Dirty job but it must be done
It has come to my attention that one can view the ENTIRE YEAR OF 2008 on my LiveJournal's front page. That's absolutely ridiculous considering how much has gone on in this stupid year so far!
Take this summer, for instance, which has been a non-stop joyride of amazing bullshit. I don't know, guys. I used to do stuff. I liked to draw a picture every now and then, or maybe play a videogame or watch some TV or SOMETHING. Nowadays... well, not so much. And it's all because I have to work for a living.
For the past few months, life seems to follow a pretty predictable routine:
1) Go to work for between eight to twelve hours,
2) Get home,
3) Bum around on the Internet for a couple hours to escape the soul-crushing weight of the Day Job,
4) Go to bed, and
5) Repeat.
Note that there usually isn't an exception made for the weekend since I'm not really guaranteed to have one. Put in a full eight hours at one of our jobs yesterday, even!
Like the majority of commercial construction firms, we get our jobs through a bidding process. One of the several larger controls firms we subcontract through passes us info on upcoming jobs, we work out a price, turn it in to them, they throw on THEIR markup, pass it along to the general contractor, and if they like the figure they go with it. It works out pretty well so long as you keep a couple things in mind: You never want to schedule TOO much work for a particular time frame, and you never want to commit more resources than you have.
So far, it's worked out pretty well. We had about seven people in the company, and all of us had enough work to keep us busy without being OVERWHELMED. This year started out along those same lines- Dad bid a lot of work, but it was all pretty spaced out, so instead of our usual eight-months-of-busy/four-months-of-nothing schedule, we'd be able to hum right along all year.
Well, until a couple of those jobs started lagging behind.
And even worse, until a couple OTHER jobs decided they wanted to finish EARLY.
What started out as a twelve-month schedule quickly became a nine-month schedule, then immediately morphed into a FOUR-month schedule. Since early May, our poor little company's been struggling to stay afloat on SIX SEPARATE JOBS. That's as many as we did during the entirety of 2007. And that's HORRIBLE. See, most of our work is done in local schools- upgrading the controls in existing buildings, or installing systems for new schools being constructed. As such, we more or less have to be done at any given school by early August or early December, depending on if it's supposed to open for Fall or Spring semester. And wouldn't you know- it's that magic time!
Now, to our credit, we ARE more or less done in all those schools we were SUPPOSED to be done by now in. There's one school, however, that had construction tied up for MONTHS due to some kind of land-ownership dispute, so instead of being able to start on it when we were supposed to, we're only just now doing any major work in it. There's another that isn't supposed to be done until late November, but every day we're not out there, the controls firm we're doing it for is calling either Dad or myself to figure out WHY, because the general contractor's dead-set on being out of that goddamn place by the end of September. No real reason why- I guess he's just a super-dick or something.
Anyway! You can probably guess the result- tons of overtime, not much time for anything else. To help lighten the load a bit, Dad hired on four new guys to help us out. But, of course, there's been no shortage of problems with THAT, too.
See, first thing you gotta know about Dad is that he's ASTOUNDINGLY cheap. He doesn't draw much of a distinction between "cheapest" and "best value"- the cheapest solution IS the best value. Rather than hiring two guys who actually know what they're doing and paying each one $20 an hour, he hires three kids straight out of high school who have NO clue what they're doing and pays them minimum wage, along with one guy with two years of experience in a slightly related field for $15 an hour.
I guess that's all well and good in terms of giving us plenty of help, but it doesn't exactly expand the brain trust- he still only has three guys who can actually THINK and know what to DO. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly take a genius to do the kind of stuff we do, and getting up to speed on the basics of the business is usually a three-week learning curve. Provided, of course, you have any kind of motivation to LEARN anything, and the will to DO it.
Which these goddamn kids, by and large, do NOT.
Basically, 10% of my work day is spent Getting Things Done, with the other 90% devoted to Babysitting Morons. These guys can spend eight hours a day doing something, go home, and come back the next day having COMPLETELY forgotten what they were doing before and how they did it. There are personality clashes to moderate. None of them can be wrong about ANYTHING- if they do something wrong, it's because you didn't explain it right. Good luck getting any of them to work past 4 in the afternoon. I'm willing to stay as late as I can at any given job- hell, after most of the other trades start clearing out around 3:00, it's amazing how much you can get done if you don't have to worry about working around or over a bunch of people, but soon as the clock starts getting close to 3:30, you can't work for having to field all the "How much longer are you planning to work"s and "Do you need me to take anything to the truck"s.
The one guy with a couple years of experience was all right, I suppose, except he had NO work ethic. We turned him loose on a job for over a month, gave him a truck and a helper, showed him what to do, and from all outward appearances he completely understood. Came to find out that he'd maybe actually go to work only every other day or so; Dad and I went out to check out the job a couple weeks ago at the request of the contractor, only to find that barely anything had actually been DONE. Dad had to let him go.
God. A year ago, I was working on two jobs and couldn't believe I was getting PAID to do what I do, I was having so much fun. THIS year, I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm not making NEARLY as much as I should. The 2008 work year has been an educational one all around; Dad's stated that once we're caught up on all this work, we're NEVER bidding this much stuff at one time ever again, and most of the slack-asses we have working for us will be out of a job. Which is for the best, really; they've already bragged about how much work they plan to skip out on once hunting season starts. I don't know- maybe placing a higher premium on making money and fulfilling contractural obligations over blowing six kinds of hell out of woodland creatures is one of those things that makes me OLD.
WHEW! Been needing to get that out for a while. Good news is that we ARE in pretty good shape on all these jobs now, and even finished a couple up over the past two weeks. The contractors still give us hassle every now and then, but that's just part of what they do- we could be two months ahead on any given job and they'd yell at us for not being THREE. Though I HAVE still been putting in (unpaid) overtime on a couple jobs, I haven't felt like I've HAD to do it since late July. It'll all get done one of these days!
And really, as harsh as the past few months have been, it's all about to turn around 'cause I'm officially four days away from VACATION!
nunuu and I will be hitting up the Seattle area for PAX 2008, as well as quality hangouts with ladyfox, fandomgreen and who knows who else. I anticipate NOTHING BUT GOOD TIMES!
More to come but far less bitching, post-PAX in all likelihood.
Take this summer, for instance, which has been a non-stop joyride of amazing bullshit. I don't know, guys. I used to do stuff. I liked to draw a picture every now and then, or maybe play a videogame or watch some TV or SOMETHING. Nowadays... well, not so much. And it's all because I have to work for a living.
For the past few months, life seems to follow a pretty predictable routine:
1) Go to work for between eight to twelve hours,
2) Get home,
3) Bum around on the Internet for a couple hours to escape the soul-crushing weight of the Day Job,
4) Go to bed, and
5) Repeat.
Note that there usually isn't an exception made for the weekend since I'm not really guaranteed to have one. Put in a full eight hours at one of our jobs yesterday, even!
Like the majority of commercial construction firms, we get our jobs through a bidding process. One of the several larger controls firms we subcontract through passes us info on upcoming jobs, we work out a price, turn it in to them, they throw on THEIR markup, pass it along to the general contractor, and if they like the figure they go with it. It works out pretty well so long as you keep a couple things in mind: You never want to schedule TOO much work for a particular time frame, and you never want to commit more resources than you have.
So far, it's worked out pretty well. We had about seven people in the company, and all of us had enough work to keep us busy without being OVERWHELMED. This year started out along those same lines- Dad bid a lot of work, but it was all pretty spaced out, so instead of our usual eight-months-of-busy/four-months-of-nothing schedule, we'd be able to hum right along all year.
Well, until a couple of those jobs started lagging behind.
And even worse, until a couple OTHER jobs decided they wanted to finish EARLY.
What started out as a twelve-month schedule quickly became a nine-month schedule, then immediately morphed into a FOUR-month schedule. Since early May, our poor little company's been struggling to stay afloat on SIX SEPARATE JOBS. That's as many as we did during the entirety of 2007. And that's HORRIBLE. See, most of our work is done in local schools- upgrading the controls in existing buildings, or installing systems for new schools being constructed. As such, we more or less have to be done at any given school by early August or early December, depending on if it's supposed to open for Fall or Spring semester. And wouldn't you know- it's that magic time!
Now, to our credit, we ARE more or less done in all those schools we were SUPPOSED to be done by now in. There's one school, however, that had construction tied up for MONTHS due to some kind of land-ownership dispute, so instead of being able to start on it when we were supposed to, we're only just now doing any major work in it. There's another that isn't supposed to be done until late November, but every day we're not out there, the controls firm we're doing it for is calling either Dad or myself to figure out WHY, because the general contractor's dead-set on being out of that goddamn place by the end of September. No real reason why- I guess he's just a super-dick or something.
Anyway! You can probably guess the result- tons of overtime, not much time for anything else. To help lighten the load a bit, Dad hired on four new guys to help us out. But, of course, there's been no shortage of problems with THAT, too.
See, first thing you gotta know about Dad is that he's ASTOUNDINGLY cheap. He doesn't draw much of a distinction between "cheapest" and "best value"- the cheapest solution IS the best value. Rather than hiring two guys who actually know what they're doing and paying each one $20 an hour, he hires three kids straight out of high school who have NO clue what they're doing and pays them minimum wage, along with one guy with two years of experience in a slightly related field for $15 an hour.
I guess that's all well and good in terms of giving us plenty of help, but it doesn't exactly expand the brain trust- he still only has three guys who can actually THINK and know what to DO. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly take a genius to do the kind of stuff we do, and getting up to speed on the basics of the business is usually a three-week learning curve. Provided, of course, you have any kind of motivation to LEARN anything, and the will to DO it.
Which these goddamn kids, by and large, do NOT.
Basically, 10% of my work day is spent Getting Things Done, with the other 90% devoted to Babysitting Morons. These guys can spend eight hours a day doing something, go home, and come back the next day having COMPLETELY forgotten what they were doing before and how they did it. There are personality clashes to moderate. None of them can be wrong about ANYTHING- if they do something wrong, it's because you didn't explain it right. Good luck getting any of them to work past 4 in the afternoon. I'm willing to stay as late as I can at any given job- hell, after most of the other trades start clearing out around 3:00, it's amazing how much you can get done if you don't have to worry about working around or over a bunch of people, but soon as the clock starts getting close to 3:30, you can't work for having to field all the "How much longer are you planning to work"s and "Do you need me to take anything to the truck"s.
The one guy with a couple years of experience was all right, I suppose, except he had NO work ethic. We turned him loose on a job for over a month, gave him a truck and a helper, showed him what to do, and from all outward appearances he completely understood. Came to find out that he'd maybe actually go to work only every other day or so; Dad and I went out to check out the job a couple weeks ago at the request of the contractor, only to find that barely anything had actually been DONE. Dad had to let him go.
God. A year ago, I was working on two jobs and couldn't believe I was getting PAID to do what I do, I was having so much fun. THIS year, I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm not making NEARLY as much as I should. The 2008 work year has been an educational one all around; Dad's stated that once we're caught up on all this work, we're NEVER bidding this much stuff at one time ever again, and most of the slack-asses we have working for us will be out of a job. Which is for the best, really; they've already bragged about how much work they plan to skip out on once hunting season starts. I don't know- maybe placing a higher premium on making money and fulfilling contractural obligations over blowing six kinds of hell out of woodland creatures is one of those things that makes me OLD.
WHEW! Been needing to get that out for a while. Good news is that we ARE in pretty good shape on all these jobs now, and even finished a couple up over the past two weeks. The contractors still give us hassle every now and then, but that's just part of what they do- we could be two months ahead on any given job and they'd yell at us for not being THREE. Though I HAVE still been putting in (unpaid) overtime on a couple jobs, I haven't felt like I've HAD to do it since late July. It'll all get done one of these days!
And really, as harsh as the past few months have been, it's all about to turn around 'cause I'm officially four days away from VACATION!
nunuu and I will be hitting up the Seattle area for PAX 2008, as well as quality hangouts with ladyfox, fandomgreen and who knows who else. I anticipate NOTHING BUT GOOD TIMES!
More to come but far less bitching, post-PAX in all likelihood.