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Comment by bsoqk | Hacker News Reader

Most of those contractors have so much work that scaring away customers is a feature.

Then they can simply not pick up the phone.

This is something I've thought about as people complain about things like restaurant photos being AI and such. You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that complain about minor details that don't really matter. Might be a net good for many businesses.

To the people who are saying these little details aren't an indicator of what matters:

As a chef of close to a decade I will tell you right now:

If people in the restaurant aren't getting small details right...

They DEFINITELY aren't getting the rest right either

Someone who isn't paying attention to the food they're serving and the conditions they're serving it in just doesn't care and isn't paying attention to how they wash their hands or that piece of meat they dropped behind the fridge a few days ago that's bringing in roaches and rodents or the sour smell coming from the bag they just opened or the open wound that just dripped blood into your sauce

Most likely, they probably don't even know what allergens are present in their menu, posing a genuine risk to people

I promise you

Who are you people sticking up for?

I don't understand the "I mean they clearly didn't put any effort in here, but I believe 100% that they're doing their absolute best everywhere else!" sentiment

It's great to be optimistic about life and people in general but that's entirely unreasonable and you're only gonna be let down (or in the case of a restaurant probably get sick)

Would you trust a pilot that advertises his services with some half assed ai generated ad with spelling mistakes?

I know I wouldn't

There's a great episode from the Search Engine podcast about this. The gist is that it takes a lot of concerted effort to make something great, otherwise it will probably suck. The host got interested in a restaurant that seemed obsessive about doing things well and talked to the owner about it. The episode title is "How to pursue excellence ... in noodles".

>> You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that

They are saying their belief about how other people act. I'm guessing they themselves do care.

People typically underestimate others. All too often bosses do. It's like the common belief that only other people respond to advertising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_effect

A prevalent problem everywhere: most dangerous in politics where we tend to call it hipocrisy.

If you can't be bothered to get the minor details right, how can I be confident that you'll get the major ones right?

Alternatively: if you're wasting a bunch of your time on the minor details how do you have enough time for the major ones? I'd much rather my restaurant owner worry about sourcing ingredients, keeping the kitchen clean, improving the taste of the food than anything else.

If you don't have the time or money to have actual menu photos taken, what are the odds you have the time and money to source high quality ingredients, keep the kitchen clean, or improve the taste of the food?

The minor details are precisely the ones that require the least time and money to handle, so if those are being skimped on, it's likely that the major details are too, in my experience.

It depends, probably. If we are talking about high end, off the beaten path places, marketing is important. For the $1.50 slice pizza at the hole in the wall in Times Square? I doubt those places are cleaned and no one is checking the reviews, people just line up because others are, and because the smell and taste is right.

Hell yeah I will ship you a box of ‘food’ for two hundred dollars. You know it’s going to be great because I don’t spend my time on stuff like describing or photographing it

...so lack of attention to detail as evidence of a focus on meaningful quality?

Yeah! Restaurants, famously businesses who can lose customers with no downside and don't operate with a high chance of failure.

this is an idiotic take

My bet: it's less than a 2% loss in customers that are just very loud on the internet.

Given restaurant margins are in the single digit percentage points, even a 2% loss of customers could be a big deal.

Are you a contractor? In the current economy, it’s very hard to imagine this being true.

Where are you located? In the Northeast US, we're finding getting a contractor who is both good and has availability is quite an ordeal, involving significant delays.

Do they really? Are there any numbers available to support this? Sample size of one, but my brother is in that field, and it's been their and their subcontractors' slowest year in a long while.

I recently went contractor hunting and everyone was too busy and ignoring me. I did find one eventually but it took 5 days of calling 5-10 shops a day. How is your brother not also swamped with work?

Maybe tell him to get a sticker for the back of his truck and make sure he has a Google map listing with 2 photos of his work and a very basic website?

Both you and I are, like I said, a sample size of one. You're drawing conclusions generalizing your 5 day experience looking for one type of work to an entire industry. He may not be in the same field you were looking for, or a different geographic reality. I also didn't say they weren't swamped with work, their schedule is full regardless, but that it's the lowest demand they've seen in a while.

You're being extremely dismissive and you're denying somebody else's reality.

Demand varies a lot by location, type of contracting, price, etc.

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