I did a deck recently for a homeowner who was wrapped a little tight. He wanted me to cut corners to get the job done as fast as possible. Mind you, I wasn't working by the hour. Time and materials often causes homeowners to watch the clock. That's human nature. This guy was a ball of anxiety trying to get me to cut unnecessary corners. Of course I fought him on this- in a nice way.
I've had many bosses like this when I was working by the hour. It's quite counter-productive but, that's how they get and keep their positions.It's sometimes skill but all too often it is being a company man, rat bastard that gets you promoted. It's probably the same at your job.
Rushing things is rarely a good idea. Homeowners want things done ASAP as foremen do but for different reasons. The lady of the house understandably wants her home back in order but the foreman just wants a feather in his cap. "LOOK WHAT *I* DID!!!!!"
There were soooo many but, I'll start with Donnie Silver. Silver wanted everything done FAAAAST! It wasn't just from an owners bean-counting perspective though. Silver was looking to reinvent painting, something that didn't need to be done. He asked a buddy of mine once why painters didn't roll from side to side. Never minding that it's stupid and a helluva lot more work, it's stupid and a helluva lot more work. A few years later, he was asking me the same question. Can you guess what I told him?
Well, I left out the "stupid" part because I needed the job but, it is more work and it accomplishes nothing. You're looking for coverage and a smooth finish on a wall and up and down is the way to go. We don't even (necessarily) do the *W* like they tell you to do on the fix-it shows. There's nothing wrong with the *W* except it leads to unnecessary wars as well as odd political segues. But, Silver had this bad habit of saying that he wanted everything done fast and punctuating fast with his hand, palms down, diving into the air in front of him. And he looked for new stupid ways to do basic things, all the time. I wondered if he stayed up at night mis-thinking things. During my first week for him I cheerfully did an after hours job in an office building that required that I spackle little pin holes on about 20 offices on four floors. Notice I said "spackle". That's what you use. Unless you're Donnie Silver....
He gave me a sack of 5 minute quickset- "because it's FAAAAST!" It is indeed. Too fast. It's often ambitious that you make it the full 5 minutes before it sets up in your pan. It has it's uses but this wasn't one of them, Finishers hate it because of the working time and because it's a bitch to sand. And spackle in extremely small doses like that dries verrrry faaaast! Gun to my head, the first floor I do is dry and ready to lightly sand and prime by the time I finish the fourth. I related this to Donnie but, he was having none of it. I had no spackle on my truck and if I left to get some, I wouldn't be able to get back in unless I propped the door and left it open to crime. Not on my watch. I should have quit that night. Donnie would not get better. He wasn't the least bit malleble. On a later job, he was using 20 minute mud to float out a wall in a bank. I suggested 45 or 90 but, they weren't faaaast enough. Donnie wished aloud that he had fans to accelerate the drying. I explained that the quickset did not air dry. Rather, it was a chemical reaction that caused it to set in the varying times available. It looked at me in a probable mix of confusion and suspicion. I went to the paint store for some 45 or 90. In a delicious occurrence of irony, the guy at the paint store volunteered(!) the statement: "I'd like to meet the idiot who uses 20 or 5 minute mud!" No prompting from me! I replied: "Well, come on down the street and I'll show you the idiot!" "Really?" he replied. "Goodness...."
Indeed, Donnie Silver was wrapped too tight. I believe his daddy was a minister and Donnie had had a strict upbringing. He had been a drug addict and alcoholic and clean when I worked for him. A year or so later he had relapsed. He lost his lovely wife, home and probably 60-70 pounds he had not needed to lose.
Little Jimmy Smith was an actual painter and pretty much knew what to do but he could never get the hang on when to do it. He was caught up in that corporate pole-climb that guys with no people skills trip up on. He was not a leader and not very organized. Coupled with that, he was what you call "a fucking liar" who regularly gave false deadlines designed to hurry the crew. After a walk-around of a new project, I'd ask when the job needed to be done. All to often the answer was: "Last week..."
Well now, he should have put me on it two to three weeks ago. I was never sure if he had seriously lost paperwork and put himself in a hole that we had to pull him out of or if he was giving false deadlines to make us hurry. It was likely 50/50. Well, Little Jimmy was a 5 foot nothing bully. We all did what could be done, in the time it took to get done. He was a rat who scampered off to the office for brownie points every chance he could. But, if you think I'm being hard on him, the guys at the shop were worse. Little Jimmy had 'trained' 4 or five of the superintendents he wound up working under. He couldn't believe the shop passed over him like that. Everybody else could.
He once had us paint the exterior of a building that we didn't actually have a contract on. I would have loved to have been in the shop for that one when he explained things- if he did. I could imagine him putting it off on me and Dale- a couple of rogue, renegade painters painting whatever buildings they felt like.... It may well have gone down like that. A week later, another company re-painted our work. Little Jimmy refused to talk about it. Very telling in his silence.
Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even gotten to "162 IQ Lou" yet. Story for another day.
The gist is, good work takes time. If there was 'book time' on these things as in auto mechanics, I could maybe beat it but, not necessarily by much. If everything is a race, chaos wins. Why rush a good thing?
2 comments:
And it will come back and bite you in the arse when clients are not happy with the results and sue you. Lose/lose
There's that plus your reputation is at stake. Little Jimmy would not take the 'credit' in the shop and we all knew that. Once on a job that I totally killed, I later found out that *I* had gone 2 grand over on labor. The thing was, I had no control over who was assigned to work on my jobs. It was all Little Jimmy. For a period he had been sending me deadheads that I neither needed or wanted. I was stuck with these guys. About six months later I learned of the labor costs and went all Ferrerman on Little Jimmy. I also went over his head to 162 IQ Lou and learned that *I* had also gone $2k over on materials....
First off, that's NOTHING on a big job. A drop in a 5 gallon bucket. But, second, materials are an estimate, estimated by an estimator whose job is to estimate. He's a guesser and, some are better guessers than others.
162 IQ Lou was still "investigating" both figures, 6 months later. The company made lots of money on the job despite the 2k here and the 2k there. Most of all, the clients were thrilled and not at all upset about the 2k here and the 2k there.
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