Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

11GTCS said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Sucks to have to say it but the having the wisdom to say it speaks volumes from where I sit. 

Turning your business plan inside out to accommodate someone else's problem could just as easily turn into a disaster for your business.  Besides, I'll bet you get a call in a few months to fix all the screw ups from whoever they find and you'll make more money fixing the mistakes than if you'd done the job in the first place.

Also, how many places have the manpower to install? You might get some contractor work in.

11GTCS said:

In reply to Toyman! :

  Besides, I'll bet you get a call in a few months to fix all the screw ups from whoever they find and you'll make more money fixing the mistakes than if you'd done the job in the first place.

This happens frequently. Probably 25% of my business is coming in behind contractors and fixing their screw-ups. 

Toyman! said:

11GTCS said:

In reply to Toyman! :

  Besides, I'll bet you get a call in a few months to fix all the screw ups from whoever they find and you'll make more money fixing the mistakes than if you'd done the job in the first place.

This happens frequently. Probably 25% of my business is coming in behind contractors and fixing their screw-ups. 

 

Same here, sometimes even from a person I gave a bid to, and they went with the cheaper bid. You know why I always say the cheay bid is the most expensive? That's why.

I especially love the speech in various forms that's like " can you go me a solid? I just spent 5k on this and it won't work?" Now it's gonna cost the 9k I quoted plus an indeterminate amount that it requires me to fix it jackhammer out the stupid 

In reply to Duke :

This is a school renovation so delivery is by the end of the school year. Call it 3-4 months. The installation is over the summer break, call it 40 business days.

I don't have the people to put more than 2 men on it so it would take me 50-60 days assuming everything went smoothly, which it rarely does. The only way I could make the job happen would be to work a crew 7 days a week and I'm not going to do that. To be perfectly honest I can't spare 2 people for that long without my other business suffering. I am loathe to piss off my steady customers to attract new ones. Particularly for a bid job with small margins.  

In a couple of more years I'd like to start chasing those jobs, but not yet. 

My rant is this:

I'm a small company, one of my guys got pretty badly hurt and I'm down manpower. When I say that I cannot do your job in the time frame you want and even if I wanted to I don't usually do or want the job you are offering, you need to listen to me.

When I say call other people, listen to me. I understand no one really does house moving here or resets a broken modular home but the fact that I said no means actually.....no. Stop calling me and saying you are frustrated by no one calling you

mad_machine said:

11GTCS said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Sucks to have to say it but the having the wisdom to say it speaks volumes from where I sit. 

Turning your business plan inside out to accommodate someone else's problem could just as easily turn into a disaster for your business.  Besides, I'll bet you get a call in a few months to fix all the screw ups from whoever they find and you'll make more money fixing the mistakes than if you'd done the job in the first place.

Also, how many places have the manpower to install? You might get some contractor work in.

Honestly none. So what happens is the general contractor hires laborers to do the installation and then pays someone like me to come in and fix all the mistakes and adjust everything.

I don't mind that but they always wait until the last minute to call me. I end up sending the entire company down there to work like fiends for 4 days so they can pass an inspection. We work all weekend and late nights to pull their asses out of the crack. There is no estimate. It's by the hour and our overtime rate is $210/hr per person. So you can imagine what that invoice looks like.

It would be much easier to plan this on the front end. Get your laborers to hang everything and mount the hardware. Then schedule a couple of weeks for me to come in and to the final adjustments. Unfortunately, they are never willing to do that. 

11GTCS said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Sucks to have to say it but the having the wisdom to say it speaks volumes from where I sit. 

Turning your business plan inside out to accommodate someone else's problem could just as easily turn into a disaster for your business.  Besides, I'll bet you get a call in a few months to fix all the screw ups from whoever they find and you'll make more money fixing the mistakes than if you'd done the job in the first place.

Our business failed in 2006 because we never said no, kept trying to be the bank for bigger and bigger jobs until the float sank when the economy started diving. Know when to say no.

Edit: I should say that I've been at this company as an employee for 17 years now and I see the same thing happening all around me. This is a big company with 40,000 employees and we don't say no to a customer even when we should.

Toyman! said:

In reply to Duke :

This is a school renovation so delivery is by the end of the school year. Call it 3-4 months. The installation is over the summer break, call it 40 business days.

I don't have the people to put more than 2 men on it so it would take me 50-60 days assuming everything went smoothly, which it rarely does. The only way I could make the job happen would be to work a crew 7 days a week and I'm not going to do that. To be perfectly honest I can't spare 2 people for that long without my other business suffering. I am loathe to piss off my steady customers to attract new ones. Particularly for a bid job with small margins.  

In a couple of more years I'd like to start chasing those jobs, but not yet. 

 

Really, in my experience, chasing those jobs ends in disaster. 

Better to stay small and always busy. Having a bunch of manpower means a hiccup can make things go upside down rather fast

In reply to Antihero :

There is something to be said for being a small specialty contractor.

By the same token, I wouldn't mind having some larger projects to make sure everyone stays employed. Probably not school size because the big national companies bid them down to pennies in the margin. I'm thinking more like design-build projects with 10-25 doors and frames. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to Duke :

This is a school renovation so delivery is by the end of the school year. Call it 3-4 months. The installation is over the summer break, call it 40 business days.

I don't have the people to put more than 2 men on it so it would take me 50-60 days assuming everything went smoothly, which it rarely does. The only way I could make the job happen would be to work a crew 7 days a week and I'm not going to do that. To be perfectly honest I can't spare 2 people for that long without my other business suffering. I am loathe to piss off my steady customers to attract new ones. Particularly for a bid job with small margins.  

In a couple of more years I'd like to start chasing those jobs, but not yet. 

 

I don't do RFQs for jobs like these, but I deal with RFQs for parts all the time. If I want to work with company A, and I am asking for something ridiculous, I would be delighted if they would say "Hey we can do that with exceptions x, y and z" rather than work with company B who may say they can do it, but cannot.

Would you ever redline the RFQ and say you can do it with extra XX weeks?

In reply to tuna55 :

When working for a government entity, they don't accept alterations to their timelines. Pricing isn't very important to them since the government is funding the project. Frequently there are penalties for being late. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to tuna55 :

When working for a government entity, they don't accept alterations to their timelines. Pricing isn't very important to them since the government is funding the project. Frequently there are penalties for being late. 

Yeah that's a hard pass from your side then. It it were me on the other end, and I got a phone call explaining something like that, I would change the RFQ in a heartbeat if it came from a supplier I trusted.

In reply to Toyman! :

There is definitely something to be said for picking and choosing jobs where you excel.

Just keep your eyes out for other guys that are doing great work and hire them to slowly add to your capabilities. 

And now my lansky kit seems to have grown legs and wandered off.

I don't know how to make folks accept reality. That's fine. But when it becomes them getting hostile and toxic because nobody is willing to waste the time to try and meet their unrealistic "needs" it becomes a problem. 
 

Money is tight everywhere. The money it would cost to fix these issues is not available. Instead, let go of your fantasy, and replace the ancient equipment with newer, safer, more reliable and more efficient stuff for a fraction of the cost. And stop getting hostile when I try to explain it. 

tester (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Toyman! :

There is definitely something to be said for picking and choosing jobs where you excel.

Just keep your eyes out for other guys that are doing great work and hire them to slowly add to your capabilities. 

One of the best hires that was made at my past company was the receptionist from the travel agency the local office used to use. When they brought all the travel agency duties in house - because the internet made it pointless - the manager called her up and asked for her personal cell. He didn't know where he was going to use her, but he knew that she was quick, sharp, and just generally an awesome person. About 4 years later she was the GM of a business unit doing about $45M in revenue. 

Also, now I'm bleeding because the weather is wrong. Finger split because cold and dry. Does that mean I'm old?

barefootcyborg5000 said:

Also, now I'm bleeding because the weather is wrong. Finger split because cold and dry. Does that mean I'm old?

I can help!

Super glue your finger splits. It works better than anything.

In reply to tuna55 :

That and lotion. At least once a day, but preferably when you wash your hands every time. Because of how much I ref hockey outdoors (and indoors too) I go through more lotion than a 14 year old with unrestricted internet access. 

The bleeding finger thing is so foreign to me personally, but I sure know some guys who suffer horrible.  I had a guy working for me 25 years ago who would lose about a quart of blood from the caverns in his skin if he ever went near Varsol.  I can bathe in the stuff and never have an issue.

On the other hand, cold dry weather and long johns make for some exquisite itching of my calves.  Then I can scratch til I bleed.

tuna55 said:

barefootcyborg5000 said:

Also, now I'm bleeding because the weather is wrong. Finger split because cold and dry. Does that mean I'm old?

I can help!

Super glue your finger splits. It works better than anything.

I was always told to use medical grade/New Skin because the regular stuff has formaldehyde in it. 

No idea if true though

Scotty Con Queso said:

Toyman! said:

mtn said:

In reply to z31maniac :

The ideal setup is obviously a 2-4 car garage in the back and a 2-3 car attached garage in the front, but space and money make that a pipe dream for me at the moment. 

This is my setup. Traditional 2 car attached to the house with an oversized 2 car behind the house. 

The only problem is the amount of crap you have always exceeds the amount of space you have. With 4+ bays you can collect a lot of crap. 

I only have room for 2 cars inside. Everything else sits on the driveway or behind the shop. 

My 2024 project is to get the Bentley out of my shop and into the front garage as well as get the Abomination out of the front garage and get Touareg in there instead.

Agree that this is my ideal setup. 

I feel like I need a "fake garage" that my wife and kids can absolutely trash with amazon boxes, bikes, gardening supplies, decorations, sports equipment, snow sleds, shoes, extra food, etc.  Then, I need a garage to myself.  But I can already hear my wife saying "we'll just put this in your garage" when she brings home a furniture project.  

The plan is I get to build a similarly sized but better situated garage space at the farm, the current shop space will be left standing for all things that don't necessarily have to worry about cold damp storage. Lawn care tools, gardening stuff etc.

Yeah, if I could just go ahead and stop sticking things into my fingers, that'd be great.

After dinner last night, the dinner I was making when I sliced my pinky finger open with one of our new knives, I decided to touch up the chain on my saw. The only file I had in that size *had a pointy end, that rather neatly pierced my index finger on the same hand when i slipped. That E36 M3 did not want to stop bleeding.

* File no longer has pointy end

Can I have 24 hours without some kind of interpersonal issue? Please? Pretty please?

berkeley.

mtn said:

tester (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Toyman! :

There is definitely something to be said for picking and choosing jobs where you excel.

Just keep your eyes out for other guys that are doing great work and hire them to slowly add to your capabilities. 

One of the best hires that was made at my past company was the receptionist from the travel agency the local office used to use. When they brought all the travel agency duties in house - because the internet made it pointless - the manager called her up and asked for her personal cell. He didn't know where he was going to use her, but he knew that she was quick, sharp, and just generally an awesome person. About 4 years later she was the GM of a business unit doing about $45M in revenue. 

I stole my admin from Boeing. One of my techs from BiLo and another from a Toyota dealership. I don't mind stealing good people if necessary.