Tree People
It is the morning of Labor Day 2020 and I am sitting in my office in my underwear (one of the luxuries of life on the hilltop where I am out of view of all prying eyes). I have just spent fifteen minutes figuring out how to fix a documentation gremlin that has plagued me. I have to send a signed grant award contract to an agency in Scotland. The first version I signed (using my IAnnotate document app) for some reason eliminated the original signers electronic signature and I was asked to re-sign the contract. The second version that I signed had the original signers signature, but for some reason reformatted the budget chart and made a continuous digit version of it. That was unacceptable. The problem lay somewhere in the interstitial ozone between Word and PDF documents on Windows versus IOS (Apple) operating systems, or perhaps due to my use of an iPad instead of a proper computer. Then again, maybe it was Scottish protocol versus American or even regular commercial and Scottish (UK, but only marginally UK, given the independence streak inherent in Highlanders). Whatever it was that messed me up, I found a way to trick it out by copying and pasting the proper digital signature in the second version into the properly formatted first version and, as they like to say in the Celtic parts of the world, Bob’s Your Uncle. Now that was Labor by today’s standards, even in my underwear.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch on the hilltop, I have detected movement out of the corner of my eye and, low and behold, it is a band of about seven or eight Hispanic (probably Mexican) men dressed in high-visibility yellow vests wending their way through my patio at 7am on their way into the nether reaches of my vegetated property. They are headed into the part of the property I rarely venture into between my hilltop patio and hot tub and the property line with my northern-most neighbor. That area represents perhaps a half-acre that I am glad to ignore since the pool/spa equipment lives over there and I suspect several rattlesnakes do as well. These are the tree people and they seem intent on getting in a full day’s work before the temperature rises too much.
While trying to work our ant problem (the little bastards are relentless in this part of San Diego County, and especially so in the hot weather when they are in desperate search of water), our ant guy tells us that they are using a live oak tree to get onto our patio palapa and using that to meander, as ants do in columns, across to the Madagascar Bottle Tree limbs that touch the palapa and the house simultaneously. I have only minimal conviction that Mr. Ant would go to all that trouble when he could just walk on the patio up to my house and be in the same position without all the elaborate tree-to-palapa-to-tree-to-house climbing. I am not certain if ants find pleasure in the challenge of this intricate travel path, but I suspect they are all about efficiency and that the tree-climbing is not the preferred route. But, nonetheless, we are told by the exterminator that we must trim our trees back. This seems sensible enough anyway (even despite ants) so we called Roberto the tree guy. He is quite the arborist and he has done masterful things with our large yuccas in the front (technically not a tree, but a succulent of proportion), but Roberto works on all things vegetative that grow to tree-size.
Roberto knows his business and his clients well and when he came over for the estimate he walked the entire 2.5 acres of our property and came back with a mouthful of tsk-tsks. I am used to workmen telling me I have a big problem that they need to solve for me, but Roberto has honed his pitch to another, more effective level. He tells me that I am eliminating an important fire hazard. He watches the news and knows damn well that we all live in mortal fear of wildfires out here and he is unabashedly prepared to use that fear to further his business case. Donald Trump could even learn a few fear-mongering lessons from Roberto.
When I balked at his initial estimate to trim everything on every inch of my property, I recognized that much of what my regular gardener, Juventino, does is thin and trim and weed stuff, and he does it MUCH cheaper than Roberto the tree specialist does it. Therefore, I told Roberto that I want him and tree people to focus on the area on the north side of the property in the land that I have chosen to ignore where the big ficus trees reside. Roberto is nobody’s fool and he knows that I have limited him to the real tree zone on the property. He also knows that I also want those two ant-climbing trees on the patio dealt with. He quotes me a price that seems too low for the patio trees and too high for the rest. Interesting tactic, but I plan to turn it against him so I ask for one price for the patio and northern side of the property and I give him a level 50% of what he had bid for the whole 2.5 acres. Roberto carefully adds $500 to my suggestion, which is him borrowing against my likely tip, so I agree and the date for execution was set for last Friday.
The tree team came on Friday and worked like demons with ropes and saws and big old Fargo wood chipper. They spent the whole day and did about half the trees, leaving a quite noticeable difference, which is good advertising for his service. We made sure they planned to come back today rather than later in the week when they would likely interfere more with my games area work that Handy Brad is trying to finish up this week. Those were the gang I just noticed walking through my patio, approaching the remaining trees from the high side. It so happens that Handy Brad just called from Home Depot where he has decided to get a jump on the games area work and called to say he can pick up two day-laboring Mexicans that hang out there in the parking lot, waiting for work opportunities. I have agreed and he will be in there mixing it up amongst the tree people, indicating mild annoyance that he has to work around others in the same area. I see the biggest issue being with Roberto, since he will be looking at the Mexican day-laborer arbitrage play right in the face. If I really wanted to fuck with his head I would have called in Juventino and his son Roberto (different Roberto). That way I would have had three levels of Mexican labor all working the property at the same time, basically doing similar tasks, but undoubtedly getting paid different wages.
I am really not trying to take advantage of cheap labor. I pay Handy Brad his asking rate of $20/hour and always add a little to it. He hires the day laborers at about $15/hour. Juventino charges in between the two rates and I always add to that as well. God knows how much Roberto pays his tree guys, maybe a bit more for their arboreal expertise, maybe a bit more for the tree-climbing and rope-wielding expertise, but also maybe a bit less since he can offer steadier workflow. I do not want to know, but when I do the math and add in the capital equipment added cost for the chipper, Juventino’s weed-whacker and Handy Brad’s truck, shopping and managerial (including recruiting and training) skills, I am certain that I am getting a bargain. My job will be to make sure I have cash on hand to pay the crews their daily tribute and add to the grey-market economy of Southern California.
Nature turns sun, water and soil into all this beautiful vegetation out here. Mexican day labor then trims it all back. I will watch the tree people with great admiration on this Labor Day.