I do skilled labor, general contracting, a little bit of everything when it comes to repairing and remodeling houses. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so long that around the time Covid hit I was able to start working for myself and doing better than I’d ever done financially.
Last September I got into a bad wreck, not only putting me out of commission for months (I hurt my shoulder, pretty debilitating injury for this type of work) but also resulting in getting the majority of my tools stolen, thousands of dollars and years worth of investment. I worked with a friend helping with his business for a bit just to make ends meet, but needed to get back out into the field to make more money; with a 5 year old starting kindergarten this year and a wife who is constantly stressed from working and bringing in most of our income, it was important for me to try and relieve some of that financial stress.
I started looking for something I could do with the few tools I had left, and found a job doing siding pretty quickly. Not only was the pay mediocre, but being up on ladders in the Alabama heat this summer was pretty brutal, so I was constantly keeping an eye out for something better. A couple weeks ago I felt like I cashed in all my luck, I just so happened to spot a listing for a repair and restoration company that had been posted just a few hours before. After I called the owner it seemed like a good fit – I had the skills they needed, it paid well, I could pass a drug test and background check which is exceedingly rare in this industry – and most importantly, he said they’d buy my tools and let me pay them back over time.
It seemed perfect. I rounded the week out with the siding crew because I really liked those guys and didn’t want to leave em’ hanging, and started the new job last Monday. Everything was pretty straightforward, but I wasn’t having many opportunities to display my skill set, brought onto most jobs just as a “helper” of sorts, someone there to do the basic work. I didn’t necessarily mind this as I knew that eventually my work and competence would speak for itself with the guys on the crew, which it did as pretty quickly the project leads started having me help with things that were out of the scope of the other “helpers”.
It didn’t take long to start noticing some oddities within the business though. As someone who grew accustomed to working for myself, I had seen the full scope of what’s required to get the job done – the estimate, getting materials, doing the job, and all the customer service along the way.
This business had estimators, material “specialists”, and the workers, which isn’t unusual, except for the major lack of communication and understanding between the jobs. The estimators had no contact with the builders, the material specialists had little to no idea about the materials they were handling, relying simply on a list given to them after going through two other channels. What baffled me the most on day one, was finding out that the builders were strictly prohibited from communicating with the owners about the job. This really stuck out to me, and their reasoning was sound; that they didn’t want any miscommunication. But if your builders don’t know enough about the job to confidently discuss it with the client, how efficient can you really be? Everyone simply relied on the owner assigning them a task at the beginning of each day, and all that was in that task was all they knew until the next day.
Then I started hearing the stories. The boss had a short fuse, little man complex, he was a businessman disguised as a builder, etc. I found out quickly that the company had a very high turnover rate because the boss would show up to the job site and fire people on the spot frequently. One guy was fired for using the customers bathroom, even though the customer offered for them to use it as there was no porta John on site and the closest gas station was 20 minutes away. Someone was fired for using an impact drill instead of a drywall drill (the impact drill is all that would fit into the confined space). Someone was fired because, while finishing drywall, they skimmed over a small hole for the customer after being asked because they had extra drywall mud that they were about to pour out. Apparently the line the boss gave for this one was “I’m the one paying you, not them!”
More stories came in over the first week, stories of unrealistic expectations and deadlines, stories of him blowing up on someone one day and acting like it didn’t happen the next morning, etc. It became clear that everyone walked a tight rope around the boss, and acted completely different when he was nearby, and he expected everyone to grovel and not challenge any of his unrealistic expectations if they expected to keep their job unlike any of their prior coworkers. This all obviously led to a not very efficient or constructive work environment, but I still imagined that with my skills and work ethic I’d be able to manage it all well enough. Boy was I wrong…
I went the entire first week without meeting the boss face to face. I got my assignment this morning and headed to the job site – to tear down and replace some fascia and soffit. A couple hours into the morning, we had started framing out studs for the new fascia, and I see the boss pull up as I’m finishing nailing a couple studs up. I finish what I’m doing, gather my tools from the section of roof I’m on, and start heading down the ladder.
As I make my second step down, the ladder slides a bit and becomes uneven. So I carefully and slowly descend the rest of the way, before asking the project lead which side of the house he wants to start hanging the soffit from. As I’m asking this, the boss behind me asks my name, and after I tell him, he says “I can’t use ya, you’re fired.” I just kind of look at him, confused, as he elaborates. “I get up here and you’re climbing down this ladder slow as hell, then just standing around instead of getting back up there! I can’t use you, you’re lazy! I ain’t paying you to move like that and stand around here. I can pay you $10 an hour for that work, you wanna work for $10 an hour?” I had pretty much zoned out and started taking off my work belt the moment he called me lazy, this man who knows nothing about me and hasn’t seen any of my work. I simply say “yes sir” gather my things and walk away. Within that few minutes (4 mins max) he got on his phone and disabled my access to the time keeping app, so I couldn’t even clock out or check what hours I should be expecting on my last check.
So here I am, sitting at home mid day on a Monday wondering how I’m gonna find something else to provide for my family, and wondering how it is that such egotistical, inefficient and clearly unprofessional people manage to find themselves managing businesses and reaping all the benefits of the people who are actually out there doing the work and putting in the time. What a day.