Strictly speaking, neither you nor they are doing one another a favour, in the case of an arranged paid job. The workman is doing it for the money, not as a favour because they are just fuzzly wuzzly good hearted people. No, its because they wish to earn the money for doing the work, and the people paying aren't doing anyone a favour either. Only fulfilling their end of the bargain.
Not that I can't see snooty little fucks who think the sun shines out of their arseholes and that you should pay for the privilege of staring up there as being a right load of obnoxious, slimy little ingrates who need a kick in the balls, or whatever else it is that they might have down there.
But it isn't a 'favour' on either party's behalf, when two parties make either a contract or agreement for one to perform services for the other in return either for financial payment, or payment in some manner of bartered goods. Just an exchange of services. Work, or if its selling something to be made and exchanged, which already HAS been made and is ready to go; merchandise, in return for money or merchandise as agreed beforehand. Business isn't doing people favours. Not to say of course that one might not DO a favour for someone in the course of the job, by making something easier, more useful, doing something in a specific way with results more convenient for the client than otherwise would be, etc. etc. etc. but just business is, well, just business.
And sounds like people like that, Parts, would be a bunch of dickheads even if they weren't employing you for a job. They'd be dickheads while you work for them, dickheads if you met them at a bar, dickheads if you bumped into them by chance elsewhere, dickheads if they were walking the dog, either ignoring their dog's shit left behind, or worse, scooping it up in a plastic bag, then tying it up and hanging it from the nearest tree branch or hedge. You can take the work out of the dickhead, but you can't take the dick out of the dickhead. Some people just have it coming.
(and as for the dog shit, no, I'm not joking. Round here at least, there are little fuckers who frequently go to the lengths to carry plastic bags, to bend down and scoop up the pile of freshly deposited theresa may, turn the bag inside out and tie it up. But rather than either wait to the next bin, or walk the 50-100 yards to the one they just passed, they just hang the plastic bags full of theresa may from the hedge right then and there. Not just one or two offenders, but it happens all over the place, loads of different areas and absolutely everywhere in many of them. I've even seen, in one particular field where there are multiple theresa may-bins, plainly marked in bright red, with lids, and a picture on the front of a dog taking a theresa may, where such offenders have literally done all this, right next to the bins, because the bins in question were no more than feet or meters away, yet the hawthorn hedges are festooned with little plastic bags full of rotting theresa may. They just couldn't be bloody well arsed to clean it up and walk a few feet, inches, even, just beyond arm's length from the handles of the bins, so instead, just stuck it up on the hedges to the point where they look like the decorations on the downing street annual xmas-tree. Dog shit bloody baubles and fairy lights of solidified canine ordure. And on occasion, even human shit. Although I'm a little reluctant to employ the term in question, as it's debatable whether or not they can indeed still be termed 'human'.
How much of a cunt does someone have to be, to leave bags of festering theresa may behind while walking their dog, hanging from the sodding hedges right at the kind of hight where accessible to young children? nasty enough to do it at all, but to hang it where little kids could grab them and catch fuck only knows what out of a smorgasbord of bacterial pathogens, noxious protozoans and various disease-causing helminths? and when there are places provided specifically for such bags of theresa may to be disposed of.
There are extensive blackberry patches, meters thick, as tall as a man, and running from the opposite side of the field to that vile hedge, but it's enough convincing to leave any fruit growing within the height of the average dog well alone unless they are both out of piss range, and far enough into the thorny briars to make pretty sure no dog has pissed or shat on them and no owner would have gone that far in because of the thorns. A pain in the arse at best because the little cunts (the two legged variety, not like the dogs know better) have left it on the ground next to the blackberry bushes, so one has to look carefully before going for any particular patch, to avoid bringing something altogether far less desirable for jam-making back with them on the soles of their shoes. Or slip on it and end up going flying into a huge patch of thorn bushes and stinging nettles.
Really does piss me off.
Plus there have been, for several years, as while the hedges are hawthorne, there are oak, beech and birch trees, plus a few other species there; a small colony of what I believe to be a very, very, VERY endangered mushroom species, almost extinct in the UK, and incredibly rare elsewhere in europe and pretty much everywhere it grows. Namely Boletus satanas, the Devil's bolete, they have a tan, sometimes whitish, especially whiter when young cap, blood-red, scarlet pores rather than gills, bruising vivid blue throughout, either when the flesh or tubes are cut or bruised, or when simply bruised, along with a squat, really fat, ringless stem, so fat and rounded that it has the shape of a turnip, often as fat as the cap is wide.
They also smell quite disgusting, particularly older specimens, smell much fouller than young ones. They grow in mycorrhizal association with oak trees, and like most if not all Boletus species (although strictly speaking, taxonomically the Devil's bolete, isn't, anymore, with itself along with quite a number of other red pored, toxic species of close relations being moved to a separate genus, Imperator)
And defiling the habitat of these is unthinkable, they are SO, SO rare, as for one to be extremely fortunate ever to see one with your own eyes. Even Phillips' guidebook, has only a picture of a mangy, ancient old grotty specimen, because it was, despite extensive searching for much time, all he ever saw, the once. As a species, barely hanging on in the UK by the skin of it's teeth. I've seen them before, once, possibly twice, elsewhere, (in about 28 years, mind you, given I'm 32 now and started with mycology as a hobby at age 4, as soon as I'd taught myself to read the english language. With mycology textbooks, as it happens, so perhaps that led to it as a hobby, being blessed with classic autism probably didn't hurt there either
And then the third time (or third and fourth, possibly fifth given they have appeared in this park with the oak and beech mixed with the hawthorne hedges for certainly two or three, possibly four years in a row) just locally. If they appear in the autumn of the year to come, I think I'm going to contact kew gardens, and send samples for professional identification by someone like Heim, if I can contact him or another expert specialist in the genus Boletus and it's allied genera (fr.ex. Suillus). Someone not only an expert mycologist (granted I'm pretty good myself, both well-read and with experience out in the field collecting, and examining under the microscope. And of course, eating. As well as on occasion, when something produces something useful, or can be mutated to do so in useful quantities, culturing in the lab) but one who is an adept expert in the specific genus itself. So I can verify the identity of the species with absolute certainty. There are other species in the new genus, Imperator, some close relatives of B.satanas/I.satanas, (most still know it and refer to it as Boletus satanas, the taxonomic reassignment is only a few years old at most). That look similar, also highly toxic, potentially even fatal (B.satanas contains a cytotoxic glycoprotein which is an extremely potent toxin, called bolesatine; although the stench of rotting flesh the mushrooms themselves give off is quite sufficient to put anyone lacking knowledge, but full of curiosity from attempting to eat them even if they did actually get to SEE one or more, one mushroom specimen was quite enough to stink a large room up so dreadfully, I couldn't go in there without holding my breath or pressing one of my gas masks to my face to block the stench), had been intending to send it to Kew, but didn't get the chance because it began to stink the place up. Still fresh, they just fucking reek like dead, decaying putrid flesh. They stink of rotting animal remains like Donald Trump's speeches stink of despising freedom, the truth and civil liberties, end of. They are just covered in stink like shit gets covered in flies.
They may stink to high heaven, and they are poisonous, potentially deadly if consumed, at least raw (although there have been accounts of people who eat them if they find them, after thorough parboiling then cooking. Which makes some sense as to this being possible given that the toxic principle, bolesatine, is a glycoprotein, as proteins can be denatured by heat (although some small peptides, made of the same basic stuff, amino-acids, as proteins are, aren't destroyed by heat, like the 6-7-8 aminoacid residue peptides which make the hepatotoxic Amanitas, like death caps so deadly, aren't denatured by cooking, by freezing, drying, they remain just as poisonous as otherwise, but large proteins are denatured by heat with very few exceptions (such as the prion which causes BSE/CJD, this can survive on instruments used for surgery if used on a patient who is contaminated with the CJD prion and has yet to become ill, due to the extremely long incubation period before the overt symptoms occur; this tough little bastard, it isn't alive, but it's a protein, as with other prions, thats misfolded, has the wrong 3D conformation to perform the role it ought to, instead, aggregating into large beta-pleated sheets, which are extremely tough and resistant to destruction either thermally, surviving many hours in an autoclave, surviving being steamed, irradiated or even chemical oxidizers in some cases, like bleach as well as antibiotics; because one cannot kill that which does not live, and prions don't, they are better thought of as a kind of catalytic poison, with the effects being dependent upon the concentration in the nervous system, brain in particular of course, the more there is, the more damage has been done, and which have a natural, properly-folded version, which performs a useful function and which is not causative of disease. The misfolded version however, catalytically induces the properly folded, normal, native version of the prion to misfold, and become more of the pathogen. So if one single molecule of the pathogenic prion were introduced to a human brain, then that one molecule would generate another,then there would be two, which would create four, and so on and so on, and being unable to be cleared away by natural mechanisms cells have for removing debris, it builds up and advances in concentration at an exponential rate, until the poor bastard is a vegetable with a brain like a sponge, after suffering greatly, before ending up first in a coma, then dead by at most a year or maybe two), generally though proteins don't like to be overheated, before they denature irreversibly.
(like meat cooking, what you end up with after the cooking process, the greater availability, nutritionally speaking, of useful bits from the meat, is due to the denaturation of proteins. Its the same cause for eggs turning white and then coagulating, plus the center becoming sorta caseous and semisolid if done long, or nice and gooey if not done very long so you can dip your sausages and chips in
Both are due to the proteins present being denatured). And in the case of a glycosylated (bonded to a sugar) protein, the saccharide residue can be crucial to the effect of the glycoprotein, and without it, it would have no effect or a totally different one (possibly, I've never actually read of a glycoprotein's aglycone portion having an activity of its own, of some other kind, where the original glycoprotein's saccharide molecule conjugated to it was crucial for it's activity, but I guess it is possible), and glycosidic bonds are not particularly tough and resistant. They can be degraded by heat, by even mild acid, aging in some cases, enzymes of various kinds, they just aren't really able to stand up to much at all in the way of harsh treatment in the slightest. So thorough parboiling and then cooking of B.satanas might not be so far fetched in the claims of people doing it and not being poisoned.
Still, wouldn't try it or reccomend anyone else did either. At least not anybody I liked
And besides, they are super rare to begin with, so picking them for any other reason than as I plan, with just one or two fruit bodies, to preserve after taking spore prints so they can be sent to Kew, for specialist confirmation of my ID, and trying to come up with conservation efforts to protect them, given they are somewhere they could easily be stepped on and squashed, or picked by idiots who have no idea just how critically endangered they are (most likely, I'd not even pick the whole thing, just take photos, unless I can find uprooted ones, as well as placing microscope slides, a covering plastic bowl, and a sign nearby on a stake alerting people to the fact an environmental scientific experiment was taking place there and not to disturb it., as well as using a thoroughly sterilized, razor-sharp surgical blade to take sections whilst the mushroom as a whole, can still reproduce, as well as giving me the opportunity to capture on video the rapidity and the extent of the blueing reaction of the tissue when damaged.
Even if they aren't what I believe them to be, their close relatives within this new genus, 'Imperator', (which I can't say as I'm too fond of personally), The ones that are known to occur in britain at all, are all extremely rare to critically endangered or almost extinct, so more or less anything related will still be a significant find worthy of conservation efforts.
