Know which screw to turn. My personal story.

There are several versions of this story circle around on the Internet. 

Some of them mention the crisis at the FedEx processing facility in Memphis. Some talk about woman asking Picasso to draw a sketch or another woman asking fashion designer Yves St. Laurent to make her a unique hat for a ball she was going to. 

All stories end the same where requestors are presented with an unexpected bill for a short period of work performed by contractor.

Here is one version of the story:

The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. None of the technicians could track down the problem. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. “We’ll pay anything; just come in and fix them,” he was told.

When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, “The presses will now work correctly.” After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.

The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services. The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn.

My personal story starts here.

Many moons ago I faced a similar situation. 

I was an IT consultant and received an urgent call from a client. One of their top executives went rogue, deleted all data from his laptop and formatted the hard drive. Company needed one file from the laptop to take to court.

Back then there was only one firm who was able to recover data from a formatted hard drive. They would require the laptop to be shipped to their lab, wait several weeks, no guarantees about data recovery. If they were successful they were to charge several thousands of dollars for their work. 

Client was desperate, they did not have several weeks to wait for data to be restored. 

I took the laptop with me and recovered the file by the end of the day. I had some software tools… 

I returned the laptop along with a bill later that day. I did not know how much to charge for the service so I just matched the price recovery lab was charging. First, the client was very happy about the fact that I recovered the file but when they looked at the bill they were shocked. 

“It only took you a few hours to get it done,” they said. 

Long story short, I knew that file I recovered worth a lot to them. They paid. I walked to the bank with a nice check and smile. 

The moral of the story - if you know that your worth every dollar you are charging, don’t be afraid to send a bill and charge what you are worth, even if your rate is higher than your competitors are charging.

Your pay equals the value you deliver, not the number of hours you worked. 

And also… next time you think of formatting a hard drive, remember that data is not deleted forever and can be recovered. Even that someone might have to pay a fortune for data recovery :))).