Interesting post.... I formerly worked in a green/yellow ag tractor shop. There were all kinds of farmers and most of them were OK. One guy really stands out in my memory. Mr. Farmer just knew he was smarter than anyone in the shop. If I worked on his tractor he insisted that I keep all the old parts I changed out, which I was more than happy to do. He wanted to take the parts home and study them to figure out why they failed. Once I had all the old parts in a box and the cleanup crew came through, saw the old parts, and chucked the box, parts and all. I went on a service call the next morning and did not know that the parts were gone. He came in to get his tractor (he thought we charged too much for trucking) and the parts were not there. HE CAME UNCORKED!! I calmly apologized and explained what happened and that his parts were somewhere in the scrap iron trailer. He insisted that I get into the trailer and dig out his parts. OK, I said, and told the service writer to reopen his ticket so I could bill my time. This really frosted him and I calmly explained that if my time is not billed out I do not get paid. My service manager got involved and re-explained what happened and that he was not going to have me spend hours digging through the iron trailer to find the broken parts. Mr. Farmer left in a huff.
A few years later I was on this same guy's farm attempting to wire in an auto-restart timer into a center pivot panel. Normally this is not a difficult job but on this installation it was very confusing. There were 3 wells that each had to be turned on in a specific sequence. My full concentration needed to be on the panel box in front of me and I was struggling to get everything to work correctly. He shows up and I get away from the panel box (480 volt 3 phase). I explained that I was having problems with a couple timers, that I nearly had it sorted out, and I would call him on his cell when I was done. He wanted to stay and watch me work so I said OK as long as you stay behind my pickup. This lasted a whole 5 minutes. He was barking instructions on his two-way radio, answering his phone, and asking me every 15 seconds how I was doing. Every time he talked I would have to start over mentally tracing the circuit logic.
I finally stood up and walked away from the panel. He giggled excitedly (you have to know this guy) thinking I had it figured out. I shook my head. I told him that there was too much distraction for me to continue and that if he insisted on staying at this well site that I was going to leave so I could get something done for someone else. He whined and sniveled but finally left. It took me a little while to get the last timer configured but I did and when I left the machine ran correctly.
Sadly, lightning struck the well panel the following week and fried EVERYTHING I had installed. The farmer thought I was rude by asking him to leave and in hindsight I could have been a little nicer about it. My 'supervisor' was pretty sure he was smarter than I was so he offered to rewire the panel himself. Good riddance, I thought, until my boss was calling me while I was on vacation asking me how I had wired the panel. I told him to call T & L (the manufacturer of the machine) and have them fix it or figure it out himself, but DO NOT call me while I am on vacation again.
This longwinded story is a lot of the reason I drive a truck hauling equipment for this dealership now. At least I don't have to deal with one whiny farmer anymore.