Social Media’s “Will Work for Food” Sign, Trust Me

[photo by JoJo Johnson]

Like most Americans I have only become a user of social media in the past year or so. According to Edison Research, use of social networking sites doubled between 2008 and 2010.

What greeted me when I entered the new social media world was a bunch of old friends and acquaintances I was happy to see again. And then a bunch of strangers started showing up; people looking for a handout or shouting at me to buy their stuff.

And then there were the “will work for food” guys. These are the down on their luck but not looking for a handout people who would like you to hire them if you have any odd internet jobs you need done. They’d be most grateful for whatever you could spare.

A few years back I was deployed to Afghanistan while in the middle of remodeling our basement. At the point I left the framing, plumbing and wiring had all been done and it was ready to be rocked.

In my plywood hooch in Bagram I received the “good news” from my wife she’d found some guys to do the sheetrock.

Like stray puppies with floppy, tattered ears women are drawn to pitiful creatures and this turned out to be no exception. The “will work for food” guys showed up to assess the job only after my wife provided them money for gas.

“Where did you find these guys?” I asked.

“At Home Depot,” she innocently replied.

Social psychology working against us

This is a symptom of a larger issue I won’t go into today: the tendency of women to assume men are good at guy things simply because they’re men. Sadly I must dispel this myth; all men are not great at “guy things.”

And just because a guy is hanging out at the Home Depot does not qualify him as an expert.

“Will Home Depot take them back?” I asked.

The problem is we want to trust people. All the people I meet online are the same at first; a name, a brief bio, a picture if I’m lucky. What do I have to go on?

Some people turn out to be wonderful surprises, others annoyingly self-serving, but there was no way to differentiate them in the initial stages so when I’m confronted by the social media equivalent of a guy who needs some help, how do I know if I can trust him?

It turned out the sheetrockers were a father/son team and aside from gas money there seemed to be an endless supply of reasons they couldn’t be there on time or stay very long.

Every few days I’d get the update.

“I don’t know why they can’t stay longer than three hours at a time,” my wife lamented. “At this rate they’ll never get done.”

There’s a lesson in here somewhere too; sometimes people are unemployed for a reason.

How bad will things get before you pull the plug?

Four weeks into a four-day job I was getting another update.

“Just the dad was here today, his son wasn’t feeling well. But he’s gone home already too.”

“How long was he there?”

“About two hours. He said he crapped in his pants and needed to leave.”

That was his excuse, he crapped in his pants? This guy was unbelievable. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him because of his incontinence or his inability to come up with a better excuse.

But then I considered, maybe this was the perfect excuse. No one in their right mind will try to talk you into staying and it’s utterly believable since it’s so embarrassing it seems highly unlikely someone would make up such a story.

Well played vagrant sheetrocker.

Given their level of commitment to the job I feared for the professional quality of their work.

“Yeah, it looks good to me,” my wife said. But she said it in that I-don’t-really-know-what-I’m-looking-for tone that would have been followed, were I any closer than 8000 miles away, with “why don’t you come down and look at it?”

I would have loved to get a look at it, but like many a touted online product I couldn’t see what I was paying for. I could get second hand reports, testimonials and quoted praise, but how did I know these people knew what they were looking at any more than my wife assessing the quality of drywall work?

How many $39 eBooks or $249 online courses sound promising until you download the actual product? It takes a great deal of trust to plunk down hard earned money based on a fast talker’s sales pitch.

Oh, and one more thing

After missing several days work due to “car problems” they hit upon a genius plan. Maybe they could buy my old Honda that was parked out front in exchange for their work. It was an old car I rarely drove any more however giving them the car essentially meant paying them in advance for work I remained unconvinced would ever get done.

“Oh, they’ll finish. What’s your hurry? You won’t be home for five months anyway,” my wife said. “They’re good guys, they’ll finish the job.”

We were providing all the materials, regularly providing gas money, lunch on a daily basis and now a car. I think these guys are in a pretty comfortable position. If I were them I’d never finish the job.

A few days after giving them the car the father approached my wife feeling cross. He had apparently gotten a ticket for a missing tail light and wanted my wife to pay for it.

“But it’s your car,” she protested.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know the tail light wasn’t working.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. What planet is this guy living on? That was the beginning of the end to the relationship.

They ended up accepting an old futon bed as compensation for the citation. The arrangement had become a home version of Let’s Make A Deal and we were trading a lumpy couch for what was behind door number three. Please let it be a finished basement.

Online hucksters have a habit of always asking for just one more thing. A little thing. You’ve already shown your willingness to do business with them so why not see where the limit of your generosity is? They’ve always got one more thing to sell you, and this you’ll absolutely love.

The good news is the father and son did eventually finish the job. And yes, it was before I got home from Afghanistan. In fact, two months before I got home my wife gave me more good news:

“Hey, guess what? I found someone to do the tile…”