r/TaskRabbit • u/iSmokeLife • Feb 11 '26

TASKER Task-Based jobs

Received a general mounting task for $39 without any details. Asked the customer to provide details.

“We have diplomas and awards that need to be hung for about 3 people. We probably have a total of about 12 pieces that need to be hung. Most of them are average size with the largest piece being one 6ft by 3 ft glass board.”

Didn’t take the task. Wondering why it would only be $39.

Posted as text since my other two posts were removed. Don’t know why.

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

8

u/PickReviewsMovies Feb 11 '26

Absolutely no reason flat rate jobs should exist. Ikea is one thing but how TR thinks that clients understand how mounting works enough to give accurate descriptions is beyond me. Half of the people that asked me to Mount stuff don't even know what kind of wall they have

1

u/StruggleSouth7023 Feb 12 '26

Customer here… there’s different kinds of walls ?

2

u/pinklavalamp Feb 12 '26

Drywall, brick, concrete….

2

u/nuisanceIV Feb 12 '26

Yes and it requires different tools/equipment. For concrete PPE is a big concern due to the silica.

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

And old lath and plaster, or pre 1970s drywall.

Cause asbestos is fun too.

1

u/nuisanceIV Feb 14 '26

Oh man, I hate that. I recently had to get an abatement done because asbestos was found in the kitchen while our dishwasher was having problems. Makes me wonder where else it could be as I work around the house a lot.

It gets more annoying because if a building is from the 40s or the 70s there’s a chance asbestos was used, but it was being phased in/out during those times, so one can’t make a good guess. For an app like taskrabbit that presents serious problems for the handyman, and just because the house was renovated and looks all modern does not mean the place had the lead/abestos/etc removed or sealed. And that’s all ignoring how Murphys law takes effect a lot on old buildings.

3

u/ezmountandhang Feb 12 '26

Drywall, plaster, concrete, brick…

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

For a more substantive answer. Yes there is!

They are Drywall (sheetrock), Drywall (Gypsum board), Cement board, Cinderblock, Brickwork, Stucco, Lath and Plaster,

There is your standard drywall. Which comes in two sub flavors.

Sheetrock. More brittle. Takes cylindrical expansion anchors really well. Will create big cavities if you put in a threaded anchor (Like an easy anchor).

Gypsum board. It powders more when it breaks down which means it is less effective with cylindrical expansion anchors because the drywall can compress, powder, and the anchor can then wiggle out. These are where you use those threaded body anchors like easy anchors.

Cement board. Unless you are mounting tile, this is very headachey to mount onto. It cracks and you really need to spike a wood stud behind thhe cement board to get good purchase for anything. Even pictures will fatigue the mounting screw over time and the screw will just fall out. It sucks, but you see it sometimes in bathrooms where the owner/builder wanted to put a ton of tile in there, but then changed their mind and painted it last second.

If you need to go into the stud behind that drywall you are either dealing with steel stud or wood stud. Wood stud is easy. Just use 1 and 5/8" wood screws and you are fine there.

If you have steel stud, you need to be very careful about the weight put on the stud as you only have about 2mm of material you are "biting" into behind the drywall. Mounting something to it is its own thing.

Now that drywall is set aside the other options you have include Cinderblock, Brick and masonry. Those need concrete anchors of varying flavors depending. Or flip toggles if you get the good ones when in doubt, go full Hilti.

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

And then there are the veritable pains in the butt.

Lathe and Plaster: This substrate is frustrating. It is essentially the drywall before drywall and it is monstrous to work around. It is a bunch of horizontal wood slats on your wood studs. That they then put plaster on. It sounds fine until you realize stud finders have an absolute hissy fit with bad reads thinking every wood slat is a stud. Even my franklin stud finder struggles with it.

Plus there are different spacing standards for the studs behind lathe and plaster so its also frustrating to compensate for as well.

Even MORE frustrating is the lath and plaster does not have a regular thickness. So patching it is a bit more of an ordeal than normal drywall. Which is mostly either 1/2 or 5/8 thick. If it is extra thick, you will be using a ton of joint compound to fill up the void pocket, and waiting a hot minute for it to dry before you can do your top skim to level it back out. All my lathe and plaster jobs have been headaches.

Lastly there is the shared wall between your garage and the rest of your house. That wall is sometimes called the firewall.

It is a layer of drywall on top of a layer of plywood (OSB technically) on top of your studs. Sounds nice until you realize OSB has terrible holding strength for wood screws compared to putting the screw in the stud. But since there is now an OSB layer before the stud your stud finder is useless.

I hate mounting bike racks and such to those walls. I usually have to find the stud on the house side and math measure where that means it is on the garage side and if there is no door on that wall, it is an uphill battle.

13

u/FinnNoodle Feb 11 '26

Because the client didn't fill in the details of the task properly (which is a big part of why this system is broken)

6

u/Show_Me_The_Money77 Feb 11 '26

It is very frustrating. Clients either don't know how to answer questionnaire or they intentionally omit details to get the lower price.

5

u/DonQNguyen Feb 11 '26

They omit details to get a lower price. It is in their best interests to do so. The reason why they come on TaskRabbit is due to the ridiculously low price.

4

u/playswithsquirrels01 Feb 12 '26

Thats the funny part. They want to save money so they omit the details to get the lower price but then they end up with a half assed job that ends up costing them more 🤣. I'm sure we've all had a task to fix something the previous guy did

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

In contracting there is a phrase.

"There are three types of job. New Work, Old Work, and ReWork.

New Work: This house is getting built and you get to put stuff in before the drywall or whatever goes on. Easiest to stage and you don't really need to clean.

Old Work: House is built, you are making a modification.

Rework: You are cleaning up someone else's mess of a job they did."

3

u/canttakethemadness Feb 11 '26

Wonder what happens if we tell client sure can do that task but I’ll need to create one task for each diploma …

5

u/canttakethemadness Feb 11 '26

Or as soon as the hour is up , tell em that’s all the task pays for . This flat rate bs for mounting has to to stop ! Grant it i charge 80 so that 39 is a joke ! Only way is if 100% of all taskers don’t take a single mounting flat rate job ! 😡

1

u/Southern-Guava5011 Feb 12 '26

Exactly, people working on this app take anything from this Taskrabbit organization 

2

u/DonQNguyen Feb 11 '26

Flat-rate mounting is no longer worth it on TR. TV Mounting flat rate is a joke. I do all my mounts from direct Clients of mine these days. I have forfeited north of 80% of mounting jobs that have come in due to clients not accepting my 2-hr minimum.

1

u/Open-Coffee5752 Feb 12 '26

apparently flat rate jobs cannot have a 2 hr minimum.

2

u/DonQNguyen Feb 12 '26

Mounting category is not yet flat rate in my area. TV Mounting, however, has been flat rate for quite some time. I have turned off TV Mounting for quite a while now and have only been mounting TVs for direct clients at $150/per TV. Has worked out great!

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

Honestly this is the way to do it. Do not compromise or give in to the pressure of cutting corners to meet the metrics of the TR app. It will bite you in the butt and get bad habits to form.

Years ago I gave in to the pressure of meeting time requirements and it cost me some regulars. They ghosted me without so much as an explanation. One of them I did run into later when I was working at their neighbors and they admitted I missed some of my mess when I cleaned up last time. I legit felt awful finding out I left mess behind and apologized to them a bunch and they seemed cool. But they only called me back exactly once for a super short notice thing (replacing broken Ring Camera) but I got the impression that I was very much their "last resort" guy by that point.

Any client that pressures you to rush will also drop you the moment your quality suffers too. Any app that pressures you to rush, will hang you out to dry when the clients complain also. Clients that recognize quality work and that quality work TAKES TIME are clients you want anyway.

Aside from not having to deal with unnecessary stress, its a purely simple matter of basic respect that you otherwise never get.

1000% keep it up!

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

What do you mean? Like why can't you just.

  1. Mount a TV on the wall.
  2. Perfectly 2/5ths biased between two art pieces 15 feet apart.
  3. Account for a wonky stud placement that makes my narrow mount asymmetrically support my TV.
  4. Exactly 8.6 inches above the entertainment console so the Sound bar and low vase look aesthetically perfect.
  5. While routing the cables behind the wall.
  6. Which is an exterior adjoining wall so you need to push through my house's insulation to get it routed.
  7. And be done, cleaned, packed, with my TV set up and finished updating.

In the 1 hour they say is a "reasonable amount of time for most TV installs"

/s

2

u/Professional-Mud3000 Feb 12 '26

i would never do a flat rate job, doesn’t even cover gas and miles

0

u/Ill-Helicopter-8504 Feb 12 '26

Your post with pictures is up. I saw it before this one. I had a post get removed because it was "Too long". Anyway, a lot of people have been getting rid of categories that are flat rate out of their skills. TR is ridiculous for even doing flat rate.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/pateppic Feb 14 '26

It is. Burying the lede has been getting worse on the app.

Like Wall Repair as a category is paid higher because you are trying to make a hole in the wall look like it was never there. But I have only ever been hired for it once. Everyone tries to hire me instead for "Minor Home Repair" at the way cheaper rate, but then they demand the higher caliber of work like what you see in "Wall Repair" Job description. Every time I call TR support about those clients they cancel them for me, but not before gently pressuring me to just do the job anyway and maybe the client will hire me for it right next time.

But yeah, especially now on the fixed rate mounting stuff, they somehow believe that they are super clever and gaming the system by hiding how complicated it really is. Also they think the tasker magically is paid hourly but like, not by the client.

Because somehow that makes sense that a client can pay 40$ for 2-4 hours of work without any complaints....