Sometimes things don’t go as planned. We did a trade earlier this year; my wife did some Home School Evaluations for a family, and in return the family (their two teenage sons) was to cut our grass two times. The trade was okay for us, they were definitely getting the better end of the deal, but we were doing it to help them out, and honestly, I am so busy with work right now that it seemed to be a good idea to free some of my time up. Well it went from being an okay trade to a very poor trade.
The first time they cut the grass, I was here and their mother was here, so the grass was cut okay, not great, but okay (they missed some obvious spots). This last time they cut the grass, our family was on vacation. I know they were here to cut the grass because the mower was moved. They did a terrible job – whole sections of grass missed. I am hoping that maybe they started but had to quit because of rain or something, but they left no note so I am not sure. We will email them, but I am afraid their answer will be they finished. I had to spend an hour yesterday just trying to make the grass look okay after they started. It was really haphazard how they cut, not sure where they started or stopped.
This was just a reminder to me that you need to be careful when you trade services. We needed to make our expectations clear about what cutting our grass means, and we should have asked if they had cut other peoples lawns before (so we could check references). A lesson learned!
