There is no honor among thieves

[Scott]

Yesterday I was sooooo hot.
I had just about finished up with two landscape jobs (new construction) side by side. Irrigation done, final grade done, sod, plants and trees in and all that I needed was mulch. Well something told me to stop by as I was heading in the general direction anyway. Out front was ok but when I walked to the back sides I was missing a handful of Knock-outs, coonties, and loropetalums.
WTH! You freakin punks! What is wrong with these people? Replacing the roses and loropetalums wasn't a problem but the coonties are zero balance in bay county. So now I have to replace the rest of them and substitute something else.
I left the jobsite something 4pm Friday and showed back up @ 8:30am. It might have been some people just looking through some nearly completed houses and thought,, "hmmm, these contractors have so much money, they can replace these plants w/o any problem. Besides these would so lovely next to all that other stuff we stole."

BUT it's not the contractor that is paying for these!

roses $15ea, total $60,, replacement $17ea $68 total
loropetalums $8.50ea, $85 total, replacement $12ea, total $120
coontie $3ea, total $27, replacement, priceless

One thing I am glad about though, they didn't steal my camelias, 42 bones a pop and they left all of them.

Why didn't they steal any of the liropie? that's easy to replace and cheaper since I have 100 or so left over in my backyard.

[Scaper-S2k]

I don't even know what a coontie is! But it sure sounds funny.

$3 a piece? Man, up here I can't get anything for $3 a piece unless they are 1 gallon annuals.




We do work for a company that hires a security gaurd firm to overlook visitors coming and going. They have a gaurd house right in front of the building where all the landscaping is. These gaurds weren't good at all. And this biz makes some expensive stuff that could be stolen.

Anyway, every year we would plant some big 1 gallon flowers and some would go missing....popped right out of the hole. We all knew it was the security gaurds doing it.


So I went into our clients office (the guy I deal with) and told him what was going on. Right in front of me he calls the security gaurd biz and put them on speaker phone!

This was REALLY funny. He blames the gaurds for stealing the flowers. Security company says "No way would they ever do that, and you have no proof that they were doing it. Please stop blaimng them."

Well, then something dawned on me! I said "Well, if they didn't do it, shouldn't the gaurds have at least SEEN and caught who was stealing from us?"


No comment on the other end, just silence!!!! My client says "Yeh, that's a good point Erich. We want all your gaurds out of here after today, we are calling a new company."

!!!!!!

That was really something. Maybe you had to be there.


My little thought, spoken out loud took out got the whole company fired for a THIEF!!!

[MASTERMOWER]

Yo, do you have pictures of your scaping? You know we all love pictures.

If I had seen these idiots stealing the plant material, I woulda followed them to thier home, recorded their address, and billed them for the plants taken, marked up 400% to boot. Woulda also included a note that said either they pay, or you'll turn the matter over to your local law enforcement agency.

[hardboiled]

Yeah what's a coontie. I think I know what a liropie is...isn't that a liriope?

After Tranny's mention of scrapping A/C's the other day I was looking that up to see what the value might be for a couple old window units. I see it is quite a big thing now to steal them out of homes and businesses that are unoccupied or being built, or even occupied places. Some guy came up with the idea of marketing an alarm that mounts in them to thwart it. Maybe you will have to start alarming your plantings?

[Scott]

whadda guys new?

A coontie,, you know, a zamia pumila,, a coontie!

These two houses are way in the back of a new subdivision so it would've been easy to take what they want.

most of the common plants around here run at these prices;
1 gallons, are under $3,
3 gallons run around $6,
but then there are a lot of exceptions like; loropetalums, camellias, bananas, hostas, flowering vines, etc... that run more.

At first I thought it might be another sub but then I cleared that thought out of my mind because we're all pretty tight about respecting each others work. I had once left my cordless 18v Milwaukee drill in a garage on a strip of 7 houses we all where working on for a week. I couldn't remember for the life of me were I had left it and counted it gone until a painter commented on a drill kit that was laying next to a controller a few houses back. I went back there and everything was laying exactly as I left it.
Also because of the timeframe, I'm sure it was a looky loo that was passing through some houses, wasting time. They never come through before 5pm so they can avoid us subs staring at them while they get in the way.

Pics; yeah I have all kinds of pics but why take pics of spec houses? BORING!

[steve-o]

Pics; yeah I have all kinds of pics but why take pics of spec houses? BORING!

boring to you, but not to us that don't do that work. i for one would love to see pictures of everybodys work. if i knew how to do all that crap with the computer i would show some of my crap. remember, your in fla. and things are different down there, so show some of your stuff. kinda like erich's garden photos, i've had a garden all my life, but really enjoyed those shots he had. just my 2 cent scotty ole boy.

steve

[GeeVee]

Coontie is a fern.