Plumbing the Depths

Despite the frantic workload not much of interest has really happened, aside from the “Tenant effect”. This is how an individual assesses the urgency of a plumbing job based on whether they or their landlord are paying for it. For example, a homeowner may well decide to ignore a leaking tap for several decades, only calling in a plumber when they require a canoe to reach the kitchen. However, put a rent paying tenant in a similar situation and the call has gone out to every plumber within a 10 mile radius before the first drip has hit the sink bowl. I like tenants.

Another cause for celebration has been the completion of our 3rd year in business. When you consider that 50% of businesses fail in their first two years I think it’s a bit of an achievement to still be here. Mind you, I don’t think we’ve done anything particularly clever to achieve this, in fact I’m fairly sure that the corner stone of our success has been ‘very low expectations’.

The fun last year was switching from ‘survival mode’ to ‘expansion’. All of a sudden the weekly flurry of paperwork became a daily avalanche. I suddenly realised that I didn’t have a clue who still owed us money, something which had never been a problem before. We were now running two vans, which made life a lot easier in many ways and a hell of a lot more complicated in others.

The best part, as always, was dealing with the Inland Revenue. In all the huff and puff of plumbing I had forgotten to send in our annual PAYE return. Since we don’t pay PAYE I wasn’t overly concerned and, when I finally I remembered, I popped on-line and sent ‘the-powers-that-be’ a series of zero’s. Three weeks later I received a letter thanking me for sending them nothing but informing me that I had been fined £100 for sending them nothing far too late. Before I could get annoyed with this, I received another letter to tell me that the Revenue was going to pay me £200 for shunning the old paper-based system and not sending them anything ‘on-line’. This was very nice of them, so I rang up and asked if they could just deduct the fine from the reward and send me a cheque for £100. Surprisingly enough they didn’t have a problem with this and two weeks later I received the cheque. Then, just as I was beginning the think that the Inland Revenue wasn’t quite the bureaucratic monster everyone said it was, I received another, rather stroppy letter, pointing out that the Inland Revenue had had to send me a cheque for £100 and telling me to get my act together and make sure I didn’t over pay them again next year!