Once again, I have to deal with tool-borrowing leeches who don't pull their weight.
A guy came up to me wanting to use my Klein thread cutter, which was brand new.
He brought it back with about 5/8" of it (the smaller thread cutter) broken off and tried to give it to me.
I thought back to the guy who blew a hole in my dikes and tried to hand them back to me, the guy who used my DeWalt recipro saw to cut out about 20 pipes from a panel after promising to bring back a new blade and not doing it, and others who used and abused and lost my tools without trying to replace them. After the guy blew a hole in my dikes with melted plastic around the hole and I told him he can go replace it, he told me it was Craftsman and I can get a new free one - that I should just go do it. I went around town to different Sears stores until I found one in stock. Pain in the butt, probably 2 or 3 hours and 40 miles on the truck just to replace one tool.
This time I just said, "Get me a new one." He said he thinks they have replacement cutters. I told him to go find one. Well, now it's been over two weeks, I needed the thread cutter 4 days ago and didn't have it.
I have a choice of not loaning anything and being a bad guy and getting run off the job for not being friendly and cooperative, or just loaning things out and having to replace at least one tool per month. It's aggravating. Now I have to track this guy down to whatever job he's on and ask him when he's going to replace the tool he broke that I make a living with.
People who borrow tools usually don't have enough tools to do the job in the first place because these people are too cheap to buy tools, and their tools are usually in lousy shape, insulation torn off of Channellocks, dull dikes, rounded screwdrivers, etc. They're too cheap to buy new tools to replace their old ones. They don't feel a bit of guilt for using and wearing out my tools, drill bits, blades. I guess I need to be the bad guy and say "I don't loan tools to cheap-a$$ fools."
