Timed Small Works And The Crimping Company

[sirsparkabit]

Wen't to help out a small independent female sparky company today.................

I was greeted at 7.45 by the owner and her list of TIMED Jobs for the day (should of got back in the motor then and there) :facepalm:

No time inbetween jobs listed and the first one was at 8.am although stock and sorting out onto the van was still happening at that time and later.

I did my best at jobs 1,2,3 and job 2 was timed at an hour to remove a socket from a chimmney brest and re- site at skirting board level to negate the need for filling ?? (no filler in this girls van) carpet and underlay to peel back two floorboards to cut out and de-nail thee joists and trimmers too, drill then chase out socket, cut and join cable refit socket and clean up then off to fit 5ft florrie and another light,at this point i get a phone call " I am waiting for you at another job to first fix a kitchen" 14 miles away i answer "i WILL BE FIFTEEN MINUTES PLUS JOURNEY TIME".

Arrive at kitchen job am told crimp this crimp that even wanted the old cooker cable crimped to a new length and dropped behind cuboards (not how i work although i think the regs allow it, 

As far as i could make out  all these crimped joints would be hidden behind cuboards or dare i even think it behind tiles!!

I hope they never have a fault with these connections or the poor spark will never find them.

i DID NOT DO THESE CONNECTIONS !!

However when she started talking about the next job she wanted me to go too i just saw red  X(

I packed up my tools and told her she could have the previous jobs on me!

I have never in 53 years been treated like a timed slave and i do not intend to start now.

Does anyone know what happened to humanity or do people think if they pay you they own you.

SSAB. ray

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Was she recommended ?

 

[sirsparkabit]

Never met her till today never want to again,spoke down to me like a two old X(

 

[Evans Electric]

Good grief !!!   Does she do any of the jobs herself or sub it all out ?

I encountered a company once that appeared to be a small electrical contractor but was ,in reality , one man , non electrical ,  who would quote & win jobs  then phone round a list of subbies in a panic to get bodies onto jobs,  anyone would do .  Then you heard the usual tales of woe , work not finished, blokes not paid , customers not happy .

He left me a message once, saying   could we help them out by finishing a job .   Thinking it was local , someone taken ill or something , I phoned him .

"  I need you to be in Preston at 8.00 tomorrow"........ then over to some other far flung northern town .........waffle...waffle...yada yada yada ....  

I quietly replaced the phone .

 

[Jono Pashley]

Worked for a similar bunch you would leave a job in bristol and start heading to cardiff 5 minutes after you left you would get a phone call asking if your there yet...no sorry the warp drive on the berlingo isnt working today!

 

[kerching]

Was she recommended ?

No.....just certifiable!

how long will a job take?........i will tell you when i have finished!

 

[Sidewinder]

Come over here, let me tell you a story! ...

I was working late one night on a machine breakdown at a car factory, the machine ground the oil seal & bearing journals for the axle banjo for a very successful commercial vehicle, a van, some of you may even have one.

I know Canoe does not, I do, but not with this axle.

My employer was the machine builder, it was out of warranty, so this was a paying job.

The clients guys had fitted 2 sets of infeed ballscrew bearings in as many weeks @ circa £6k per set + a 10-12 hour change time to one of the wheel feed axes ballscrews.

The plant whilst only supplying within the company, but another plant, in the UK, quite a few miles away, was on a penalty clause in 6 figures per hour if they stopped the customer plant from building vans.

They were low on stock due to the previous downtimes.

I was asked to change the bearings.

No problem, I'll work all night, after working all day!

Anyway, come 10pm the night shift manager comes in, his nickname was Fruity, because he was as nutty as a fruit loop.

As this is a line stopper, he is straight down to me.

"have you finished yet?", "how long will it take" "do you need to do this, that & the other", so I say look Alan the job will get done a F*** of a lot quicker if you stop interfering, so why don't you F*** off & do something useful!

At this all around went silent, no one dared talk to Fruity like that, at this point I cared little, I knew my boss would stand by me.

So, he says, "like what?", I replied, I'll have a number 52 (or what ever a white coffee with no sugar was from the vending machine).

So he went and got me coffee, we had, had, previous similar exchanges, but did have a mutual professional respect for each other.

He brought it back and said what now, how long, I said, just keep fetching the coffee & I'll tell you when its done!

OK he says, and drags over 2 fitters & a spark, and says, stay with him, get him anything he needs, here is my vending card!

Then he left me alone!

We got the machine running by around 13:00 the following day, & it ran for another 5 years until it was decommissioned.

Plus we all got paid!

The moral of this tale, don't always be pressurised into working to the clients time scale.

 

[Manator]

Scoobed because I can imagine you doing this and it made me chuckle

 

[Robin Spark]

Doesnt this also remind you of customers for whom you have done quotes for,..................

You hear nothing for ages,.........

...........

.

Then ring goes the telephone " oh hello mr spanky can you come and do that job tomorrow as we are having new carpets fitted in 2 days!"

 

[Evans Electric]

Doesnt this also remind you of customers for whom you have done quotes for,..................

You hear nothing for ages,.........

...........

.

Then ring goes the telephone " oh hello mr spanky can you come and do that job tomorrow as we are having new carpets fitted in 2 days!"

Slight concern with this part of the post .... and the N is nowhere near the R ....what sort of services are being offered here?

 

[batty]

Doesnt this also remind you of customers for whom you have done quotes for,..................

You hear nothing for ages,.........

...........

.

Then ring goes the telephone " oh hello mr spanky can you come and do that job tomorrow as we are having new carpets fitted in 2 days!"

If anybody called me spanky I would be worried.

 

[sirsparkabit]

Cheers Guys do not know why i said i would work for the crimping queen but..................................................................................................

NEVER AGAIN :slap

 

[kerching]

Ah yes, Mr Spanky.....Max Moseley i believe

 

[Andy™]

Doesnt this also remind you of customers for whom you have done quotes for,..................

You hear nothing for ages,.........

...........

.

Then ring goes the telephone " oh hello mr spanky can you come and do that job tomorrow as we are

having new carpets fitted in 2 days!"

get it all the time. always getting calls of 'can you do it tomorrow'. fair enough if its an emergeny job, but not becuase they havent planned it

and then you get others who understand there is a queue. busy with a lighting re-wire now. called to fault find a while back. all class I fittings, old rubber cable, no earth. fault on the live somewhere, all in conduit with no access to most connections. needs re-wired. no complaints about the 2 week wait til i had time to get it done

 

[Robin Spark]

Mr sparky likes to think he could turn into Mr spanky and give some of the customers a little slap when they are being very inconsiderate and demanding!

However,  i knew a certain someone on here would see the deliberate mistake! :slap

 

[NozSpark]

Yeh, right,,,, you just forgot which forum you were on :slap

 

[binky]

did you check if the lady concerned is even scam registered? Wouldn't have let her off jobs done - time is money and all that :yellow card

 

[northernspark]

Had the misfortune of working for places with similar working practices, never again I go to work to earn a comfortable living not work myself into an early grave for somebody else's benefit, end of the day it's like sidewinder said don't let them pressurise you into their timescales/rough working practices if they are so desperate for it to be done that quick let them get on the tools 

I had a former boss try similar on kitchen jobs with crimping and lashing wires in any old way cause "there's not enough money in this job to do it right" I slid my tools over to him and told him to fill his boots and I went for a wander down the road for a bacon sarnie 

And a contracts manager who expected at least 8 flats tested a day on a large new build we were doing because that's how many he could do ( Certs written out in the office off the not quite right drawings and miles off the truth DB schedules then off to site for a Ze and Zs where he thought the EOL,s were then make every other result up, he was the QS for this NICCY AC aswell not bad for a clown with an attitude problem no experience and a short course to his name) he was told to stick his megger where the sun don't shine, on another job he told me I was too neat and as a result wasn't making enough money for the company (I was still 1st fixing quicker than the other spark who had a mate and they were lashing everything in) I got "let go" a few days after telling him what I really thought of him

Have to agree with Binky aswell although I'd of hit her with a bill for the full day, travel and a % on top for inconvenience tax for the misfortune of having to work for her

Just another shining example of how brilliant domestic sparks are these days 

 

[Evans Electric]

Had the misfortune of working for places with similar working practices, never again I go to work to earn a comfortable living not work myself into an early grave for somebody else's benefit, end of the day it's like sidewinder said don't let them pressurise you into their timescales/rough working practices if they are so desperate for it to be done that quick let them get on the tools 

I had a former boss try similar on kitchen jobs with crimping and lashing wires in any old way cause "there's not enough money in this job to do it right" I slid my tools over to him and told him to fill his boots and I went for a wander down the road for a bacon sarnie 

And a contracts manager who expected at least 8 flats tested a day on a large new build we were doing because that's how many he could do ( Certs written out in the office off the not quite right drawings and miles off the truth DB schedules then off to site for a Ze and Zs where he thought the EOL,s were then make every other result up, he was the QS for this NICCY AC aswell not bad for a clown with an attitude problem no experience and a short course to his name) he was told to stick his megger where the sun don't shine, on another job he told me I was too neat and as a result wasn't making enough money for the company (I was still 1st fixing quicker than the other spark who had a mate and they were lashing everything in) I got "let go" a few days after telling him what I really thought of him

Have to agree with Binky aswell although I'd of hit her with a bill for the full day, travel and a % on top for inconvenience tax for the misfortune of having to work for her

Just another shining example of how brilliant domestic sparks are these days 

Nice one Northern ,   I've come across them too. 

Many , many years ago  , ( am I starting too many posts off with this?)   I graduated on to" the tools "  as they called it .   The firm I was with carried a huge number of apprentices and many of us moved on  after a year or so.  

A mate went to a well known firm in this area that did all the big housing jobs and high rise flats for the council ,  blue eyed boys doing all the price work on the new builds , my mate was on  fault finding .     " Fault finding "!!! Says I .      Yes none of the houses could be handed over without fault finding , two ways not working ,  cables nailed , open rings , heating cables missing ,  you name it . 

Thing was , a Sparks back then , took home about £25  / 40 hour week  ( Sounds daft but quite good money then)  as my mate did. 

The speed wonder blue eyed boys were 1st fixing a house /day  @ £10.00    and working 7 days per week so £70 ./ week   .  Back then a fortune !!  All driving round in brand new cars , with someone following you round , putting all your jobs right ,  Site foreman cracking the whip all day .

 

[Sharpend]

The moral of the story, nothing's changed in all those years!