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That guy who asked me to "thin out his oak tree" so his satellite dish would get better signal
I showed up to a house in Austin last spring and the homeowner pointed at this massive live oak and said he wanted me to just "trim a few branches" so his dish could see the sky, but when I climbed up I found he had already nailed the dish mount right into the trunk and wrapped the cable around a branch, so now I gotta figure out how to explain that his TV reception is the least of that tree's problems... has anyone else dealt with a customer who thinks trees are just objects that get in the way of their technology?
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mason_lopez1mo ago
...and that's exactly the kind of situation where you gotta stop and have a real talk with the homeowner before you touch anything. I had a guy once who wanted me to "clean up" a big pecan tree so his new security camera would have a clear view of his driveway. Got up there and found he'd screwed the mount right into a cracking branch that was barely hanging on. I came down and told him flat out that tree was not the problem, his mount was. I showed him the branch damage and explained the tree was actually blocking strong winds and keeping his house cooler in the summer. He was annoyed at first but after I showed him a better spot for the camera way off to the side, he calmed down. Sometimes you just gotta be the one to help them see the tree isn't the enemy, it's how they're trying to use the tech that's causing the trouble.
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vera_lewis21mo ago
And another thing nobody's bringing up is that pecan trees drop a ton of limbs naturally, especially in storms, so mounting anything on a branch that's already cracking is basically asking for a lawsuit. If that camera had fallen and hit a car or a person, the homeowner would have been blaming you for not warning him. Sometimes it's not just about the tree or the tech, it's about covering your own back before some hidden risk turns into a big problem.
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