Bill got paid
Next time when a client asks “Why do you charge me so much when you can get this task done in such a short time?”, send him this piece I found online some time ago:
A fellow works at a steel mill for most of his life. One day, he’s laid off because a new machine comes in to replace him.
2 months later, he gets a frantic call from his old boss. “Bill, I need your help, the machine is broken and we can’t figure out what’s wrong with it – the whole plant is at a standstill!”
So Bill goes over to the plant, walks around checking a few things and then finally pulls out a piece of chalk. He goes over and marks 3 parts – a switch, a gasket and a small servo. “Replace these parts and you’ll be fine” he says.
The plant manager is ecstatic, and replaces the parts. Sure enough, the plant is operational again.
A week later, the plant manager gets Bills invoice. $50,050.05!
Agast, the manager phones up Bill and says “What is this! All you did was walk around and make 3 marks! Explain this invoice to me.”
Bill replies “The .05 is the cost of the chalk. The $50 was my time for coming down here”
“And the remaining $50k?!”
“The $50k is the 40 years of experience it took for me to put the marks in the exact right spot and solve your million dollar problem.”
Bill got paid.
Brilliant story !!
That reminds me I have a friend that have been dealing with most of the production pressure of his company, not getting fairly compensated with crazy long hours. When he got a new job, his boss had to beg him to teach other people with a very high pay.