Payment problems: I hear this a lot from mates in the trade. The deposit that never got taken. The job that went sideways because the terms were never nailed down properly in the first place. Then it turns into this whole saga — the tradie feels stitched up, the customer maybe thinks they got stitched up, and everyone’s standing around arguing about something that should never have been ambiguous.

It’s not bad luck. It’s not a run of unlucky customers. It’s weak terms.

And a lot of the time, weak terms come from desperation. You need the job, so you don’t push for the deposit. You don’t want to look difficult, so you let the terms slide. You tell yourself you’re being easygoing, being accommodating. What you’re actually being is weak. And weak terms get taken advantage of — not always maliciously, but they do.

I don’t get it. You don’t go to the supermarket and tell them you’ll pay whenever. You don’t walk out with your shopping and say you’re good for it. Nobody accepts that anywhere else. But somehow in trade work, tradies are meant to just wear it.

Here’s the other thing nobody talks about enough: chasing unpaid money is bad for your mental health. Genuinely. Being owed money you’ve already earned, work you’ve already done, and having to chase it, wait on it, wonder if it’s coming — that’s a weight you shouldn’t have to carry.

You called me. I didn’t turn up on your doorstep looking for work. I had other paying customers I could’ve been doing jobs for instead. I’ve done the work. Pay me.

That’s not attitude. That’s just how it’s supposed to work.