Pool Dude shoots in the gate. Bribes the dog. Throws himself around. Shoots out the gate. Bless that man!!! That pool has been crystalline GORGEOUS since the first day he showed up on the job.
Ruby dearly loves him. She knows when it’s Tuesday — Pool Dude Day — and lurks by the door or the gate waiting for him to show up. I suspect this is largely because he bribes her with treats. But in fact he seems to be a very sweet man, if somewhat eccentric.
I wonder if you can earn enough cleaning pools to actually make a living.
Hmmmm…. He charges me $110/month. This includes chemicals, though…so he’s not getting anywhere near that much. Let’s estimate that maybe he nets, after gasoline and vehicle upkeep, around $60/month…maybe $70. Hmmm…
If it takes him around an hour to drive from one customer’s house to the next, plus of course the drive time from wherever he lives, he can probably serve five to eight customers a day. So that would be, say, 5 customers/day times 4 (five-day) weeks/month: 20 paying trips per month.
ooohkayyyy…. 20 trips * $110 = $2200/month, gross.
That’s not a helluva lot less than I was earning at GDU. And he doesn’t have a Ph.D., 15 years of journalism experience, and 20 years of teaching experience. On the other hand, I didn’t have to purchase all the materials needed to do the job — and chlorine, in particular, ain’t cheap. Nor did I spend half the day driving from place to place…burning $4.25-a-gallon gasoline every inch of the way.
In other sylvan fields…
Yesterday’s freeway wreck, which I narrowly escaped, apparently was even more spectacular than reported. It looks like the cops actually RAMMED the guy’s truck to stop him! At freeway speed…
Wow! If I hadn’t gone into the Best Buy on that futile quest for…whatever I wanted, but instead had continued on north toward the Costco up the freeway, I would’ve been in the middle of that.
Y’know…I kinda doubt that I’d be real happy with a job that required me to drive allllll over the Valley every day. It is just too, too crazy out there to be in a car any more than absolutely necessary.
Phoenix: what a place!
Holee shee-it indeed! Poor van owner, or was he just the van driver? Glad they got the thief, at least.
Also, glad you’re posting again, was getting worried.
Thanks! Glad to be back. The plague and the endless isolation and boredom have kinda landed me in a blue funk. Trying to snap out of it!!