At the end of my meeting with the Italian-Israeli, I agreed to meet with him in two weeks so that he could be "the last person I talked to". I thought he would be bringing me some sort of budget, some idea of how much it would cost. When we got in the house, he asked me if I had met other contractors and when I said I had he asked me if I was ready to go. I looked at him a bit confused and said, "well, I haven't gotten any numbers from you, so no." I told him that I would not be signing anything without getting some sort of idea of cost and I think he was a little surprised. He spent five minutes taking a couple measurements and writing a basic list of the projects I had: kitchen, bath, electrical, etc... and spouted off a number. It was higher than I was hoping for, and higher than the other guys, but not that far outside of reasonable.
After he gave me the number, he asked me what I was thinking about the project. He said he had been honest with me and that he wanted me to be honest with me. I decided to go ahead and do that. At this point, the Pete's were the most impressive, and I had pretty much knocked him out of the running. I was pretty sure that we would just not work particularly well together. I felt that our ideas of design and finish would not match and that he would be spending his time working to convince me to spend more money. I told him that I was leaning in a different direction. He looked at me confused and asked, "What do you mean?", so I decided to make it more clear. "As in I'm leaning away from you and toward someone else." At this point his face got all pinched with what seemed like confusion and possibly hurt. He asked me if there was anything he could do to change my mind. He asked me what the other guys had done differently. He told me he really wanted this job. He was starting to sound a bit desperate. I felt like I was breaking up with him. What I was really looking for was a detailed bid with labor and materials separated. I had asked him for it before, but he basically avoided answering, trying to tell me how his bid included a budget of, say, $3-5 per square foot for the kitchen tile (never mind that I want hardwood). When I asked him what he would do if I wanted something that was only $1, he just told me matter of fact that he would give me a credit. I didn't want to waste the time or energy explaining to him that without a detailed bid with everything separated, I would have no way of knowing if the credit had actually been given, or how much it had been. Basically, the division of the bid by labor and materials is designed to keep him more honest, and he didn't seem all that interested in that.
He asked for his folder back, which he checked to make sure everything was still there, and I told him goodbye. As he was leaving, head down, tail between his legs, he continued to ask if there was anything he could do, because he really wanted the job. I pictured him returning to the office and getting yelled at by his family (he said his company was a family business when we first met) for not getting the job. I assured him that I had his contact info, and if I thought of anything he could do I would let him know. I was sure to use my calming, "everything is going to be ok" voice.
As soon as he drove away I sent a text message to my friend and called my mother so I could share the laugh. What can I say, sometimes I'm just not a good person :)
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