How many electricians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
That’s the question I asked myself last week after the electricians left my house.
One of the frustrations of electrical work, and of contracting, in general, is the inherent vagueness that accompanies so much of it. It’s a truism with systems of any kind ”“ wiring, plumbing, the human body ”“ that one thing leads to another. There are incidental findings, complications that weren’t foreseen. Thus a headache can be a preamble to the flu, a flickering light the signal of larger electrical trouble.
“An hour, at the least,” the electrician estimated before the visit, “maybe three or four hours. There’s no way of knowing what we’ll find.”
So I set up the appointment, and we allotted an afternoon, just in case, to install a new light in my kitchen. As luck would have it, a second task had cropped up, as well. A dining room fixture, suspended from the ceiling by three wire cables, suddenly snapped. It was now hanging by two cables, resembling a satellite ready to land.
The day of the appointment, the electrician arrived with an apprentice. The two of them worked steadily for close to two hours, fishing wires from the attic into my kitchen. They installed the new ceiling fixture that I’d bought, and moved on to the second chore.
They removed the broken pendant that hung precariously in the dining room, and prepared to re-wire its cables. As I was warned in advance, they took a section of the cable and headed over to a nearby electrical supply shop for a replacement.
I noted the time when they left ”“ 1:50 p.m. ”“ as I had noted their arrival earlier. While contractors can guard against the variables of a given job, I could at least keep track of the particulars.
The supply store is located 15, maybe 20, minutes away. Double that time for round-trip travel, and figure another 20 minutes to match and buy the cable. According to my math, the electricians should have been gone for about an hour. So I was puzzled when, at 4:10, almost two-and-a-half hours later, they returned with the goods. Perhaps they had stopped for lunch, or a break ”“ I didn’t know.
They re-wired the cables on the fixture, and clocked a final 45 minutes on the job.
When the bill arrived, it answered several questions. I was indeed charged for ten hours of work ”“ two men for five hours, including the nearly two-and-a-half hours that the electricians were out buying cable. Which raises a number of questions.
Let’s say, for instance, that the supply shop didn’t have the proper type of cable. Should the customer be charged for an extra hour or so of what would politely be termed “research” ”“ namely, two guys shopping for wire?
Or should that be the contractor’s responsibility?
More to the point, since when does it take two men to buy a handful of wire cable?
Surely one of them could have stayed behind and completed the other small items on the docket. Needless to say, I questioned the electrician’s bill and we came to an agreement.
I can go along with the need for vagueness ”“ up to a point. But I’m reasonably certain that it shouldn’t take two electricians to screw in a lightbulb.
— Joan Silverman is a writer in Kennebunk. This article appeared earlier in The Journal of Commerce.
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