All you have to is hire folks in the trades to ride this train. So many of them are lost and in the trades by default of no career plan.
Signs you don’t need to be working construction
- Thread starter AndyG
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All you have to is hire folks in the trades to ride this train. So many of them are lost and in the trades by default of no career plan.
Sounds much like the Navy. But most of my fuckups had to be bailed out of a Tijuana jail, picked up from a whorehouse (before the ship left!), or told he can't marry the stripper with 4 kids from 4 different baby daddies, or buy the V6 charger at 46% interest.
There are days when you finally amuse yourself with a little harmless fun purely because you have grown weary of folks being dumb with zero critical thinking skills, full ignorance of Occam's Razor, and just general fuckery. We were adjusting toe. I had to tell "Joe" every single time that when you tighten the clamp, stop turning the tie rod, hold it still, gently put the impact on the bolt, ease into it, when it is snug, then hit it. EVERY SINGLE TIME and to the point where I would have to do my side first or his fumbling would change the setting and we'd have to do it again.
One day, I had him do the smart end so he could see the problem with how he tightened the bolts and how that affected the toe in. Both tapes on the tubes, back one has the end of the tape clamped in place, I'm holding the dumb end on the front on the tube so we can move it out of the way to tighten, he gets to read the front one. I didn't even wait for him to fumble fuck it, I warned him to be very careful how he tightens the clamp and it is time for him to see what his fumbling does to the numbers.
He turns the tie rod, adjusts the length, says it is good, 3/16" less than the rear. Okay, tighten it. He does, then we set the tape back up to check it, I move my end over so it is now an inch longer than it should be. He looks and tells me it is way off. Well Joe, I told you to be careful how you tighten the clamp, take it loose and do it again. We move the tape off the tubes, he loosens it, we put the tape back, I let the tape hook the tube like it should, number is dead on. He tells me it is good, I tell him to tighten, we set the tape down, he tightens, we check, I burn an inch. Joe says it is way off again, see Joe, you have to be careful how you tighten the clamp or it fucks up the setting. Okay, I got it and then we do it again.
I repeated this for about 30-40 minutes or 20-25 times waiting to see how long it would take for the light bulb to turn on.
1- the back tape measure dimension never changed, therefore the front one can't.
2- the tie rod never turned, the dimension can't change.
3- even if it did turn slightly, it would have to turn about 10 times to be an inch off.
After a half hour plus, I finally got bored and didn't burn an inch but he nary a single time questioned what was going on. I saw this clip the other day and it is what reminded me to tell the story of Joe again.
I've been on "both" sides of the coin. I work as an IT manager at a university, hiring both full-time employees and student workers (our help desk is run by student employees). So I can relate to only a fraction of that with hiring clowns, especially when things like state required DEI hires and everything else comes into play. I also worked in the corporate world previously where I had to install software on company laptops that tracked things like idle activity, mouse clicks, web browsing time, tasks completed per hour, etc, and reported it back to the managers. As you can probably guess, a lot of these places had high turnover.
With that said, I am hopeful for the future. We just hired two student workers on as full-time employees after they graduated. Sure, there are plenty of idiots in every generation, but there are also some really bright and talented kids who are not afraid of working hard. Always make a point to reward those on your team who work hard, even if it is something small just to show you appreciate them, and usually they will make it worth your while. Some people just suck, and I never feel bad about firing those people. It can be both a learning opportunity for them, as well as a chance for someone else who does actually want to work.
With that said, I am hopeful for the future. We just hired two student workers on as full-time employees after they graduated. Sure, there are plenty of idiots in every generation, but there are also some really bright and talented kids who are not afraid of working hard. Always make a point to reward those on your team who work hard, even if it is something small just to show you appreciate them, and usually they will make it worth your while. Some people just suck, and I never feel bad about firing those people. It can be both a learning opportunity for them, as well as a chance for someone else who does actually want to work.
For starters, I would never measure anything I could mark.
What is scary is we are quick to hand these people a truckload of power tools.
You are 100% right.
I have a few guys who want to do this….are willing to learn and are all about doing it well.
Because the entry-level price to open your own construction business is so low normally our biggest competition is the lure of self-employment.
Then sometimes you have a runaway (Helper), which is someone who attempts to do that and they are not as ready as they think and they get out in the field and get in a lot of trouble… like some boys who were setting some tile around an island and it did not meet up.
What happens is when a customer senses you have any lack of confidence they become hypervigilant and they will eat you alive.
The key is to make it so good to work here. It’s less attractive to run your own show..
Some of your best people can be people who got out there and found out how hard it is.
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That guy cutting the shelves above can show you exactly how to do that.
No, you are quick, I have a rule if you can't count to 12, you don't get to touch power tools.
There are some who can work alongside others and not learn, for whatever reason. I hired a young guy who had been working as an apprentice in the IBEW for 4 years, I figured he must have learned a lot and I hired him. It only lasted a week after I found out he didn't really learn the trade at all, either because he expected the journeymen to take him aside and teach him everything or because he didn't get out there and learn it for himself, or a combination of both. He was good at menial stuff like running things back and forth, crawling around in tight spaces and pulling wire but after two major mistakes in a week that even a DIY would know better. I couldn't afford to keep him. One of the mistakes would have been catastrophic if I had not inspected his work before powering up.
One of the things I noticed right away which was a big red flag is that he liked to talk about everything except the job at hand. I knew before the week was out he wasn't going to cut it.
There are certain individuals who sit back and wait for things to happen and there are those who go out and make it happen.
One of the things I noticed right away which was a big red flag is that he liked to talk about everything except the job at hand. I knew before the week was out he wasn't going to cut it.
There are certain individuals who sit back and wait for things to happen and there are those who go out and make it happen.
Or they are so silly it is painful. We had a large living room with a rock fireplace across one wall with a full length hearth and sand stone on the top of the hearth. Per typical, we looked at the blueprints, it showed the typical architectural generic drawing of stones across the face of the hearth. The masons finished, the owners came in and said it was all wrong and had to be redone. We looked at the prints, we compared that to the stone work and could not find the error and certainly not one bad enough to rip it out and start over.
Stupid us, turns out, they were crystal worshipers and the drawing was stones put in a very particular and precise pattern down to the size and shape of each to allow the proper worship of such things. Oddly, there was no notes on the drawing, no meeting with the owners, nothing but your typical blueprints where everyone assumed we would put every tiny little fucking rock where it went. Boy were they wrong.
My boss and I exacted our polite revenge. We laid out the face of the hearth full size on the floor, put the pile of rocks and stones next to it and made the owners lay every single one exactly where it went with strict instructions that whatever they did was going on the hearth exactly as they laid it out. That took them over a week to do.
I think they’ve got some relatives over here. I had a couple dry lay an entire basement of tile.
Most of crystal that’s being worshiped is crystal meth here.
OK, here’s another one and this person is actually very very accomplished- but at the end of their career.
I give very clear instructions and a photograph of another job for the design and this is the question that I get back
And keep in mind, I deliberately only sent enough face frame to do the head trim to reinforce my message-
This is how somebody gets into something and they do it the wrong way and then they run out of material and before the day is over, they take a 45 minute job and it doesn’t even get done- and delays every subsequent trade, and the last check.
Oh, but they will stand there at your truck door at 4 o’clock looking to get paid
I give very clear instructions and a photograph of another job for the design and this is the question that I get back
And keep in mind, I deliberately only sent enough face frame to do the head trim to reinforce my message-
This is how somebody gets into something and they do it the wrong way and then they run out of material and before the day is over, they take a 45 minute job and it doesn’t even get done- and delays every subsequent trade, and the last check.
Oh, but they will stand there at your truck door at 4 o’clock looking to get paid
And here’s another one somebody’s trying to run the project and they’re fixing to delay getting finished-
Me in the green
Me in the green
I was in a house a few month ago with a window like that. I can't remember if they drywalled over the interior side, of if the siding guys covered over it, but it was a window to nowhere.
Am I the only one who hates when people text like they haven't moved on from elementary school level english? In a professional setting at least...
I can't stand it. Worse yet is the people who talk like that. The wife had a previous coworker stop by and talk for a minute. This chick is our age, but her command of the English language is shit. She kept saying things like "I be...", "they be...", "we be...". I was like, "to be, or not to be in this room, I'm leaving". 5 minutes of her talking gave me a headache. I seriously had to leave.
My typing style ranges from "basically on discord" to "messaging a client professionality" based on how well I know you at work lol.
Have you taught any of those people any new acronyms?
I'm keeping that little exchange. That's good humor, BlueC!
Many. I am also a lot of people's source of new reaction gifs!
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