We're a small outfit as well. We have two "regular" techs and another that we sometimes call on when things get busy.
We don't go in to the office every morning, but are dispatched from home, so I don't get "sent home" if it's slow; I simply don't go anywhere. We get paid hourly only when we actually work, but fortunately, I can do a lot of my work remotely, and there's often some little maintenance or update or check-up tasks I can use to fill out my timesheet.
Our part-time tech also does other contract work, so he manages to keep himself fairly steadily employed as well, and can still make time to come in when we need him.
We've tried to go UI1's route of reusing short cable bits and other little cost-saving methods, but being paid hourly, it typically ends up costing more for the tech's time to do that, than you're saving on small bits of cable; pre-made patch cables are so cheap, it costs less to just buy a big bag of them, than the cable and terminations are worth separately, never mind someone's time to assemble them. We'll keep some off-cuts around for those times when a custom patch cable or short run is needed, but that's about it.