Brown University Professor Scams Me

Narragansett RI

Description

So quick story, an adjunct faculty member at Brown University, part of their engineering department, scammed me out of payment on a job the day before this past Thanksgiving. I run a small landscaping company in South Kingstown and he happens to be my neighbor. He approached me (third time he has this year) and asked me to do the work. Each time he asked me to do work I told him my rate and this last time was the first time he agreed to have me do the work. My rate is $50 an hour for leaf removal, which is relatively low. His yard (about.6 acres of lawn) and was done in 3.5 man hours for a total of $180. For those unfamiliar with how large this space is, that's about 45% of a football field. Or put another way, had his yard been the size of a football field, the job would have cost about $400. For anyone who thinks that's not a highly competitive and reasonable price, go buy your own $700 blowers and trucks and do it yourself because it doesn't get cheaper than that. Particularly for a yard that is not maintained, such as this professors property which never had a cleanup until 11/25, we're talking about a considerable amount of material that needed to be moved. Anyways, this professor at Brown comes out at the end of the job and attempts to slap bills in my hand, and it's basically dark out so I can't see how much it is, so I ask him. He goes, "$75, you did a great job." As soon as I tried to inform him it was more than $75 he flipped out. He absolutely lost it, wouldn't even let me tell him how much the job was. I had told him 3 times prior (including right when he asked me to do this job) how much my rate was and he flat out refused to pay me when it was completed, and began going on a rant about how: "I'm an engineer and I don't make that much!!!" He literally said this to me like 10 times, as if comparing the rate of an engineer (which I know have the capacity to make far beyond $50/hour) to a manual laborer has some sort of meaning. I'm curious to know how many people carry this kind of mentality. Do you think manual laborers should be paid less because you have an educated job that pays less hourly? For me, this experience was 95% shitty because of that line, not really because the guy scammed me monetarily. I can take the hit no problem, but to shout at somebody that they shouldn't get paid an amount because you (who work in an entirely different field) don't get paid that amount is just a crappy thing to experience. I was honestly shocked to see this kind of rabid, greedy, weird, and trashy behavior out of a Brown University professor, but apparently deadbeats come in all different shapes and sizes. Oh his name is Ahmed Zaki, so if you're a contractor definitely beware, this guy has no gripes about ripping people off, even his own neighbors apparently.