In California it is a tough life for a company employed service technician, whether it is home maintenance, repair, plumbing, heating or air conditioning. To explain this, I am going to divulge the true story of how many plumbing companies operate in California.

Generally, a plumbing technician is paid a sales commission average of 27% of the net job. That means that if a plumber performs a drain cleaning service and charges you $75, he is getting paid $20.25 right? Wrong! That is NOT the whole truth. This is how it really works for a plumbing technician.

A drain cleaning of $75.00 costs the employee an average of $17.50 and they are paid $15.53 whether the job takes 15 minutes, 2 hours or more. (This does not include any deductions for parts and materials used.) Here is the break down.

The plumber invoices you $75.00 for a drain cleaning. He writes the invoice and the company charges him $10.00 for the invoice. (Some companies charge the technician more) He then turns in the invoice to the office along with the customer's payment. At this time he is charged 10% of the invoice total for administration costs of processing the invoice. After these deductions, he receives 27% of the balance as his wage for the sale and performance of the service. In addition, if parts are used, the retail value of the parts are deducted from the invoice total, which further lowers the wage of the technician.

On top of this, if for some reason you, the customer, call the plumber back regarding the original service or what the industry refers to as a "callback", the technician is not paid at all for the second service: But wait there is more… If the original technician does not or is not available to respond to the callback, the original commission pay is deducted from his pay and given to the second technician. Yes folks, this is a fact. I worked for companies who did this, one national company and two small companies and have plumbing technician friends who work for other companies. This folks is the plumbing companies' industry standard of pay in California.

It goes even deeper than this with some companies withholding payment to the technician until the payment by the customer clears the bank. Furthermore, if for some reason the payment does not clear, the company does not pay the technician and informs the technician that they need to secure payment before they receive payment for the services performed.

These are the hidden factors of the commission paid technician. They are not paid an hourly rate, they are not paid for their labors, they are not paid for driving to your house, and they are not paid for time spent in the office or waiting for a call. If a service technician has a busy day or week and works more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, they are not paid overtime. They must be available to respond to a call for service between set hours and days and be on call after-hours, on weekends and holidays with no compensation unless they perform work. This means that they are restricted from visiting family and friends during these "on call" times if their family and friends are out of the service area.

So the next time a cranky service technician comes to help you out, try to be understanding, they may be overworked and worried about how they will pay their bills just as you are worried about yours. If you have company coming and know you have a leak or slow drain, don't wait until the last possible moment to call for help and be short with the technician to get the job done before your company gets there. The technician may not have had an opportunity to see family and friends for a long while.

A smile and a kind word can make a bad situation into an enjoyable experience for both the customer and technician.