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WTF is wrong with contractors?

SilentStalkr

SilentStalkr

Wonna Be Badass
Full Member
Minuteman
    • Oct 8, 2012
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    Somewhere in the US
    Ok, so I got my patio built about 2 months ago, driveways cleaned but the dude had the pressure way too high and basically pressure washed the top coat off. I’ve done it myself several times and never had this issue. Ok fine it is what it is, no way to fix it really. Two weeks later grass guy comes and gets ironite all over the clean drive in the rain so guess what that lead to? Rust spots everywhere on the drive I just cleaned. Then hired a guy to clean and restain my deck. Said hey don’t pressure wash the patio cause it’s new and I don’t need you blowing all the kinetic sand out! What do they do? They pressure wash the patio too harsh and blow the sand out. So that dude now has to come back. And to add insult to injury thr dude got oil all over my driveway as well. WTF? So I give up. I guess I’m not supposed to have nice stuff.
     
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    SilentStalkr said:
    Ok, so I got my patio built about 2 months ago, driveways cleaned but the dude had the pressure way too high and basically pressure washed the top coat off. I’ve done it myself several times and never had this issue. Ok fine it is what it is, no way to fix it really. Two weeks later grass guy comes and gets ironite all over the clean drive in the rain so guess what that lead to? Rust spots everywhere on the drive I just cleaned. Then hired a guy to clean and restain my deck. Said hey don’t pressure wash the patio cause it’s new and I don’t need you blowing all the kinetic sand out! What do they do? They pressure wash the patio too harsh and blow the sand out. So that dude now has to come back. And to add insult to injury thr dude got oil all over my driveway as well. WTF? So I give up. I guess I’m not supposed to have nice stuff.
    Click to expand...
    I guess you missed the other thread where contractors never fuck up or rip you off and it's always the customers fault
     
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    SilentStalkr said:
    Ok, so I got my patio built about 2 months ago, driveways cleaned but the dude had the pressure way too high and basically pressure washed the top coat off. I’ve done it myself several times and never had this issue. Ok fine it is what it is, no way to fix it really. Two weeks later grass guy comes and gets ironite all over the clean drive in the rain so guess what that lead to? Rust spots everywhere on the drive I just cleaned. Then hired a guy to clean and restain my deck. Said hey don’t pressure wash the patio cause it’s new and I don’t need you blowing all the kinetic sand out! What do they do? They pressure wash the patio too harsh and blow the sand out. So that dude now has to come back. And to add insult to injury thr dude got oil all over my driveway as well. WTF? So I give up. I guess I’m not supposed to have nice stuff.
    Click to expand...
    Or do a better job hiring people! Lol! I know, it’s a bitch!
     
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    I can sympathize, I work in the construction industry and it's a cluster fuck right now. It's next to impossible to find good help and the ones you do get are borderline retarded. Unfortunately, for me anyway that typically means paying extra and waiting for the ones that do a good job to free up or take my chances with Mr. Bargain Basement over here and try to watch him like a hawk while I'm working on a dozen other things. It's basically the construction version of the Kobayashi Maru.

    Case in point, my company hired a subcontractor installer since our crews were tied up on other jobs for the week. I talked to their lead installer and told him "I just want to make sure that you know when we have a cabinet going against a wall, we have to put in a 1" filler so there's clearance for the handle and hinges.". I got "yep, we're good, we'll do it like that". I come in the next morning to the smell of burning wood and see four rooms worth of cabinets that are slammed against the walls with no fillers. I walk into one room and three idiots are standing around a table saw just staring at it and one looks at me and says "the blade was on backwards, we sent a guy out to get the tool to switch it around." I just turned and walked out to have a conversation with their boss.
     
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    Trigger Monkey said:
    I can sympathize, I work in the construction industry and it's a cluster fuck right now. It's next to impossible to find good help and the ones you do get are borderline retarded. Unfortunately, for me anyway that typically means paying extra and waiting for the ones that do a good job to free up or take my chances with Mr. Bargain Basement over here and try to watch him like a hawk while I'm working on a dozen other things. It's basically the construction version of the Kobayashi Maru.

    Case in point, my company hired a subcontractor installer since our crews were tied up on other jobs for the week. I talked to their lead installer and told him "I just want to make sure that you know when we have a cabinet going against a wall, we have to put in a 1" filler so there's clearance for the handle and hinges.". I got "yep, we're good, we'll do it like that". I come in the next morning to the smell of burning wood and see four rooms worth of cabinets that are slammed against the walls with no fillers. I walk into one room and three idiots are standing around a table saw just staring at it and one looks at me and says "the blade was on backwards, we sent a guy out to get the tool to switch it around." I just turned and walked out to have a conversation with their boss.
    Click to expand...
    Help a brother out, where are you finding the borderline retarded ones?
     
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    I run subs all the time. Ya gotta baby sit those tards. You cannot stress it enough to the customer that i have to talk to them every day and usually more than that, just to make sure they show up!
     
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    Currently it is a shit show. I’m lucky and have had my trades for a good while. I have just had to open the wallet more than one should to keep them happy and on jobs.
     
    Finding good help isn't a new problem. I got out of the GC business twenty years ago. We were a small outfit and did the carpentry work ourselves. Lots of guys would show up at the job site looking for work. Most that showed up with their tools got put to work, but usually only lasted until they got their first paycheck - after that we never saw them again.

    The ones that showed up looking for work without their tools - We told them to come back the next day with their tools and we'd put them to work. NONE ever came back. Not sure why they stopped in the first place?!?

    I thought for a while it was me (or my partner!) but we did have two guys that stuck with us for years. Found both of them through existing friends and family - not just walk-ons.
     
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    Trigger Monkey said:
    I can sympathize, I work in the construction industry and it's a cluster fuck right now. It's next to impossible to find good help and the ones you do get are borderline retarded. Unfortunately, for me anyway that typically means paying extra and waiting for the ones that do a good job to free up or take my chances with Mr. Bargain Basement over here and try to watch him like a hawk while I'm working on a dozen other things. It's basically the construction version of the Kobayashi Maru.

    Case in point, my company hired a subcontractor installer since our crews were tied up on other jobs for the week. I talked to their lead installer and told him "I just want to make sure that you know when we have a cabinet going against a wall, we have to put in a 1" filler so there's clearance for the handle and hinges.". I got "yep, we're good, we'll do it like that". I come in the next morning to the smell of burning wood and see four rooms worth of cabinets that are slammed against the walls with no fillers. I walk into one room and three idiots are standing around a table saw just staring at it and one looks at me and says "the blade was on backwards, we sent a guy out to get the tool to switch it around." I just turned and walked out to have a conversation with their boss.
    Click to expand...
    Dude I’m a super for commercial construction and I’ve had to emotionally divorce myself from work to not lose my fucking mind from pure frustration
     
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    Construction manager. Door company delivery driver calls to tell me he has a front door for the house.......but there's no house there yet.....just a basement.
    Asks what he should do. I tell him to back up the truck and push it off the into the open basement.

    That stretch of silence told me he was considering it. I had to make sure I told him to return it to the warehouse until I had a house built we could nail it into.
     
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    Carlos Danger said:
    Construction manager. Door company delivery driver calls to tell me he has a front door for the house.......but there's no house there yet.....just a basement.
    Asks what he should do. I tell him to back up the truck and push it off the into the open basement.

    That stretch of silence told me he was considering it. I had to make sure I told him to return it to the warehouse until I had a house built we could nail it into.
    Click to expand...
    Well, we know it should have never even been a consideration, but in the dudes defense I can guarantee you he has either done it before or been told to do it by another contractor or his boss or both. Or, I suppose he could just be a moron but I doubt it.
     
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    I was doing a huge commercial metal lathe job for a stucco guy, to fill in between stone jobs. I get the the top of the building and there is a round 4 foot diameter vent in the gable end. I reach over to grab it and it is loose as can be, no way its going to be water proof, so I call the foreman up on the scaffold and show him. He says "Looks good from my house, stick it.". I try to be conscientious and do jobs the way I'd want them done for me so I called the Site supervisor up there and show him, explain its got to leak. He asks me what the foreman said. I told him so he says, "Then stick it." I needed the job so....I stuck it.

    What the fuck can you do?

    As mentioned above, dont get me started on architects. Their like engineers who think their artists.
     
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    Forrest84 said:
    Dude I’m a super for commercial construction and I’ve had to emotionally divorce myself from work to not lose my fucking mind from pure frustration
    Click to expand...
    I'm working on that part and I'm getting there, I'm starting to get really jaded by all the dumb shit I encounter.

    Like when a smooth brain asks me for the 6th time if I've released our cabinets and countertops for production and I have to remind him that no I haven't because the smooth brain collective hasn't picked a color yet. It's a little hard to build cabinets when you don't know what fuckin' color it's supposed to be.
     
    Trigger Monkey said:
    I can sympathize, I work in the construction industry and it's a cluster fuck right now. It's next to impossible to find good help and the ones you do get are borderline retarded. Unfortunately, for me anyway that typically means paying extra and waiting for the ones that do a good job to free up or take my chances with Mr. Bargain Basement over here and try to watch him like a hawk while I'm working on a dozen other things. It's basically the construction version of the Kobayashi Maru.

    Case in point, my company hired a subcontractor installer since our crews were tied up on other jobs for the week. I talked to their lead installer and told him "I just want to make sure that you know when we have a cabinet going against a wall, we have to put in a 1" filler so there's clearance for the handle and hinges.". I got "yep, we're good, we'll do it like that". I come in the next morning to the smell of burning wood and see four rooms worth of cabinets that are slammed against the walls with no fillers. I walk into one room and three idiots are standing around a table saw just staring at it and one looks at me and says "the blade was on backwards, we sent a guy out to get the tool to switch it around." I just turned and walked out to have a conversation with their boss.
    Click to expand...

    23 years in public education, and I see each crop of students getting “dumber” each year. Very noticeable in the last decade.

    POS parents don’t understand that when a person reproduces the child comes first and their life is now somewhere down the list.

    They don’t have the sense to put down their device and just read to the child - from birth.

    Add in what popular social media does to kids and the fact that parents put a phone or tablet in their hands to pacify them = a downward spiral that is a cancer in the human race.

    The situation society is in is only going to get worse.
     
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    SilentStalkr said:
    Ok, so I got my patio built about 2 months ago, driveways cleaned but the dude had the pressure way too high and basically pressure washed the top coat off. I’ve done it myself several times and never had this issue. Ok fine it is what it is, no way to fix it really. Two weeks later grass guy comes and gets ironite all over the clean drive in the rain so guess what that lead to? Rust spots everywhere on the drive I just cleaned. Then hired a guy to clean and restain my deck. Said hey don’t pressure wash the patio cause it’s new and I don’t need you blowing all the kinetic sand out! What do they do? They pressure wash the patio too harsh and blow the sand out. So that dude now has to come back. And to add insult to injury thr dude got oil all over my driveway as well. WTF? So I give up. I guess I’m not supposed to have nice stuff.
    Click to expand...
    No barriers to entry. Fill out the first form in the link below and pay your $125. Now you’re a contractor in my state. You don’t even have to organize as an llc, but it allows you to to basically screw over people at will since it costs a small fortune to sue a business with liability protection and you’ll probably never collect if you win anyway.

    Silentstalkr Handyman Services, LLC
     
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    I’m a builder and trust me I get it, we can’t find any help. i did a large remodel last year I had my painter of 25 years quit after starting the job, hired another he committed suicide, hired two additional paint contractors and still me and my crew had to do a large amount of the painting to get the job done.

    Shit is not normal, this covid shit is making people nuts. Recently my lead guy of 15 years packed up in June and moved out of state didn’t say a word to me our his family. And we were on good terms. It’s nuts who does that? I’m still in awe.

    All I can tell you is ask for references, depending on what they do if there carpenters call the local lumberyard and ask if they now them if there shit they’ll tell you, shitty contractors make those of us who honestly do are best look like bad. It‘s a problem, lucky for me I have been around for over 30 years and all my work is referral. Good luck to you!
     
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    hlee said:
    It is just as frustrating from the customer side, watching a new home being built, wondering who hired the monkeys, and why they keep giving them new footballs.
    Click to expand...
    Because when you only have monkeys to do the work customers still want their home built.
     
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    Devildog said:
    I’m a builder and trust me I get it, we can’t find any help. i did a large remodel last year I had my painter of 25 years quit after starting the job, hired another he committed suicide, hired two additional paint contractors and still me and my crew had to do a large amount of the painting to get the job done.
    Click to expand...
    I hired a well known local painter a while ago. I came in to check on their work after a few hours and found this all over the walls. They couldn't figure out what the problem was.

    20180614_175441.jpg
     
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    I am cheap. I always do the math. I make X wage-rate dollars an hour at work. If I can complete a job which takes Y hours, and my wage-rate times hours is less than the contractor quote... I do it my frigging self. Why the @#$ would I pay a plumber $100 for a job I can do myself in 30 minutes?

    I cannot tolerate paying some unmotivated Gomer MORE per hour than what I make at work for Professional grade labor.

    The only upside/downside is that I have learned every mistake which was made when they constructed my house. I now know how much the door/window frames are out of plumb, the schizophrenic design of the plumbing, the crazy stuff done on the Air Conditioning install, the bad daisy-chain layout on the GFI circuit layout, etc. No workman has been inside my home for over a decade, and my life is better for it. It does not hurt that the money I earn, stays in my bank account.

    I feel the same way about mechanical work on cars too. I will only take a car in to do work which requires a 20,000 dollar tool (like a four wheel alignment on a track car). I keep my cars running. My newest car is from 2005. My daily driver is 30 years old.

    A lot of us older guys had to teach ourselves how to do everything around the home. We were once young, and had no money to pay someone else to do the work. We learned it before there was such a thing as "Google". As we progressed in life, and made more money..... we still did it ourselves. It was obvious that nobody else would sweat the fine details on our house, as us. Knowledge on how to do things, is money in the bank.
     
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    I'm a a (pool) contractor and this last project was a nightmare. I had a Karen customer, that really was her name, talking to me and my Gunite crew like they were dirt after I knocked half off the project and her cuck husband that would steal my tools.
    Finding labor was impossible and when I did they worked so slow and fucked up so much it was easier to fire them and do it myself.

    Then, I had an excavator start another pool excavation on another job and took topo maps and drawings out there and told them explicitly not to put excavated material below a certain elevation because the city will red flag the project. What did the fuckers do? The they shoved the bulk of the material down below that elevation and when I told them to bring it back up they instead shoved it over on the neighbors property. Heads are fixing to roll for that.
     
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    What I'm seeing a lot of, is long waits, retard help that is below the bottom of the barrel, and people willing to put up with it all. They'll do anything just to get the job done and not do it themselves. Right now, friends are waiting for over a year to get a new patio pour. When you ask them about doing it themselves..............deer in the headlights.

    There are some things that you just can't do yourself for various reasons that are valid, but I found that if I can do the job, I'm a lot better off.

    Crossing my fingers on a gas line install, as it is one job I don't feel I can do without blowing up the house. Insurance won't cover for my mistake, but the company I hired (long wait time) is insured and bonded.

    Getting things done today is a real challenge with worker shortages and I don't see it getting much better in the future.

    As an aside, if you are needing a major appliance replaced, better get to it. Long waits (over a year for some items). Parts replacement is a nightmare................Welcome to the utopia.
     
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    rady said:
    As an aside, if you are needing a major appliance replaced, better get to it. Long waits (over a year for some items). Parts replacement is a nightmare................Welcome to the utopia.
    Click to expand...
    Weird. The compressor went out in our refrigerator about a month ago. The repair man was out there, with a compressor, in just a couple of days.
     
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    rady said:
    What I'm seeing a lot of, is long waits, retard help that is below the bottom of the barrel, and people willing to put up with it all. They'll do anything just to get the job done and not do it themselves. Right now, friends are waiting for over a year to get a new patio pour. When you ask them about doing it themselves..............deer in the headlights.

    There are some things that you just can't do yourself for various reasons that are valid, but I found that if I can do the job, I'm a lot better off.

    Crossing my fingers on a gas line install, as it is one job I don't feel I can do without blowing up the house. Insurance won't cover for my mistake, but the company I hired (long wait time) is insured and bonded.

    Getting things done today is a real challenge with worker shortages and I don't see it getting much better in the future.

    As an aside, if you are needing a major appliance replaced, better get to it. Long waits (over a year for some items). Parts replacement is a nightmare................Welcome to the utopia.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah I'm looking forward to doing some concrete pours and laying tile, painting, minor electrical work when I get my place next month. It's gonna be a shit show, but fun.
     
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    Had a guy working for me. He liked to paint, i despise painting so I let him at it. Customer just had their kitchen remodeled and explicitly said numerous times to not use the kitchen faucet or anything else, understandable. This was in email and verbal, to which he was present for.

    job gets done and i was out of town when he finished so i could not walk it. She finds the tiniest bit of paint on the underside of her new faucet and flips out. It wiped right off but that wasn’t the point. He has been doing this line of work for 20+ years and i gave him a lot of work. Problem is when someone tells him NOT to do something, he will go behind their back to do it out of spite. Just a real cunt. Now he is not only looking for a new job but a new place to live. I put up with too much for too long and he didn’t get it. See ya cunt!
     
    Devildog said:
    Painters and drywallers are the worst. Work release and ankle bracelets from the local jail are common with these guys. Not to mention that a large number of them are drunks and druggies
    Click to expand...
    i have had the best luck with these two. Now granite installers? Please….
     
    SilentStalkr said:
    This is not always the case. I’ve seen expensive contractors do shitty work. I’ve seen Bolivians do fantastic work at 1/3 the price any American will do.
    Click to expand...
    Sure there's exceptions, but you're usually safer off with a guy who charges $40/hour vs minimum wage. And if not, then someone else besides the contractor is to blame.
     
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    Trigger Monkey said:
    I can sympathize, I work in the construction industry and it's a cluster fuck right now. It's next to impossible to find good help and the ones you do get are borderline retarded. Unfortunately, for me anyway that typically means paying extra and waiting for the ones that do a good job to free up or take my chances with Mr. Bargain Basement over here and try to watch him like a hawk while I'm working on a dozen other things. It's basically the construction version of the Kobayashi Maru.

    Case in point, my company hired a subcontractor installer since our crews were tied up on other jobs for the week. I talked to their lead installer and told him "I just want to make sure that you know when we have a cabinet going against a wall, we have to put in a 1" filler so there's clearance for the handle and hinges.". I got "yep, we're good, we'll do it like that". I come in the next morning to the smell of burning wood and see four rooms worth of cabinets that are slammed against the walls with no fillers. I walk into one room and three idiots are standing around a table saw just staring at it and one looks at me and says "the blade was on backwards, we sent a guy out to get the tool to switch it around." I just turned and walked out to have a conversation with their boss.
    Click to expand...
    I wish I could find borderline retarded help… Im a contractor and I turn down work because I can’t hire anybody that I trust to do the job properly. Even if I had 2 borderline tards I could split from my current guy and give one tard to each of us so we don’t have to work solo and there’s somebody I can trust on each site, myself and the guy I work with now, which is my father.
     
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    TxWelder35 said:
    If I charged $40/hr I’d be out of business before the end of the month
    Click to expand...
    I was using it as an example 😂, you get what you pay for. If you pay peanuts, don't be surprised if you get monkeys.

    It really comes down to how much they actually give a damn about their craftsmanship. I'm fortunate I get to build mostly high end commercial stuff or government buildings, where they don't mind paying the premium for good work.
     
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    SilentStalkr said:
    How much you charge?
    Click to expand...
    I typically don’t like billing hourly, I bid by the job. Only jobs I bid hourly are when it’s impossible to know how long something will take because it’s like opening up a can of worms because you can’t see everything that needs fixed from the surface.

    if I’m forced to work hourly, which is rare, it’s $150/hr. I also have minimums, I do zero jobs for $150.
     
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    SD carpenter said:
    I was using it as an example 😂, you get what you pay for. If you pay peanuts, don't be surprised if you get monkeys.

    It really comes down to how much they actually give a damn about their craftsmanship. I'm fortunate I get to build mostly high end commercial stuff or government buildings, where they don't mind paying the premium for good work.
    Click to expand...
    To be honest, with Biden bribing people to stay at home and not work, further destroying Trump's booming Capitalist economy, nobody works for peanuts anymore. Why should they when they can make more sitting at home on their asses?

    People are so hard up for labor now, you pay top dollar for whatever is willing to show up. It may be a skilled tradesman, it may be some 'tard that screws up so bad you have to redo their mess and do it yourself.
     
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