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I thought of the classic bike cuck comic today, because I kinda feel that way in reverse: I'm particularly mad at someone because I know they aren't better off for having fucked me over.
I've had an ongoing nightmare with a contractor working for my father. He's repeatedly shown up juuuuuuust enough that it seemed like a bad idea to fire him and try to find someone else to finish (no one likes to take over a half-finished job), but then would demand a progress payment, and disappear for a few days afterward, with no notice. It took a month to do a week's worth of work, with a million excuses about how this wasn't ready and that wasn't right and this was bad and that was bad and whatever, and it is holding up other aspects of the same project. Last week, I wrote up a new contract to have him sign, indicating that in exchange for a payment on that day, he would come to work every day until the conclusion of the project. For every day he missed we would deduct 1/7 of the remaining balance. He's since missed three days. I didn't mention the balance reduction, somewhat dishonestly, because I didn't want him thinking "Well, is it even worth finishing for 4/7?"
Well today he comes in and demands to get half the remaining balance up front. "I gotta make my car payment or they're gonna repo the car!" I put him off all day then told him, hey, we're going to abide by the payment terms you signed last week, I see no reason to divert from them. Whatever issues there are with the job or with your finances, you knew about them last week when we put that together and you signed it.
Now he's saying he isn't coming back for two days because he needs to do other jobs to make money. I told him we intend to abide by the contract terms, and that he is obligated to come in every day. He said that he would make up any lost money charging us extra to do repairs on work he had already screwed up.
I'm going to need to rig up better security cameras at the property to make sure he doesn't pull some bullshit.
But the thing that galls me the most about the whole process is that he didn't benefit from this either. He's still broke! We paid him his entire initial estimate, and it took four times as long as it should have, so he didn't end up with a big pile of money at the end. It's going to cost us twice as much as it should have by the time we actually get it done, and he's broke.
Maybe I would feel better if he had just stolen my money, at least it would have made him happier.
I'd just chalk it up to a learning experience. The only leverage you have against a shady contractor is the money you haven't paid them yet, the know you aren't gonna wait long enough to get some form of actual judgement against them to complete the job, and they'll just leave town if you try to get a financial judgement afterwards.
It sucks, but if you actually try to enforce that balance reduction term he's just gonna split.
Oh, he's already split, I just hope he stays split. I've heard horror stories of guys who "repossess" construction work by destroying it, hence the need to rig up better cameras. The purpose of the balance reduction clause was primarily to motivate him to consistently show up, and secondarily to create a drop-dead date for the contract if he didn't. Once seven days pass where he didn't show up, there is zero remaining balance. On the off chance he tries to waste our time in small-claims.
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This ties in with another argument :re poverty-as-a-cause-of-crime. If you actually do some ballpark estimates for the average criminal, you'll frequently find out that they make money barely on par with a regular minimum wage job, often worse, with the added risk of ending up in jail. This goes against the claims of significant parts of both left and right; The left often thinks that people turn to crime since minimum wage jobs aren't enough to get by, but as it turns out crime isn't actually better so that argument is kinda moot; Many on the right think that criminals are self-serving egoists taking advantage of a well-meaning system for their own gain. As it turns out, the majority of criminals are probably just idiots who are screwing themselves over and others. And at least for me a lot of things clicked into place upon that realisation; For example you'll notice that many people who just barely get by have a certain degree of self-destructive behaviour that holds them back significantly, they just also have some admirable (or at least tolerable) qualities in addition. Your contractor seems like a good example.
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