An Unpleasant Conversation

I knew that if I waited to post something I wrote last week the situation would change, and it has.

I had to have an unpleasant conversation with our neighbor boy last week. About the lawn.

Really I wish John had dealt with all of this and left me out of it. (It was Thursday evening, but John was at work. In truth, I AM glad that John has a job – even if he is still working there at 8 p.m. – because this means we can have a house with a lawn.) I mean, I get left out of lawn care as a rule seeing as I cannot start the weed-eater, and if my dear husband had really wanted me to mow the yard he would never have bought a manual push mower. Plus, I am so extremely watchful of getting too much sun that the whole “mowing the lawn is a good way to get a tan” concept doesn’t appeal like it might have in high school.

Anyway, circumstances led to me being the one who had to talk with the neighbor boy.

Background:
You see, John has been waiting for the neighbor boy to come of lawn-mowing age since we moved into this house. John has grand plans of teaching the boy all he knows about building a successful lawn service that might someday allow the boy to make a nice down payment on a house. John was willing to pay the boy a small amount of money in return for giving him all the expertise he might need as well as a large lawn on which to practice and hone his yard care skills.

So a couple weeks ago, the boy came around asking if he might mow our lawn this summer. The price was agreed upon, and the lawn mowing commenced. (Although, admittedly, John was hoping the boy might be eager to mow, say, ten lawns a week while the boy obviously was thinking more along the lines of two yards: his and ours. Gotta start somewhere.)

Fast-forward to Thursday evening:
Apparently the neighbor boy asked John for a raise last weekend. John might have said something like, “Well, OK” but that was before discussing it with me, after which John himself told me he wasn’t thinking clearly (maybe due to the 110-degree temperatures) and really does not want to up the price. I understand it takes this boy half a day to get our lawn done, but he also just started. He’s only done it twice. Rome wasn’t built in a day, people.

So, when the boy came by Thursday evening, I gave him the same amount I have been giving him and had to politely explain that we cannot afford to raise his salary. I think I gave all the good reasons: you just started mowing lawns, you’re using some of our equipment instead of your own, John will help you the next couple weeks, you’ll get faster with more experience, blah, blah, blah. Maybe I should have given him some cookies. Would that have assuaged my conscience? OK. Probably not.

As many times as I’ve screwed up in my life and had to make up for it, I really do not feel I have yet attained competency in resolving awkward situations or confronting people outside of the well-defined boundaries of counseling. I just don’t want to make enemies of our neighbors.

For two days after the difficult conversation, I overanalyzed everything I said and how the boy might be feeling and convinced myself that it is not a good thing to promise to pay someone more than you really want to or can pay them. (Because I can overanalyze with the best of them.)

So, the boy showed up last Saturday to mow the lawn and John got to have a talk with him. John’s conversation was somewhat easier than mine had been seeing as the boy basically fired himself. It might just not be a good fit. He doesn’t like mowing lawns (can’t blame him there), nor does he like waking up early in the morning (again, no objection from me), but this means he has to mow the lawn when it is nearly as hot as the surface of the sun thus taking him approximately twice as long as it would were heat exhaustion not a very real possibility.

We’ll still pay him to take care of the grass when we’re out of town. John spoke with the boy’s father and things seem to be amicable.

So, we still have friendly neighbors, but John’s dream of helping a youth build up a lawn business has been shattered. For now. Until we move and live next to another unsuspecting family whose son could be the next millionaire lawn service owner.

Heck. If John has to work many more 60-hour weeks he might just start another lawn service himself.