for humans to watch an artisan whose training has become innate to the point of making it look easy, and then for us believe “I could do that.” Truth is, results really are more difficult to replicate. We have very little practical understanding for all the investment that goes into knowledge.
I’m reminded of the Picasso story, whether its true or not.
The story goes that Picasso was sitting in a Paris café when an admirer approached and asked if he would do a quick sketch on a paper napkin. Picasso politely agreed, swiftly executed the work, and handed back the napkin — but not before asking for a rather significant amount of money. The admirer was shocked: “How can you ask for so much? It took you a minute to draw this!” “No”, Picasso replied, “It took me 40 years”
It is a pretty interesting story.
I guess that is why locksmith is always so expensive and slow.
This is why the Segwey is so socially awkward. People despise the rider because it looks like they’re not doing any work.
ive never thought of things that way but it totally makes sense. if people think you are working hard they will reward you
Well, I understand the argument that he now has unhappier customers because he is so quick, but the $/hour argument is not talked about.
Just last week I forgot the key to my house and the locksmith, who has his shop one block further, came and opened the lock in 5 minutes – that includes walking from the car to the door. He charged me 160$ for those 5 minutes. He drove from his shop to my place in about 3 minutes.
He probably doesn’t have 7,5 customers/hour to maximize his revenue (I guess he sometimes has to drive further/it takes longer), so let’s say 3 customers per hour. That’s still 480$/hour…
I don’t think that is the right money for the service.
Next time, do it yourself.
I doubt most locksmiths average 3 customers an hour. That seems really high. I don’t believe there are any locksmiths on the Forbes list. You also mentioned his shop. Those cost money. I would imagine there is a fair amount of liability insurance that must be carried. I think part of what you’re paying for is that he is available when you call. If he had a three day back log and you were willing to wait three days to get into your home or your car it would probably be much cheaper. He would do much higher volume.
I am a paramedic and people often complain about high ambulance bills. They do not understand that within that city or county, there are several maintained, stocked, insured, fueled and cleaned, ambulances staffed with two skilled providers waiting at all times for someone to call for help. Customers/patients would probably not tolerate longer wait times for emergency services just for lower bills.
I run an on site computer repair business. My prices are $60/hr. – two average jobs per day (average is 2 hours per job) gives me a $30 – $40 K a year income (which is OK after expenses for a one person business). On the surface, it appears I’m only working 4 hours a day.
But wait! There are costs that have to be accounted for that aren’t apparent to a casual inspection. I have quarterly sales tax returns to file (they take an afternoon to do). I have to buy a service vehicle and take it into the shop from time to time or repair it myself – those costs are obvious, but there’s a lost opportunity cost as I can’t do repairs at a site while the vehicle’s being repaired.
I have equipment to maintain and require more of it – again, there are lost opportunity costs and my labour to do it should also be costed for a proper accounting. And I have to train myself to keep current in my skill set – this includes software costs and lost opportunity costs. I’m fortunate in that there’s a tremendous amount of free training on the Internet for my profession – but I still have to find it and for the newest software it may not be available as quickly as I need it (e.g. when Windows Vista was being introduced I drove three hours one way for a Saturday seminar about it put on by Microsoft. The seminar was free, but the trip cost money, time, and lost opportunities). Also, I have considerably more email to deal with than the average person as I have many newsletters etc. to read – it takes an average of 2 hours daily for me to clear my Inbox.
Your locksmith is probably working out of a shop instead of his home as I do. So he has far higher costs for his place of business – which are offset to a lesser or greater degree by the advertising he receives from having a storefront. My quick web survey suggests that 50% of locksmiths in the US make between $38,074 and $48,584 annually which is ~$18.30 – $23.36 an hour. But the business has to pay that wage whether or not the locksmith is actually out on a job (unless it’s the owner – many business owners will accept a lower wage for business-related reasons). Plus how much did it cost to train the smith?
So you can see that your locksmith’s $160/15 minutes ($640/hr.) has far higher costs and a lower profit than is readily apparent.
Value perception is like beauty in the eyes of the beholder. After sitting in a freezing or a sweltering house the person who shows up to fix it will be more appreciated and the money seemingly well spent regardless of the effort.
The locksmith could be more appreciated if he is younger and perhaps cuter as Gideon Mathson said, but he was also probably apologetic and sweating and perhaps even much more polite.
That people’s sense of value for effort is totally skewed is not lost on women, who still do most of the housework, child rearing and bring home half the bacon whilst doing jobs outside of the home that take more effort yet are paid less.
If effort were valued, there would be no need to hire illegal immigrants to pick produce and a lot less jobless.
Everything is relative, so it is how you relate to the product and the person at that given time that molds your perception and no economic model can be designed to do that computation with data that changes at the blink of an eye. You can’t factor in prejudice or the weather.
Would people pay more if they knew the effort that goes into all kinds of products and services? Even though times have changed and Unions have demanded it, this will never be so. (Some countries still allow slavery and if it were legal in North Anmerica, many people would happily have them and a hooters tip is much more then middle aged waitress in a diner who gave better service)
Sorry to go a little off topic, but I did manage to answer the question!
Dennis, 3 costumers an hour? How about a reality of 2 or three per day and at what times 6 in the morning because your couldn’t open your shop 11 at night because you couldn’t get in your house/ is the rate that outrageous now?
It reminds me of a story about a carpenter I knew that went to change a door lock in someones house. When he was finished he gave the woman the bill for $100. She said – “That seems very expensive – could you break that down for me?” and he replied – “Sure no problem. Its $50 for doing the job and the other $50 is for knowing how to do it it”
I don’t think it’s simply about fairness; the locksmith’s speed makes customers think that his job is easy.
Mike: Now the number add up! If really only 2-3 customers per day are served, the money is perfectly fine to make a living!
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But if one only has 2-3 customers with 5-20 minutes per customer a day, that would mean roughly 5,5 hours ((20minutes+30minutes drive)*3customers) of the 8 hour work day sitting around, doing nothing. 5 hours of sitting around? That calls for more efficiency and more customers (e.g. run around and glue doors shut
liked the video – can I just say – it looks like you only shaved the right side of your face – the left side has a 5 o’clock shadow. is it just bad lighting?
I wonder if this is why child care workers are pretty much at the bottom of the financial food chain– people make the mistake of thinking it’s an easy, no-skill-required job that “everyone” innately knows how do (and besides, Mom never got paid for looking after us!. In reality, caring effectively for children–especially groups of children– takes a great deal of patience, ingenuity, creativity, and resiliance.
Reminds me of an old joke: Plumber gets called to fix a problem, which he does in five minutes, and asks for $100. Client complains “$100 for five minutes work? Outrageous!”. Plumber responds: “Yes, 5 minutes now, but 20 years experience to be that good.”
@ nobody you should read Dan’s bio for more info.
@Alix, yes … spot on. I worked in a daycare for 6 months to augment my retirement cash and found it fun, but also overwhelmingly difficult given the number of little ones we looked after and the plethora of things that went wrong (or came from each oriface) on a minute by minute (yes I mean that sincerely) basis.
I thought getting minimum wage to work that hard was outrageous, and I only lasted 6 months. Checking on the pay for those who I worked with who were skilled professionals (had 3 years or more training) in the field was mind boggling. It is still near poverty wages!
Picasso was in a park when a woman approached him and asked him to draw a portrait of her. Picasso agreed and quickly sketches her. After handing the sketch to her, she is pleased with the likeness and asks how much she owed to him. Picasso replied $5,000. The woman screamed “but it took you only five minutes”.
No, madam, it took me all my life, replied Picasso.
——
The locksmith picks the lock in five minutes and people get upset because he is -that- good at his job? They’re missing the main point: They cannot do it themselves and that is why they call an speciallist. Also, they are not paying for the five minutes the job took, they’re paying for the years and years of experience it took him to be that good at his job.
I used to work as a plumber’s apprentice. Once when we finished thawing out pipes in ten minutes, we just relaxed for another 20. I asked why and he said customers are giving up their hard-earned cash and they want to feel like it was a good value. I got a tip.
Very Interesting. In my country locksmith is both cheap and fast.
Don’t the more professional ones charge more? It seems to me that locksmiths rate is another factor, the more professional ones becomes, the higher its hourly rate will be and hence less tip he’ll get.
Marx’s Labor Theory of Value? It’s a gateway to socialism…
We still read Lee’s books on tactics, don’t we?
Ok, I can buy the story, but with his increased productivity and charging a flat fee, the locksmith is getting paid more per minute of work than he was before.
So the plumber should stop bitching because his hourly wage has effectively gone up.
Good video and correlation to ‘other services’. This post has produced an interesting and enlightening topic in a forum I frequent.
Thanks for sharing !
I just read some Amazon reviews of a new book by an author whose earlier books I’ve really enjoyed. A few reviewers have one-starred it because “it’s so short!” The content’s quality and the effort that went into it didn’t seem to matter.
If people paid based on time, quilt makers would be rich…but they are not. It is seen as a hobby, and to a lot of hand-quilters, it is. They never get their time paid for. They are paid based on a reasonable price for the quality of the work, and the intricacy of the pattern.
I know a person who runs a kayak tour company…As an employee for a company he contracted himself to do tours, he was tipped. As the guide of his own company he did not get tipped. People paid the same amount, the service was exactly the same, but people percieve that employees are not making as much money as owners, and therefore do not feel obliged to tip the person who will make all the profits (even though there is not a lot of profit)…
I locked myself out once, and called a locksmith from my neighbor’s phone.
I was shocked at how fast he got into my house. I didn’t balk at paying his fee though… I almost asked him how much to install better locks!
This whole phenomenon is a very interesting as it has a strange twist for health care therapists. Most therapy procedures are paid by health insurance companies per 15 minutes of time worked – regardless of skill or experience. Therefore a “new” therapist who is less skilled and takes longer to perform certain therapies than a therapist with lots of experience and skill will actually be paid more than the more experienced counterpart. In this situation the whole medical insurance infrastructure is acting in a similar way with therapists. For the record I am not a therapist but I am in health care.
Who tips a locksmith anyway? I don’t tip the plumber or electrician. Tipping sucks anyway; it is an arcane tradition that lingers on because some businesses – mainly restaurants – are allowed to underpay their staff.
Exactly my thought. It would never occur to me that I was supposed to tip a locksmith. He’s charging a fee – if he feels he’s not making the amount he should, he should raise his rates.
reminds me of:
“The secret of showmanship consists not of what you really do, but what the mystery-loving public thinks you do.” Houdini
Reminds me of a joke. A man went to his dentist to get a tooth pulled, but before the dentist pulled it, the man asked how much it would cost. The dentist told him it would cost $250. “What?!” the man exclaimed. “It only takes you five minutes!” “Well, if you’d prefer,” the dentist replied, “I can pull it very slowly.”
I noticed the same thing with one particular customer when I owned my own pool service business. The “tech” I replaced used to spend over an hour and a half cleaning their pool and it looked awful! I did the job in one-third of the time and the water sparkled. A little knowledge of water chemistry goes a long way toward keeping a pool stable and, in effect, keeping itself clean. It was not appreciated by the pool owner, however. They felt I charged too much because I wasn’t at their house as long each week so they went back to their old, cheaper, pool guy.
Guilting me into paying more is creative, but it is not going to work.
I get this alot as a mechanic. I can do something on a car, do it quickly and make it look easy. People will complain that it only took this long to do it, why did you charge so much. What they fail to take into account is how many times I’ve done that same thing. The first 10 times it took twice as long as it should have, still got paid the same. Second 10 times, took as long as it should. Now i can get you out the door in half the time, so shouldnt I get paid more because it was faster.
People dont take into account the time or equipment needed to learn, and be proficient at a service job.
Tipping is supposed to reward effort ‘above and beyond’ and, unfortunately, if you make it seem easy people think it is. Magicians depend upon it. Look at any DYI show on television and pity every fool out there who’s wife has decided renovating the kitchen will be an easy weekend job for the two of you to share starting tomorrow.
Theoretically you are supposed to make up in volume when you inprove efficiency and trim your profit margin a little. You still come out ahead because your sales increase in volume outpaces your decrease in price – the Walmart effect that America has come to know, love… and expect.
I somehow cannot digest that we could extrapolate the locksmith example to a doctor..
I think what we could learn is that the higher the perceived effort required to do a job the higher is the perceived value for it….this again is something that is very fundamental that can be seen even when business was done through barter system….a similar reason as to why gold and sliver become precious metals when compared to copper or any other metal….
This is so true. I distinctly remember feeling ripped off when a locksmith came over to replace a lock, it took 5 minutes and charged me NIS 150. I felt really ripped off, but why?
Bottom line, the experienced guy makes it look easy! A couple minutes, a strategic tap or two and the door is open, presto! Now the rookie looks at the lock, scratches his head, tries something then something else, it looks like the guy is working his butt off (and he is). You are actually getting more effort from the rookie but it’s not productive. But perception is the key, it looks like the guy’s working hard, he’s taking longer to do it and charging the same scale as the pro. So you tip the guy who looks like he’s working harder, the rookie. Perception is everything!
People have a high valuation for time. I think the points made above about hourly wages make a lot of sense.
As for the locksmith’s high flat fee, I actually would have assumed that had less to do with the skill required to pick the lock, and more to do with having a trustworthy professional available when locked out–a circumstance that often can be an emergency. That said, i agree that people tend to undervalue and underestimate the amount of time and dedication it takes to acquire certain skills. It would be interesting to see to what extent this miscalculation varies among professions.
Years ago, a friend worked as an apprentice to an old locksmith. He explained to her that it was always the same people who locked themselves out. So, the first time he was called out, he replaced their lock with a new one. The trick was, he keyed all of his new customers’ locks to the same key. So, when she would go out on a call and they said, “oh Mr. so-and-so can always get me in”, she knew to fiddle with the lock for a bit and then use the key when they weren’t looking. I bet this old locksmith got good tips up to the day he retired.
Random thought:
Rockband or Guitar Hero (the videogames) allow users to feel that playing a musical instrument is easy and reinforce that idea ad nauseum.
The genre of games is based on allowing untrained people to live out the fantasy of instant expertise–the sort of expertise that we pretend we have when we see the efficiency of well-trained locksmiths, plumbers, or mechanics.
Aren’t most fantasies those of instant expertise (e.g., SpiderMan, Harry Potter, The Matrix)?
Photographers have the same issue.
When you’re new and fumbling around, and have no idea how to light stuff, everything seems like a struggle…and then you do it for years and it becomes second nature, and the client wonders why they pay you so much for pressing a button.
Sometimes you’re better off making it look harder than it is…
As a glassblower, I encounter this a lot. Skill makes the process faster. I can make a better (x) in 10 minutes than a less experienced person can make in 40 minutes. And really skilled glass artists do much better than me in what seems to be mere moments. Maybe 2 minutes. We all pay per hour for the studio time, though so it behooves me to get very fast at the saleable items. When someone asks me how long it takes to make, say, a glass pumpkin, I usually reply “18 years and 20 minutes”. Although working with a good crew in a production environment can get that down to 5 minutes, and when I’m rusty, it can take 40.
We do perceive time taken *at the task, at that moment* to be valuable. What we don’t perceive in the cases like the locksmith or artists or other skilled labor issues is the value of them learning to do it right before they work on your project, which can take years.
Locked out my car the locksmith I’d called was making it look hard to get the door open, so I told him to stop wasting my time and just open the damn thing. He gave me a look and then opened it within a second or two. I suppose he thought he had to put on a show for the $35.
Inside the front cover of Pacfic Fishing magazine, a trade publication, a month or two ago they had a bit about how even though most people in that industry really hate “The Deadliest Catch” for various reasons, the magazine had decided to stop poking fun at the melodrama. Their reason? After seeing the show, people had a much better idea of how incredibly hard deep sea fishing is, and there was a drastic reduction in the volume of complaints about how expensive the seafood was.
The locksmith gets tipped after being paid? Does that include a happy ending?
Few customers seem to understand the total cost of doing business. In my opinion it’s an education issue. We’re not taking the time to teach our children about the cost of doing business, and they grow into adults who don’t understand or appreciate it.
Several of the comments above address the underlying “hidden” costs of business. In my opinion fellow small business owners are more likely to understand these costs. W-2 employees generally haven’t a clue about the costs beyond their limited roles in their organization.
that’s it josephmartin, great comment, you’re so right
The comments have been as interesting as the video that sparked them.
Very interesting concept. It applies to other domains as well — writing, for example. Everyone thinks they can do it, but they don’t do it as well or as efficiently as the pro.
One of the post I read today show real sense. I’ll keep coming back here for more..
I notice the same perception of value in my field of surgery. Due to the advancement of medical technology, and dare I say my own skill, many procedures which wold require a several day stay in the hospital are now performed with the patient leaving the hospital the same day. I have heard patients and family members comment “I can’t believe he is getting $[x] for 45 minutes of work.”
If there were more surgical complications resulting in death or disfigurement would people place a higher value on a surgeon’s services? If there were a few more commerical airline crashes each year would people be more appreciative of the airline companies?
I totally agree with this, and in fact I was about to mention surgical equipment in my comment below (I didn’t for conciseness). It’s certainly a fact that technology makes us work more and faster, but it doesn’t increase what we make per hour of work in the same proportion.
I am a professional translator and this issue is a common topic of debate among translators. Usually there is a curve: as a beginner usually you make less money for your hour of work because it takes you longer, you may need support from other people and you are not established, have less opportunities and less arguments to negotiate better rates. With experience you start to make more money. However, as you work faster and it takes you less time to do each job – and as you invest in better technology, terminology tools, translation memories, etc. – often clients want to pay less because they think the effort you’re putting in is reduced. In fact, tools are a puzzling issue: the same client you had before may demand that you work with a specific CAT (computer assisted translation) tool, and then lower your rates per word because you will not have to type all the words and will finish your work sooner. But you paid for that tool and invested time learning it because it would allow you to fulfill the client’s requirement. So we’re like a snake biting its tail. You may break this cycle if your demand is so high that you can select your clients and set your rates, but that is very rare.
This reminds me of a Photoshop seminar I took where the instructor pretended he was given a photo of a lawn dotted with dandelions by his art director, then hemmed and hawed about how it would take him all afternoon to fix…and then proceeded to get rid of the dandelions in a couple of keystrokes.
Once we were all done laughing, he told us to keep this in mind: don’t undervalue our training. We aren’t being paid to press a button. We’re being paid to know which button to press.
This idea made me think about college grades. Some college professors give higher grades to certain students because of the effort they put into the class and not necessarily for their performance. Nonetheless, your grade should be a measure of performance and not effort.
Why.
I disagree. It’s clearly the case at younger grades that effort should be rewarded. Maybe at college less so. But it seems reasonable to have it be a factor.
It seems gradesare rarely a reflection of actual performance (and more a measure of effort) especially in some of the more difficult classes. Grading curves tend to distort performance results by masking it.
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You can’t predict about the locksmith service provider efficiency and the dedication just seeing a single video. I always believe that there is a opposite part of that picture exist. Waiting for anyone’s reply.
Speed is of little concern, no damage is the primary concern. http://www.thedenverlockmsith.com
I think this is common in every occupation unfortunately. I often find myself taking longer on projects simply so that the client doesn’t think it was easy for me. It took years of gathering knowledge and attaining skill for me be as fast as I am. Many people don’t get that.
-Mike
This isn’t really exclusive to locksmithing. I’ve heard stories of computer repair people being questioned when they do their jobs as quick and efficient as they possibly could. Customers can be really clueless sometimes. I almost can’t blame con artists for preying on them.
My Father was a locksmith his entire life in Italy and when he came to America 7 years ago he found the same thing to be true. He actually got out of the profession a few years after he came here because it frustrated him so much. I think this is an American issue only. Americans “gotta have it yesterday and gotta have it cheap” mentality is hurting the not only this industry but others as well.
Thanks for posting this. It sure made me think what I need to do in life.
Love some of the comments here, as a locksmiths also I can turn up to a job, take a look at the lock, now,,, you never know how the lock will respond, on picking you feel how the lock responds,, this gives you an idea how good the lock is, and that it might take some time to pick. However, some locks just fall open so easy, this just happens sometimes, then i turn to the customer, but don”t have the heart to charge full price to gain entry. Simply because you did not have to work for this one. Time is a big factor..
Locksmith would hand a single lock. Hours of work using the files and produce a single hammer lock. Today, the manufacturing process locks changed. The same basic design was used with a unique number to each lock. The locksmith role has also evolved, where it is now more in repairs rather than production.
littleton locksmith
I don’t think it’s simply about fairness and Thanks for posting this. I will sure to come back this blog.
I agree. It’s clearly for me and i wait the new post.
Yea, people like to see a “hard work” before paying.
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Thank you Dan. This was a fantastic video presentation and something I will be sharing with members of my organization and the professional locksmith industry. Well done!