Green Hypocrisy

[Larry Edgerton]

I went to see a customer today and as I was leaving she looked out and saw my large van and chided me for driving such inefficient transport, while telling me how efficient her Prius is.

Heres the rub: She was at her 6500 ft. vacation house built on a previously pristeen bit of lakeshore, all glass on the lake side, heated pool, and all of it heated/cooled year round for about a month of actual use. Her house downstate is bigger of course, and when she is up here she is not turning the heat off down there either.

I live in a VERY efficient 1100 ft house, my normal car gets 36MPG without toxic batteries, and I don't have a vacation house at all. I could drive my van 24 hours a day and never use as much fuel as it takes to keep their pools warm!

Another customer was asking me if I use green building practices.
The week before he had had one pilot fly his helocopter 500 miles to the airport here to pick him up after another pilot flew him in his Gulfstream up to the airport, alone. He keeps a Mercedes wagon at the airport, but didn't want to drive it the 17 miles to the house. How green would I have to be to make up for that one weekend?

These are the kind of people that will bulldoze their little piece of the lakeshore, and then try to stop anyone else from building on the lake. One of my customers was stopped from doing anything on his property by a lady that had just built down the lake, didn't even bother to talk to my client, but filed an injunction because of "Monkey flower" on the property, which she could not have found without disregarding the No Tresspassing signs. I told my customer not to worry about it and I took care of the problem. Gotta love Roundup.......

Not about green, but a recently retired CEO of a multinational was trying to beat me up on price because times were tight and he couldn't afford it. This was after we had walked by a GT40 and a Lambo parked in the garage. Really?

I am so glad that my time in this business is almost over. One of these days I am going to say what I am actually thinking........

I do have a core of really great clients, but some of the others I have to deal with just blow my mind.

Ok, I vented, I feel better..

Larry

[ray hampton]

Larry . I can not see your face so tell me do you look better ?
telling some people where to go is a hazardous to your health so be very carefil

[John Coloccia]

Demonstrating yet again the lack of correlation between intelligence and success..

[Joel Goodman]

+1 on the hypocrisy rant!! This is the problem, the more money we have, the more toys we have, the bigger our carbon footprint. So a rich man will be responsible for more carbon. But the rich want to be rich and have the moral high ground.
A friend (who drives a Prius) told me a joke --- "What does a Prius emit?" Answer -- "Smug"

[Van Huskey]

+1 on the hypocrisy rant!! This is the problem, the more money we have, the more toys we have, the bigger our carbon footprint. So a rich man will be responsible for more carbon. But the rich want to be rich and have the moral high ground.
A friend (who drives a Prius) told me a joke --- "What does a Prius emit?" Answer -- "Smug"

"SMUG" he must be a South Park fan. The episode was called Smug Alert http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155193/thanks

[Van Huskey]

Demonstrating yet again the lack of correlation between intelligence and success..

I suggest it is more a direct correlation with success and entitlement. Giving said people the benefit of the doubt they may buy carbon offsets...

[Jim Matthews]

These are the kind of people that will bulldoze their little piece of the lakeshore, and then try to stop anyone else from building on the lake.
Larry

I call this the "Montana effect": after purchasing a valley, the new owners proclaim perfection has been achieved on their arrival and attempt to put up a fence.

Money is like a magnetic heavy metal - it draws more to itself, and is poisonous in high concentrations.
Symptoms of money poisoning include; multiple spouses, more than one house and formal dinners to raise awareness of World Hunger.

To be environmentally safe, it needs to be circulated through many hands in exchange for actual work.
Few of the current wealthiest individuals actually make a tangible product or act as employers.

[Phil Thien]

Outstanding. Larry, that belongs in the SMC rant hall of fame.

[Greg Peterson]

I suggest it is more a direct correlation with success and entitlement.

+1.

Yeah, I know a person or two like this. They are oblivious to their contradictions. A by product of success often times is an over inflated sense of entitlement.

[Kevin W Johnson]

Rich + Green = hypocrisy, in many cases anyways. Its all about what everyone else should do, while those who can buy carbon offsets continue to live the lavish and excessive lifestyle and proclaim that they're "carbon neutral".

[curtis rosche]

"SMUG" he must be a South Park fan. The episode was called Smug Alert http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155193/thanks

that episode is very true

[Jason Roehl]

Outstanding. Larry, that belongs in the SMC rant hall of fame.

I agree.

The RoundUp comment caused me to laugh out loud.

[Jerry Thompson]

I don't know if "Green" and "Rich" go hand in hand. Green and ignorant/stupid are more appropro. Years and years ago I installed solar hot water. All the neighbors excpet on were congratulating me on going Green and saving the enviorment. I told them to hell with that idea I was saving money. This did not seem to go over well. Yet, in this case saving money would reduce electricity use.
The Green objective, in my view, is to eventually control all of us.

[Dave Lehnert]

kinda like the guy in a restaurant who orders coffee with artificial sweetener but has "blueberry pie all over their face".

[john lampros]

Larry, I was in that same position as you described when i was contracting (for 20 yrs). In the beginning when developing a client base I had to eat a lot of crow but as time passed and base grew I realized one day that one of the luxuries of being in my position is that I now get to pick my clients. I started refusing work from people I got a bad feeling from. At first I just tried to price myself out of the job but I found I got most of those jobs anyway. for a while it was great to charge more for people I didnt like but after a while even the money didnt help as I was still working for people of questionable character. Even tho what i wanted to say was your an #$%^ hole and i dont want to work for you find someone else. but I dont think my client base would have held up for long. so I eventually relied on a very long back log to get out of the work, strangely, that worked better than an inflated price. I was Very lucky in that most of my client were very good people, or at least it ended up that way due to it being a conscious effort. My point is, in the beginning when your hungry you get use to eating crow and the time comes when you dont have to but your still stuck in that mode.
Maybe your business is to the point where you can respond to that lady who criticized your van with out being nasty, just enough for her to realize the hypocracy of her statment and if she goes postal on you maybe you didnt need her business anyway. whatever, its the tough part about being in the service industry. hang in there.