Fun on the Job

A neighbor and myself were sitting in his back yard watching a neighbor painting his metal roof with aluminum paint. He started painting at the bottom of the roof from a ladder. He was ok until he stepped on the wet paint on the roof and slipped off the roof to the ground about 20 or so feet. We ran over to check on his health and was assured by him that he hadent broken anything and was ok. We returned to my neighbors yard and began our conversation when we realized the painting neighbor was returning to his roof. He stepped into the wet paint again and off the roof he went to the ground. I looked at my neighbor and asked should we check on him again? My neighbor said screw the stupid ass hole and we continued our conversation.

In the late 60s, I often stayed in Kansas City. Rooming was cheap and temporary jobs were easy to get at Manpower. Off of it I was offered permanent jobs a number of times and even took a few. One job, in particular, called for a crew of three to assemble a long row of bins, about eight feet tall, inside a warehouse. We worked steady and hard and finally had it all standing. We began filling the compartments with product. I don't recall why, but I was compelled to climb on top. No sooner had I got up there than the entire monstrosity lost its integrity and I rode it down, unhurt. I think we should have gone behind my
coworkers. I am almost certain one or even all of them failed to make the bolts tight.

I had a new customer, a 90-year old man who needed roof repair on his two and a half storey rental house. He was the sort that likes to stand at your shoulder and back seat drive while you are working. When I got up on the high part the roof was too dangerous for even me. But I was fixing a leaky valley and found footing by keeping my feet on opposing sides. I had no sooner congratulated myself for getting away from the old man's interference than I looked up to see him coming down the valley and gaining momentum until he was nearly running. I expected him to pitch over and plummet to the asphalt below. Miraculously, he came to a stop and was able to observe my efforts for a few minutes before trudging back up and entering the house at a dormer window.

We became friendly enough for me to do several jobs for him. Once when I replaced stair treads for the same building, I was positioned just right to see him rush into a storage area, leaving the door ajar. I was not spying and I wish I had not seen it. He pulled off his pants and threw them down as hard as he could, enraged that he had **** his pants.

I put linoleum down in a big hall of the old house. I seemed to get it cut and set just right by the time I left. After the flooring settled a while one spot developed a bit of a bubble. Instead of calling me to trim it, he kicked it until it broke. Of course I was to blame.

He had a very old dog in his own yard. It was protective and it bit my leg below the knee. The dog was so feeble that I barely felt a pinch.

His wife was very nice and completely devoted to him. They lost a lifetime of savings off their strip center and drugstore when each needed an operation one year. They had to count their money after that, to give me work.

I'm going back over thirty years for all of this. I often wonder what their relatives did with their property after they passed.

I hired onto a project in which an addition was being put on a house. As junior man I was placed under two men who were very young. They generally set me to tasks requiring lots of labor while they stood around and studied the plans. Once I was caught up enough to decide I should build a short wall since my leaders were otherwise occupied. I no sooner cut the plates for it than one of them insinuated himself between me and the lumber and began laying it out and lecturing how it was done. I assisted as he nailed it and then he moved along. It was obvious that wall was wrong, but I moved on to another project.

Every time I worked near the stairs, the one that built them would hussle me off to work elsewhere. I was puzzled why they kept trying to preserve the sheetrock ceiling in one big room. When I got lectured at length on preserving it to save work later, I went to see the supervisor in his supervisor shack. "They keep telling me to save the sheetrock when the plans clearly show us raising the ceiling." The supervisor's hat nearly lifted off his head when he checked and saw I was right. Suddenly the whole crew spoke knowingly of the need to transform that part of the house.

About this time they realized how effed were my lead men, particularly once they saw that the stairs would have to be built all over again. One day the man that replaced them was working with me on a small roof section. I was wearing brand new shoes and they were much different than the old ones. I took a step and my shoe's toe caught my other shoe, enough to trip me. I was going down and beginning to pitch head first toward the edge. My coworker positioned himself and caught me, likely saving my life.

There was a friend of the supervisor who came to visit. I pointed the way for him and he said, "He better not be putting anything in his nose without me." I did see them doing lines one time.

I no longer recall the circumstances of my leaving. That raised up room had no interior walls. I recall explaining to them that the kind of roof they wanted could never stay built without braces. They changed it to a shed roof. I always did wonder how the customer felt about the final result.

I was doing computer work in a SMB that had 2 floors. I sent an email company wide asking everyone on the second floor to please keep their computers on over night so we could verify some port information. I received approx 20 replies asking which one was the second floor.

Wow.

I mean, unless those people were from England.

What Americans call the 2nd fl they call it the 1st floor, our 1st fl being their ground floor.

When I was young and did lots of carrying and hammering I felt really good to move constantly, carrying loads and putting walls and roofs together. I was very strong but was not that vain about it. I trained myself to tap a 16 penny nail to start it and slammed it into the board with a 16 oz hammer in just two hits. We were decking the roofs with 1x6 boards. When I stood the boards to lean against the building for dragging up and nailing them down I carried the tallest stack of boards I could get on my shoulder. I just saw myself helping out, not showing off. They continually pushed me for greater speed and there I sometimes let them down. But when they would get angry that I paused to light a cigarette, which I kept in my mouth as I worked, I wasn't that sorry.

The company would deliver all of the material to build a shell of a house over an average of three to five days. We sometimes worked on sites with electricity and sometimes we rented a generator. We set blocks and stacked cinder blocks on them and often got a wall or two up the first day. At first we used 305 wooden siding on the walls, but soon went to putting up Masonite. As the others nailed on the shingles I worked on the floor.

The flooring was 1x4 notched pine, laid right on the joists. I tried to keep the joints separated as much as possible, but often the bundles offered up nothing but short pieces. Consequently there were pieces supported just by other flooring pieces, because I couldn't find something long enough to lay over a joist. One of the crew had the nerve to criticize me over it. While nailing shingles, he "could count up to" so many seconds or whatever between nails put in.

If I happened to smack my thumb with a hammer I would be laughed at for a few minutes, then told, "Get back to work."

Working in Crystal City on wet ground, I once picked up a saw to cut a board, just as the others were doing. But a short froze me in place. I tried to tell the guy standing three feet away to cut off the electric, but he just stood there unable to make a move. I guess saving one from electrocution was not in his job description. Fortunately the short ended on its own and I flung the saw to the ground. Then had to be criticized the rest of the day for refusing to pick up the same saw.

These houses would be turned over to the owners to install utilities and drywall or whatever they chose to do with them. There were times I hated it and times I enjoyed the hell out of it. I started out earning seven dollars a day, but in the end was paid 2.50.

$2.50?

A day?!

Per hour.

When we built those houses we were sent all over mostly south Texas. My brother once was sent to Needles at the California border to build a few. We sometimes slept in roadside motels, for a buck apiece per night. More often we made platforms of boards over sawhorses and slept on them. Baths? Baths? We ate breakfast in a restaurant (I sometimes saw black patrons come to the kitchen window to get their food to eat at outside tables in the back). For lunch somebody went to a grocery store for a loaf of bread, balogna and a bag of Mother's cookies.

A big handicap for some in maintenance you might be surprised to learn is hand size. There are so many jobs that require getting your hand(s) into a tiny space. I sometimes sound like bragging when I mention my hands, but they kept me from getting work efficiently done. Maybe it's because this stuff is made in China and they have small hands; maybe it's to save money on material. I had to invent ways to get a grip on parts tiny and in extremely tight spaces. The lead was twice my size but his arms were long, his hands very small. He could work in tight spaces more efficiently. Once I realized why that was, I no longer felt bad about it.

At one point in my house carpenter career, I hired on with a crew to build for a man who had coveted Johnny Weismuller's role as Tarzan. He sad JW's politics beat him out.

After a time, I had houses going on my own and subcontracted a Mexican crew to keep up. They did excellent fast work. Their boss was a better carpenter than me, but he was illegal and didn't speak English. Otherwise I likely couldn't have afforded him. He was difficult to pay because he had to go over every detail repeatedly to make certain he got every penny he was due. I took a token amount of his money to help cover the income taxes I would pay on his money. He didn't like it, but I stuck with it. He would occasionally get picked up and sent back across the border. We always had a good laugh about it because he invariably brought back at least two or three more men with him. I often think about these Latinos that worked alongside of me. There was a crew from one of the central American countries that always insisted with a smile that I was one of them, passing. One fellow I worked with had come from Mexico long enough ago that he had bought a house in Houston and one in Corpus Christi. All of these men that I met were the salt of the Earth.

Great yarns, Edgar...

100% agree

Thanks. I had intended doing more but thought nobody was reading.

I'm enjoying them too. Keep them coming.

There are tales of maintenance men having physical relations with residents. In my experience that did not happen. It could have, once or twice, except I declined to participate. For instance, I learned from a woman that she was a writer and she shared her online offerings when I evinced interest. It was the camaraderie between fellow authors I offered, but she read it from the perspective of one recently split from her husband. She was feeling lonely and adventurous. I politely spoke of writing experiences when in her apartment, scout's honor.

Once, she approached me, holding out a screw. "My husband used to hand me one of these when he wanted to go to bed with me," she said, handing me the screw. I pretended ignorance and proceeded to do her work order.

On another occasion, I had business near her apartment. When she saw me draw close, she rushed up and threw her arms around me. I stood there until she released me and shortly went about my business. She gradually backed off after that and eventually reconciled with her husband. I think it was a nice ending.

On one project I subcontracted a house to a crew of framers who worked it until most of the first story walls were up. Then they told me they didn't like the situation and quit. I didn't mind too much. They weren't that fast and I suspected they had stolen a heavy duty electric cord of mine. The boss looked at their work and on Friday gave me their check. Their lead man looked at the amount on it and began yelling. "That's not enough." "How much more are you asking?" I said. He looked confused and said, "Enough." I told him I would relay the message.

About a week later, he came to the job site and said, "All right, you s.o.b. where's my money?" The man I was getting my checks from was present. As the man closed on me he became enraged and ran up and tried to kick the man in the chin, a sort of uppercut by foot. He only missed by three inches. The man advanced on him and he back-peddled until the man backed away. As he prepared to leave, he said, "One of you is getting blowed away."

After that, I parked very near to the house I was framing, with a covered pistol on the seat of the truck. He never did come back and he never did cash that check.

It was then, probably is still, a cut-throat proposition to carpenter in Houston.

Jeez!

Sounds like a Wild West situation!

I love the part where he looked confused and said "enough"

Here's 2 stories re paychecks from me.

I didn't distrubute paychecks, but sometimes someone would come to me about a pay question, and I was happy to help.

This new guy saw me helping someone, and so he waited for me to be done and said "my checks wrong"
Now there were all kinds of shift differentials and different rates for weekends etc. so it could be confusing. No ones check was ever the same 2 times in a row, but people obviously had an idea how much it would be.
Since he was new, I went into the system with him and he verified all the hours and shifts he worked were correct, and based on that, his check was perfect. He seemed a little put off by this, but oh well.
Anyway, every week after that he would come to me with the same complaint. If it wasn't the hours, it was the deductions, or why were the taxes different, etc.
Finally I watched him talking with someone in the hallway, holding his check envelope. He opened it while talking, and hadn't looked at it yet. He turned and saw me, and said "Oh! My check is wrong!"
I told him I saw that he hadn't even looked at it yet, and he actually said "Well, no, but it's wrong"
I was done. I told him he should look at the check, and once he figured out what he thought he should have made, and why, I'd check into it.
He never approached me again.
Now this guy, by that time everyone had realized he was a pot stirrer, so I knew it was just his nature.

The other guy though, give me a break.
I worked for the regional director, and he came up to me saying he wanted to talk to her about how the company was "cheating him"

I asked him how, and he said that when he got his last raise, he had received a 65 cent an hour raise, and he should have received 65.31 cents.

Ok I said. That's .0031 cents. Not even a 1/3 of a penny and hour. Really?

He was indignant and said yes, he had children to raise and how was he supposed to feed them if he was being cheated? (beside the point, I so wanted to suggest he stop tithing to whatever whack a doodle church he talked about all the time, and he'd have the money, but I refrained)

What I did say (while whipping out a calculator) was "Ok, you work 2 12 hour shifts a week. I know you don't work every single week, but let's just call it 52 weeks). So (tapping keys), that's 24 hours times 52 is 1248 hours a year (he worked probably more like 1000). Take that times .0031 cents and....that $3.87 cents the company owes you for the year.

Rather than being like "oh...yeah forget it" He actually smirked and said "YES! I'm owed that."
I said I would send an email to payroll in another state, but that wasn't good enough. He said that we had been making interest off his money that whole year, and wasn't going to wait any longer.

I reached into my bag, pulled out $5 and said "Fine. Here. Take this $5 and when payroll gives you an adjustment you can give it back to me. And yes, I'll make sure next time you get a raise they round it up to the next penny." Then I looked at the clock and told him he'd been in my office for 15 or 20 minutes, and had he punched out before he came to talk to me. He said no, so I said let's just forget that he'd just spent that time not doing patient care.

I couldn't believe he actually took the $5. But that's not the end.
I called payroll. Our payroll person and I happened to have developed a really close work relationship over the years. She howled in laughter about the whole thing and said sure, she'd add on the retro pay of $3.87, and put add an entire penny to his rate.
Next payday, I saw him and asked him if he had gotten his back pay, and the extra cent on his rate, and he said yes he had.
"Great, then you can just give me back my $5, and we're done"

"HUH? What? You want ME to give YOU $5!!!??"

I just said I knew he didn't want to cheat me out of money owed to me. He told me he didn't have any money on him right now. I told him I'd remind him next shift he worked.....which I did.
I don't think he was ever really clear why he needed to give me that money.

Whack a doodle.