Basic Trope: A sleazy, sketchy contractor who does extremely poor work and dodges accountability whenever something they did catches up with them.
- Straight: Bob owns a roofing company that is notorious for doing terrible work, regularly has serious injuries and/or property damage, is known for using damaged or broken equipment (some of which has been fished out of dumpsters at jobsites), and has multiple red tags connected to it. He is also infamous for classifying his workers as independent contractors and using day labor to get out of paying worker's comp, and his company routinely gets thrown off jobsites for creating massive safety hazards or botching a job so badly that they have to go before they kill someone or destroy something major (and his guys are also infamous for stealing tools and equipment from other tradesmen). He has dissolved his business and reformed under a new name on three separate occasions when faced with a massive lawsuit or regulatory fines, but he still never goes without work because he is able to massively underbid on jobs due to how many corners he cuts.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob and his guys are a Walking Wasteland who cause every single building they work on to collapse or explode within a few months of completing work.
- Bob and his guys are one of the many subsidiaries of The Mafia. They will not only do an incredibly shoddy job at an incredibly high price and steal everything that is not nailed down, you are going to sign that paycheck and give them a good review if you know what is good for you and everyone you love.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is known for his poor work and has several serious injuries on his record, but he also has taken responsibility for some of his bigger screwups and seems to be trying to clean up his act.
- Bob's company is a legitimately capable company, though he has occasionally taken jobs far beyond his company's resources, and is forced to go to great lengths (classifying people as independent contractors to keep costs down, buying cheap or secondhand equipment of questionable quality, or from multiple ANSI revisions ago, and cobbling together equipment from salvageable parts of decommissioned equipment) to finish the project rather then simply owning up to his inability to do so.
- Justified:
- Bob lives in an undeveloped country with far worse resources and minimal health and safety standards, which means that questionable work and poor safety practices are normal and expected.
- Bob is a self-employed solo contractor and is unlicensed, so he's able to fly under the radar and disappear at a moment's notice and also doesn't have the time, resources, or skills to do a good job.
- Inverted: Bob is a crooked client who routinely tries to get contractors to do dangerous or illegal things, scam them for free work, or just refuse to pay his bills and most contractors who do work for him find themselves in court, either because he sued them or they had to sue him.
- Subverted: Bob is a trustworthy and honest contractor.
- Double Subverted: When Bob hits hard times and his business starts to struggle, he begins cutting corners to save some money.
- Exploited: Alice wants illegal and dangerous work done that legit contractors invariably refuse to touch, and after multiple rejections, she hires Bob & Sons because she knows that they don't give a fuck and will take any job. Given they underbid every company, she is able to afford paying them extra to ensure their silence.
- Implied:
- Alice calls an attorney for a consult about a potential lawsuit against Bob & Sons and is greeted with a sigh before being told that they get a lot of these calls and know Bob & Sons all too well.
- A tradesman is overheard ranting to a health and safety officer on the jobsite about their experiences with Bob & Sons and how they need to be kicked off the site.
- As BJ stands in the middle of the Horrible Housing Alice lives in with the unspoken question of what the hell happened to turn this house into a condemned site overnight, Alice shrugs and says a deadpan "contractors".
- Enforced:
- One of the writers was done dirty by a contractor and has plenty of material for a plotline.
- Several of the writers used to work in construction and had to deal with more than a few questionable fly-by-night operations and their handiwork on jobsites.
- The writers wish to justify why Alice lives in The Alleged House.
- Discussed: "Oh look, it's Bob & Sons. Hide your tools and keep your phone on you, because you know that you're gonna have to take pics of something they fucked up or some sort of ragingly insane shit they did before the day's over."
- Conversed: "I want Bob & Sons the fuck off my jobsite by the time I get back from this Wendy's run, and I fucking mean it." "Oh, yeah, the pipefitters? Don't worry, they've been on my shitlist for a while, this is not the first time I've had to deal with them on a jobsite." "I have had to yell at these fucks three times this week for working in unshored trenches, another time for working under a fucking live load, and one of my guys caught the fat one with all the ICP tattoos trying to steal his angle grinder out of his van yesterday morning. I don't know who hired these idiots, but I hate them, whoever they are." "Believe me, I tried to keep them from getting hired for this job because I knew full well what kind of garbage work they did and how many problems they would cause, but hey, I got vetoed because they met our prerequisites on paper and were the lowest bidder. Fuck me, I need a new job."
- Deconstructed: Bob's poor work quality and safety policies, habit of classifying his guys as independent contractors to reduce costs and liability (and the caliber of the employees he attracts as a result), and tendency to dissolve, fly under the radar, and reform whenever it looks like someone is coming for his ass all eventually blow up in his face when multiple employees are killed on one of his jobsites as a direct result of his poor safety practices, and he gets destroyed by regulatory authorities (who levy several million in fines against him) and also in criminal court after he is tried and convicted of multiple manslaughter counts.
- Played For Laughs
- Bob & Sons are responsible for The Alleged House Alice lives in, in all of its unmitigated quirkiness, and the constant repairs (by them and other people) just making the house more strange is a Running Gag.
- Personnel of Bob & Sons appear offended at being labeled as crooked until Alice mentions her house and they admit they built it and they cut every corner they could think of when they did it.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice contracted Bob & Sons to build her dream house and spent all of her life savings in the project. Now her hopes and dreams are utterly dashed by this POS that can barely be called a "building", let alone a "home" and her life savings have been, to be quite blunt, stolen by Bob & Sons.
- Alice is hurt by the damage left behind in her home by the lousy "repairs" Bob & Sons did.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob & Sons have a particularly nasty little habit of disposing of cadavers in the places they "repair", occasionally homeowners that got too snoopy about their crookedness.
- Alice gets killed by the damage left behind by the lousy "repairs" Bob & Sons did.
