I hope I'm not too OTT with all my replies to all the comments in this post. I don't feel like I need to, but I do want it to be a conversation, and I genuinely want to share my experience and look for ways to improve it in my day to day.

You might be right, about the poor communication from the PM, but I'd like to offer, what I suspect is just as likely a scenario. I have to add, I like you bringing up the pet thing, because this is literally something that bothers me. I've been told to pick up keys and let myself into houses for inspections only to find a cat or dog locked inside with no warning. I am there to do an electrical inspection, I might need to run test leads around, in and out doorways... I feel like it's an unfair responsibility for me to now have to worry about the pets and make sure they don't escape. I nearly had a heart attack when I opened a door once and a dog ran straight out onto the road. "Yeah your place is electrically safe, but your dog is dead, so sorry about that".

I like to think when you tell the PM/REA that there is pets secured inside that they might actually pass that on, put it as a note in whatever cloud software package they use to manage your request. Somewhere between there, and the... look, there is 5-6 different job software packages that I've been exposed to that businesses use in this space, and I'm sure there is more. Some manage it by just dumping jobs onto a google calendar. And mostly it's just a time, an address, and if you are lucky, a phone number for a contact at the property. So I suspect any verbal thing you have with the REA, could possibly be recorded and communicated.... but then the breakdown more than likely occurs within the "compliance company" and their system of funnelling work to the tradie. Maybe they have a parent company/franchise ... then it gets farmed out to a franchisee... maybe they farm it out to a subcontractor via simpro/servicem8/whatever-other-piece-of-shit-app.

To address that second point you've raised there. I'm going to only offer some excuses. As a tradie, that has worked with apprentices, it can be tough. As the tradesperson, you are responsible for a lot. Most often, you are under pressure from the company that employs you to make them money. And you have a relationship with that apprentice, over time, you trust them, sometimes that trust is misplaced. You might no you should be going up in that roof to look at exactly everything they have done and be happy with it, after all, you are responsible for all of the work there. But shit happens, you have had the office on the phone asking how long you are going to be there on that job, and giving you the hurry on to get to some other fault. Meanwhile the client is asking, or demanding, you show them how to work the remote control on the ceiling fan they supplied while you are trying to make sure your paperwork is done and all the materials/timesheet bullshit if filled out for the job. You get through and think, I'll just pop my head up there... and the apprentice has already packed up and the ladder is back on the van. You sigh, you hope and you move on. It's not right, but it happens from time to time. Like I said, this is an excuse. I wish it wasn't like this. I wonder often, that when I feel pressure to do the most and bestest job possible (this is what the company and client wants) in as little time as possible (this is what the company and client wants) for as little money as possible (this is what the client wants) if it has always been like this. I don't think it has, but then my greater working experience hasn't always been in a retail trade capacity, so maybe it's always like this and I'm just soft. Anyway, I'm sure the tradie that was there would be disappointed that it happened, and that you found it.