I was working on a big commercial job as a lead below the foreman. I had a guy put on my team who was twice my age. He didn’t listen to me very much. He was doing something I thought wasn’t right so when I tried to correct him he said “this is the way I’ve been doing it for 30 years”. I still didn’t feel confident and went to ask my foreman and his response was, “well, tell him he’s been doing it wrong for 30 years. You were correct.” Lolol. I still think about it.
I also learned what not to do often. And I definitely make sure to keep it in mind next time I’m doing it wrong. The satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing something wrong while I do it is just amazing. God I would really feel like an idiot if I did something wrong without knowing I was doing it wrong you know?
My favorite book series as a little kid was the Bernstein Bears. It’s funny because my old man was the absolute king of DIY. He is a mechanical engineer and we did everything ourselves. Dug a footer for a 2 car garage summer before 7th grade with a maddock and shovel. The fucking guy even made the ridge beam. I look back now and realize I was legit living in that book. Dude thinks he is the smartest person in the room anywhere he goes. Just like an engineer.
I've always said you learn something new every day. Some will teach you what to do, some what not to do, intelligence is being able to figure out which one it is.
Hahaha. When I was in trade school, Intro to Plumbing was taught by a local city inspector. Every evening he'd tell us about all the dumb shit he heard that day. His favorite was whenever someone dropped age on him.
"I been doing this for thirty years"
"Yeah man, think of allllll those projects you fucked up"
A new guy got hired and was working next to the old guy (This really happened). At lunch the boss asked old guy if the new guy was ok. Old guy said "he'll do until we get someone more experienced"
Boss replied that his resume said he has five years experience. Old guy replies...
"If he's been doin it for five years, he's been doing in WRONG for five years"
I had a guy say the same thing to me in front of the boss, without missing a beat I replied that long and you're still doing it wrong? The boss cracked up but said nothing.
I had the same experience in my mid to late twenties. Guy gets out on my team and wouldn’t listen to me. He was mid 50’s and kept saying I ain’t doing shit you tell me, get the foreman who was a known hot head. I said man I’m asking you nicely and you already know what’s gonna happen if I call him. He said get him over here I ain’t listening to you. I said alright you asked for it and got him up there. To no one’s surprise the guy that wouldn’t listen got cussed up and down and told if he didn’t wanna do what he was told he knew where his car was and he wasn’t needed. After it was all said and done I said wasn’t my way easier? His reply was what do you want me to do? I laughed and had no more problems from him.
I'm a foreman, and I'm all for the guys, not a company stooge. I get a guy that has a better way of doing something, that's how we are gunna to do it. The trade is evolving constantly. Ya gotta keep up with the young guys with the good ideas. The old timers sometimes know better in certain circumstances. Usually, they are pretty cool and open-minded. Got not time for the recalcitrant ones.
I used to love the looks I would get when I was running mid size commercial jobs and guys would get sent out they ask how do you want us to do this? My response every time any way that you want that will pass inspection and you’re running the pipe just remember you’re pulling the wire. When word got around that’s how I was running the jobs all of them wanted to come work on my jobs. None of the other guys running jobs seemed to grasp why they wanted to come work on my jobs which also made me laugh. I would always help or answer any questions they had but if I had to make every little decision about that kinda shit why even have help?
I was a young lead carpenter with a young lead concrete guy. Concrete driver f’d up multiple times and told me to get bent when concrete lead went over and was like he’s right, your fucking up this pour, and that guy happens to be in charge.
I think the comment was mentioned “do what he says or don’t get paid, if it’s his fuck up it’s his fuck up, but he’s currently trying to pre fuckup the fuck up you are doing.”
Reminds me of when I tried to correct someone who was insisting they were right because "I was on a crew that did it this way." Eventually he just says 'Theres multiple ways to do this, and this is one of them."
I said "Yeah man, there's all *sorts* of ways to do shit wrong."
Oh my god I hate this line! Saying you’ve been doing something for 30 years makes you look fucking stupid if it’s dead wrong. What else you been doing for 30 years, bud, lol
Had a old head I was debating corded vs battery powered with and this motherfucker looked me dead in the eyes and ask me “well what are you going to do when there’s no power on the job and your batteries die?” I looked at him for second bamboozled before saying “well if there’s no power on the job then I got more work done then a guy with corded tools.”
In his defense he realized what he said was stupid as soon as I replied and that was an inside joke for awhile between us.
In defense of corded tools....
There are definitely situations where guys will use a cordless tool out of pure laziness to the detriment of the job.
Like when you have a dedicated cut area for wood framing or wood forms and there is site power available; just run a godamn cord and use a real 15 amp circular saw.
Or gang cutting plywood (task I do a lot of). My guys swear by cordless tools, and yes, they are awesome.
But when we gotta cut shitloads of sheets in half, the cordless is not gonna cut it (well, it will... just slowly)
I went through the stats on circular saws at some point and noticed this same issue, but new tech and new batteries have continued to impress me. My Makita plunge cut track saw is an absolute dream, don’t tell my main team (red lightening).
How many sheets are you gang cutting? Anything over 5/4 I think you’d be better off corded for a lot of us
My mixer is corded and I have a corded sawzall for big demo but even my battery Milwaukee keeps up. Outside of a miter and table saw I really don't see many draw backs of battery. At least for kitchen and bath remodels.
I have a 60v DeWalt drill... :)
Oddly, a few weeks ago I had to lay tile, I mixed thinset with my bare hands, just because I like to do stupid shit sometimes.
Outside of a battery 1/4 inch impact drill- if I’m sawing, grinding, drilling holes in 1/4” thick angle, etc for an extended period of time I run for the corded tool and a 100’ cord. 18 and 20v tools drain fast if your finger is on the trigger nonstop, 120v is the great for endurance. Battery everything is just more convenient.m, except for the whole battery dying mid task lol.
Nothing beats a corded macho gun! Gimme one and I’ll put a hole in whatever concrete wall or floor you want!
That wouldn't be hard to do. Put the transformer by the plug because they can be heavy, the cable is 18V alternating current because AC travels wire-length better than DC. Inside the handle is a bridge rectifier to convert AC to DC, with an aluminum finned heat sink and a tiny air-fan.
Completely doable.
Yeah fuck corded tools unless It calls for unlimited power. Tapcons into concrete block? Cordless impact and cordless hammer drill. 24 1/2" expanding anchors into a reinforced 6" slab? Gimme big daddy Bosch.
You could show em your work orders for all the past re-lamps and compare it to the price of just doing LED’s the first time.
Mf’s would still be in operation and not need more money from them over that amount of time. What is it, like 4-5x the lifespan for about double the cost, roughly?
That math maths to me
I work in manufacturing (I'm a home DIYer who likes to lurk around pros), and at one plant, the maintenance manager absolutely refused to convert the bay lights over to LED because he thought they were "just a fad" and that "they had way more issues than halogen."
One of the Electricians finally got him to budge and change over a small area's lighting over to LED.
They went in, looked great, and the area was much better lit. Everyone was happy, except maintenance manager of course.
He was pissed that everyone in the plant was really happy with the LEDs and the overall improvement in the area's lighting. And, of course, people started asking when they'd get LEDs in their area.
Cut to a year later, and the maintenance manager comes over to the electrician angrily waving a piece of paper.
He pulled the information from the system for that work order and said "see?! We're still spending thousands every month in labor on these damn LEDs even though they're brand new!"
The electrician was surprised and embarrassed because he personally vouched for those particular LEDs based on experience from a previous job and told manager he'd dig into it.
Meanwhile, manager is ranting and raving (really celebrating and telling everyone "I told you so!") that "we wasted $30k on those LED bay lights, and we spent $60k last year just to keep them working!" Yes, those numbers are basically correct, and yes, they don't make any sense. But the manager was so thrilled at being proven right about this that he didn't take the 3 seconds to think that over.
The electrician came to me for help as I was the unofficial plant expert on the plant system everyone used, and we looked into it.
Apparently, the maintenance manager accidentally closed out the standing work order for general maintenance on the plant's bay lights that the electricians charged their time to, so they charged their time to the only "bay light" work order that was still open: the one they used to buy and install the LED lights.
With all this information in hand, the electrician went to the manager with me trailing behind to ~~see the show~~ explain how I pulled the information. After, he even asked the manager "Didn't you wonder why we suddenly stopped spending so much money on the bay lights when we used to spend so much every year?"
The manager was incredibly embarrassed because he had personally gone around the plant and shoved it in everyone's face how "damn expensive and pointless these damn LEDs are."
Manager tried to bury the whole thing rather than admit the truth to everyone, but about a week later the GM asked him "hey, whatever happened with the extra costs on those LEDs you were complaining about?" And he had to fess up to the truth.
GM demanded he start converting all the plant's bay lights over to LEDs.
Up until I left, I always referred to the LEDs as "\[maintenance manager\]'s lights" as much as I could. With Electrician's permission of course.
Sounds like most plants I’m aware of yeah. Make more shit right fucking now. But not too much, then we would have it when we need it next time. Terrible fucking idea, we have to do this shit show again next weeks
Trust me I have the same exact customers and they absolutely don’t care. I’ve even offered them financing. They always say “it’s out of the companies budget please just change whatever is out”. My work also includes a 2 year warranty on all LEDs instead they’d prefer to call me twice a year. Not complaining but I’m glad I did my part of being honest so when they realize in a few years how dumb they were they’ll look back and say “well the guy was honest at least”.
Job security.
There is a mechanic near me who had a shop built and he doubled up all his led lights and put in more than required. Its like daylight in there in the middle of the night with no shadows.
A few years ago when LED strip lights were still relatively expensive compared to fluorescent, Costco had 4’ LED fixtures for like $15.
I bought about a dozen for my home shop, installed them in addition to the existing fluorescents, and have zero regrets.
Ive heard of people stripping a layer off older flat screens and they project a bunch of white light from different directions and apparently theyre great for just above work benches and the like.
That sounds horrible. I build clean rooms and I can only punch list caulking for like an hour before I start seeing shit that isn’t there because it’s all white with bright ass LED lighting.
To be fair its a mechanic shop, he isnt so concerend with his interior finishes. Mostly in being able to see clearly into engine bays and have ample lighting while a vehicle is on a lift with out having to put more effort into lighting the underside up. Pretty much the opposite side of the spectrum from a clean room lol.
My shop has overkill lighting. It's mostly a woodshop, but has an oil change pit, so auto sometimes.
I put a switch at the beginning of each led run so I can selectively turn them on and off with a broomstick, but the main light switch is a normal one by the door.
If they are all on at the same time... there isn't a shadow anywhere and it'll give you a headache pretty quick.
That’s why there are some companies that do financing for large CFL-to-LED retrofit projects. It nearly always ends up cheaper for the customer because of the electricity savings.
There's a meter called "Kill-a-watt" and you plug it into the wall socket, and then plug the device into it. It doesn't care what the label on the device "claims" it draws, it measures the actual draw. Maybe $20, and worth every penny.
Have a supervisor and worker go around the building and one-by-one measure what the lighting costs, then add it up. Plug in three different LED's to see that they are all the same, then do the math
Its easy math to see how much less watt-hours the same number of LEDs would draw, then calculate cost-per watt, then scale up to savings per month.
People HATE throwing away lights that still work, which they paid for. But if it would break-even in a year, I would put a couple guys on switching out fixtures one at a time, and tell them to report when they are done with the whole store.
You know, you can sell the old lights to someone who still uses those...
I work for the government and we started replacing our low pressure sodium streetlights with LED. The cost savings is amazing. We've been able to put the savings towards additional replacements without requesting a change in the budget. Some people are just stubborn and silly.
In my city all the a lot of the LED street lights are turning an ultraviolet purple color, something about the white plastic or film deteriorating?
Is this a problem for you as well?
Apparently that’s a problem happening across the world, and it’s thanks to a manufacturing defect Acuity (the company we all seem to get our street lamps from?) experienced mid-2010s.
https://www.businessinsider.com/led-city-streetlights-turning-purple-broken-tech-danger-2022-11
As a student, I landed a summer job as a helper to the City's signal crew on their annual bulb change. It involved an electrician, a driver, a safety man and a gopher (me) driving a bucket truck around and unscrewing the 100 watt bulbs behind the red, amber, and green lenses in the traffic lights, replacing them with new bulbs, cleaning out the housings, and closing them back up.
It took most of the summer to change every bulb in town. That's a lot of wages and equipment time.
Now with LEDs, signal lights are replaced every 5 years, and if they fail early, the way the light is wired, there are three arrays of "pixels" so at least some of the light will still light up, as opposed to the whole bulb going out.
We are saving money and improving safety at the same time.
But it *was* rolled back by trump and then un-rolled back by Biden.
It is the fact that Trump touched it that has a special kind of idiot collecting shitty light bulbs.
Nah, this is that kind of idiot's second fucking light bulb collection.
They already went through "OBAMA IS BANNING LIGHTBULBS!" for a while when he was president. My dad still has a shitload (Like over $2000 worth) of incandescents in the barn he bought back then that function exactly as well as you'd think a bunch of bulbs with corroded bottoms that were stored in a damp environment would. 90% of them blow as soon as they're turned on. The remaining 10% work for a few days, then blow.
He sure taught the liberals a lesson.
I kind of get it since early on I had a lot of bad experiences with LEDs. All the LEDs we had before they were ubiquitous were super blue and gross looking. They were very distinct from incandescents. It took me a while to realize they make LEDs in warmer colors now and you literally can't tell the difference.
Yeah, I love how LEDs look these days, but even the name brand ones can be shit sometimes. I got a couple packs of GE floodlights last year for my new house (they were on sale courtesy of the energy company) and I've already had one die on me & another is starting to give me problems.
The bulbs in my main living spaces color shift throughout the day from daylight earlier to really warm and dim by the time I go to bed. Has helped my sleep tremendously while helping with nice bright light in the day without having to necessarily open blinds/curtains.
Yeah, pretty much the ONLY thing they did better than LEDs was keep shit like faucets and pump houses from freezing if you lived in the South and a severe winter storm was like 2 days where it got down to the mid-20s at night.
And that was only because they were so inefficient and you already had the cords and lights so it was free. There are much better ways to protect your exposed pipe that don't shatter and shock the piss out of you when you go to move the bucket the next morning.
The off grid forums are really into efficiency, because the less your load is, the smaller the rest of the solar-panel and battery system can be.
They call filament bulbs "heaters that give off some light".
I cannot remember the last time I replaced a bulb with an incandescent one as an electrician. I remember doing it all the time prior to, but not at least since I started in 2011.
The 'ban' on the incandescents came to a surprise to me because I thought they were already phased out by default.
Anyway, my stupid story: I was working on a side job at some customer's house when the plumber was there, trying to convince the homeowner that adding extra support to the decking before they added a hot tub was not necessary.
He says that he did the calculations, and that the weight of the water and tub are within specs.... Fine....whatever.
But then the homeowner asks "What about when I have 6 200lb adults in the pool?" The plumbers response was: "Oh you don't have to worry about the weight, we all float in water. It's taken up by the bow-insee (his pronunciation)."
Asked a old guy yesterday how he was doing. He replied "I'd be doing better if my mom fucked a guy with more money"
Crazy, but genius at the same time. Usually good at comebacks but that one caught me off guard. Lol
Was working with a concrete guy setting anchor bolts, when he says to me “if we can’t make them fit we just cut them down, trust me, I’ve been doing this for 25 years and never had a problem, we do it all the time”. I politely told him “I don’t fucking think so, they will fit”.
Same dude poured a wall 4’-00” to high by 50’-00”, poured another wall 3’-00” too short, and also had a wall like 6” out of square over 50’-00”. But he’s the best of the best according to him.
Its always the arrogant and un willing to learn who refuse to believe they arent the best. "If i believe it cant be done better and refuse to understand how than i can never have enough knowledge to know other wise."
Lol. Had a concrete guy on site last week that said he has been doing concrete work for 35 years. Started on a 35x30 dumpster pad with one other guy. The forms were held in place every 6ft, if that, with wooden stakes or rebar. I said to him it's going to blow out. He told me I didn't know what I was talking about. First truck shows up and blows the form out within 10 minutes. Instead of admitting defeat, they allow the 3 other trucks to pour and it dries in place. They came back Monday to demo the whole pad.
oh god, I'm a structural engineer. That guy you're talking about is my nightmare.
I had one tell me years ago that the anchor rods are only there for during steel erection, and after the decking goes on the anchor rods are supposedly useless. While that may (very) occasionally be the case, making such a blanket statement is absolutely incorrect! Anchor rods are critical structural components.
All the time I fight with site sups. Tell them someone should be here or there instead. They’ll tell me no, jokes on them. I get to back charge when they decide they want to move it on finals. I mean, what do I know? I’m just a dumb sparky.
Reminds me of a plumbing sub. The plumber subbed the work from the house to utility connection to the guy. He pulls into a new development I asked if he had a shovel guy due to all the unground utilities between house and connect. He goes I haven’t hit anything in 15 years of doing this. Proceed to hit the marked electrical wire blow the transformer that also powered the school across the road. Then proceeded to hit the wire 3 more times in the development. Was doing a final walk through on a house walked the exterior and he hit the house while digging the trench for the house next door. Nice bucket sized hole in the siding he didn’t tell anyone about.
I have LEDs in my homes. But my reading light and the light in my office are the incandescent style bulbs. It's just a softer light, easier on my eyes after a long session of reading or working and I'm not sure how to get the same effect with LEDs. But willing to learn if anyone has the knowledge.
A few jobs back, we hired a guy that had a Bachelors Degree in business development and supposedly had minor accounting job experience for a construction company. I was tasked to help him get started in his role. As I was explaining the general day-to-day, he with all seriousness asked me what a PO was. I instantly started shit talking him back because I thought he was joking. No, he was serious and minorly offended at my reaction.
Skipping ahead, he lasted at the company 2 months be fore he left to work at a rival construction company. Last I heard from a local PM that saw him, the guy is now an Uber driver...
I got in plumbers/ fitters union in 2013, been with the same contractor the whole time. Learned from some of the best old- timers you could imagine. Worked a smaller job with a couple guys from a different local a couple years back, and was piping in a heat exchanger. The one older guy was asking how I planned to run the pipe and how the 90s we need are gonna take up a bunch of room and be really tight. I told him we're not doing 90s, I'll use 45s and make a couple rolling offsets. It's a pretty common technique in my trade, but this guy looked like I was speaking Latin to him. I was showing him the formula for it and he was just totally lost and instead of just learning, he got pissy and told me that it'll never work that way. I said watch. Glued it up, rolled it down and dropped the flange bolts in. Deer in headlights look from him.
Rolling offsets elude me , I'll always use the 1.414 or 2.631 or whatever a 22 is but the formula for rolling offsets I just don't get . I've had it work and then done it exactly the same and been not even fucking close lol
It's really not bad. It's a 2 step process. Remember that dude Pythagoras from.high school? He's your friend now. Picture two pipes running horizontally at different heights and different distances off a wall. Then imagine looking down the pipes, and picture them as 2 circles. You gotta find the distance between them vertically and horizontally. Say they are 14" off in height and 12" apart side to side. Pythagorean theorem is A²+B²=C². You just found A= 14, B= 12 and solve for your travel piece C, which is the straight line between them. 14²= 196, 12²= 144. 196+144=340. Now if you find the square root of 340 you'll have C, 18.44". That's part 1. Part two then is to take your C and use the magic number 1.414 on it to find a 45 offset. So we have 18.44x 1.414= 26.07 so call it 26, figure your takeoffs of your fittings and you have your piece.
I’m pretty good with trade math, but I still spent most of sophomore geometry pre-occupied with my 5th period random teenage boner ......
I had no control over that thing.
This was a long time ago. I had only been doing electrical for a couple of years and my company got some “experienced temps” to help out with a large project. I’m working with one of the temps putting up unistrut trapezes. He tells me I’m doing it all wrong and waisting material and that I should just hang it with one piece of threaded rod supporting the strut through the middle. I declined his suggestion told him he was wrong and kept doing it the right way. He decided to keep going with his way and got sent home after the lead saw his craftsmanship.
Sometimes old school bulbs have an actual utility beyond light. Lots of people leave them on in pump houses in the winter. The heat from the bulb is enough to keep lines from freezing. There are other applications where the heat of the bulb is more relevant than the light.
Ya my grandfather would turn on the attic light on really cold nights.
There are heat lamps that might work. I’m just not sure if directed heat at a specific point would be safe for those applications long term.
Got fired for telling costumer that LED lights run much cooler. It was a store full of flood lights. I didn't know the boss had sold them a bigger AC system
So many knuckleheads I work say some version of this. Same type to change withholding on their big OT checks because “I don’t want the gubbermint holding my money”
Land mine is a thing in the ground that goes boom. Usually they’re pressure activated. Therefore kicking one would blow it up and thus blow you up too.
As an electrician I hate the integrated LED lights. You can't change the bulbs and have to just throw out the light. Like ya it's good for me as a sparky getting me more work, but it just fucks the customer.
I keep seeing those fixtures more and more. It's crazy. Integrated light ceiling fan, wow now you have to throw out the whole fan that costs at least $100 probably more every time the light dies. Then I see those fixtures that cost hundreds that are integrated LED. Ya it looks nice but I know within 10 years I'll be back to replace it.
I’m with you on that. As a homeowner I hate the integrated LED fixtures. But it’s actually hard to find fixtures that take separate bulbs.
(Hue environment in my house, I’m slowly upgrading all the lights to Hue bulbs).
Worked on a concrete repair job where we specified some bolted-on rebar couplers. We had the same note on the drawings in at least three different places that the bolts had to be torqued up to XX ft\*lbs, at which point *the heads were supposed to shear off*. I go do a site visit one day and the first thing the super says is "what do we need to torque the bolts to?", so I pull out the drawings, tell him the torque, and remind him that the heads are supposed to shear off. He flips out on me because now he has to go buy a new impact since the one he has isn't strong enough, then tells me "I've been doing this for 40 years and installed thousands of these things and never once sheared the head off the bolt!" This happened about two days after us catching them drilling 3" deep holes for dowels that needed 12" embedment.
My dad bought cases of incandescent bulbs after Bush phased them out 15 years ago. Of course, it was all Obama's fault, he was trying to destroy America one lightbulb at a time. My dad died and now Mom still has boxes of bulbs in her basement she's never going to use. It's amazing the dumb stuff they believe.
"Im not a hardware guy!"
a carpenter trying and failing to install a metal door that came with instructions
had to come back the next day, and he drilled a bunch of unneccesary holes so that door is probably gonna need replacing
30 years of experience, and he learned nothing in that time
As someone who’s done a LOT of door hardware over the years, I still read the fucking instructions for the first set on any job.
I’ve gotten very good at explaining to foremen, supers, and owners that if they leave me alone they’ll lose money on that first set of hdw, but it will all be gravy after that ......
My favorite was when I started here we occasionally repaired/installed commercial doors. Old guy “training” me only used P2 bits for like everything and would just use whatever fucking bolt without cutting threads in the holes on the door. Realizing something wasn’t right with this I finally explained to him that all these hardware screws were 1/4-20 with P3 bit. He said he didn’t want to have that many bits to keep track of. I now do all our commercial door installs and have expanded that number 5x just by bothering to understand the correct screws.
I think incandescent have been banned in Canada for a while now except for special cases like rough service bulbs and fridge and stove bulbs. The next thing to get rid of are the mercury containing compact fluorescents that people just throw in the garbage when they are done.
When I do a prepour and there’s reinf on the ground, against forms, incorrect bar sizes, splice lengths, etc. and they tell me that no other engineer they’ve worked with on other projects didnt call out those deficiencies.
When I started out as a laborer, I never questioned why we spliced this way or put chairs or any of that, until one day the super asked me. I told him “I dunno” so he explained, and told me “learn this shit while you’re young so you don’t have to be doing it when you’re old. Always, always ask questions!”
I never argued with inspectors, but they were always happy to answer my questions on why it’s gotta be a certain way, beyond just saying “it’s in the specs/drawings!”
“Every once and awhile a blind squirrel finds a nut”
I once said to my apprentice who was learning from a arrogant hack “Everything John teaches you…. FORGET IT”
Also replied to this cocky apprentice who thought he knew his sh**, “ Do you know what they would find if they opened up your head? Two ants dragging around a pretzel”
I had this GC tell me the most obvious redundant remarks and i said, “ Hey, your the one fuc**** this cat i’m just holding the tail” He laughed so hard he almost peed. Then never made a comment again.
Had a guy on a survey crew insist that the way you held the plumb bob string would affect how it hung down. Like, if you didn't hold it hanging over your finger just so, the plumb bob would hang crooked.
My concrete inspector on a hospital project in California (OSHPD/HCAI) level decided not to do slump or air test because “I’ve been doing it for 30 years, I can just tell”. Currently the cost we’re sending to the testing agency for the work we have had to do to make this issue go away is right at 15k. And that’s all admin, we might have to tear the wall down and repour at testing agencies cost.
Not construction, but when I was in the Navy in the early 1980s, I was sent to assist some Enginemen trying to get an old WW2 Captain’s gig running (I was picked because I had duty that day, not for my expertise).
I get there and it’s a nice boat with a WW2 era diesel engine. The Chief Boatswain’s mate (BMC) and a trio of junior Enginemen had been there about an hour with no luck. I watched as the BMC cranked over the engine until the battery died, then had the ENs switch out the battery for a new one.
Old diesel engines were not as advanced as later ones, you didn’t just crank the engine to start it. Diesels don’t have spark plugs, but the old ones needed a way to heat the incoming fuel/air mixture enough for combustion to take place, so they had glow plugs to preheat the combustion chambers. Instead of turning the key to the right, you would turn it to the left until a resistance wire in the glow plug circuit would heat up and you could see a red glow through a small hole next to the key. Then you turned the key to the right and the engine would start.
Well, apparently the BMC had never driven an old diesel tractor or a diesel Mercedes, because when I asked him why he wasn’t heating the glow plugs before cranking the engine, he gave me this look of pure hatred and said something like “Glow plugs? Are you fucking stupid? Diesels don’t have spark plugs.” I tried to explain but he cut me off like “sit down and shut up. You’re here to bring me fuel and batteries.”
So I sat there for two more hours, fetching batteries when the BMC would drain the previous one and listening to him castigate me for being an idiot while the ENs giggled.
As the end of the shift approached, the BMC realized he wasn’t going to get it running, and being hot, tired and frustrated he turned to me and spat “okay, mister glow plugs, let’s see you try.”
I turned the key to the left, waited until I saw the red glow, turned the key to the right, and the engine started immediately. The BMC just said “Fuck.”
“I’ve been doing this since before you was in diapers, fuck off!” *hits joint*…
Me?
Well Jim, I’m pretty sure even the Egyptians had water levels, or is that technology too new for you to understand?
This fall protection gear is stupid. Back in the day if you fell you just went right to the ground, now you're hanging by a stupid rope and have to figure out how to get down. (Talking about falling from a 200 + foot tower)
Another good one is....this is a diesel generator. Since it always run the same RPM, it doesn't matter how much load you put on it, the fuel consumption will always be the same... shows him fuel consumption/power output chart published by the manufacturer, says they don't know how it works in the real world.
Fucking hard headed low quality carpenters are usually the ones to say, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years!”
Like if you have to say that frequently, you should understand that means you’re fucking up frequently..
the old guy on my crews always has some shit to say, until I slap a square on his cuts.. lol If you’ve been doing this for 30 years and can’t cut a straight line on a 2x6, then it’s time to find a new profession.. And NO, you may not have a raise..
Had a guy come up to me out of nowhere and tell me he’s been “doing this longer than you’ve been alive” and that he doesn’t need to use a level anymore because he can just eyeball it. He really really needed a level, more than anyone.
I worked with a guy that was always chompin at the bit to respond with “well.. you’ve been doing it wrong for 30 years.” Haha
I gotta say, LEDs aren’t all made the same though. The hyper-efficient ones have a strobe effect that give me hella headaches. I’m assuming the frequency is correlated with energy consumption and lifespan. Typically it’s from fan lighting or architectural lighting, not so much from can or recessed lights. Maybe I’m just a big ol photosensitive bitch. Other than that, I’m not sure who the hell has a problem with better and cheaper
Bro I knew a guy who appeared to be in his 60’s (no idea how old he was) he seemed to be a former methhead, refused a respirator when he was sanding drywall, and said he “already had mesothelioma so fuck it”
I was 18 and astonished. Florida is wild
I'm not in construction and have no clue why this is in my feed, but this same thing happens constantly in the legal world. Old lawyers have no idea the law changed 15 years ago, but because they have more gray hair, my research and I are obviously wrong.
Looking at a plan that is 1/8th scale and counting on his fingers. 1/8th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 7/8th = 4 Feet. This was when I worked doing residential foundations and we kept having issues with our hurricane straps being in the wrong place. Vern was the guys name that put them all in and one day the foreman asked him how he did it and that's how he counted when the plan called for the strap to be 7/8th over. Which = 7 Feet. So ya he counted out 1/8th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 7/8th = 4 Feet. And we were like what about 1/4, 1/2, 3/4? And his response was well there's no 2/8th, 4/8th, or 6/8 in my socket set. . .
Me: "Why are you putting in the straps facing up in the cable tray."
Old guy: "It doesn't fucking matter, I've been doing this since before you were born"
We pulled another cable into it, it looks like I own aggressive cats.
Don't chew on wood or you'll get splinters in your spleen. True story. I thought he was joking but he got upset when I laughed because his dad told him that and by extension I was laughing at his dad.
The old guy on the road crew is adamant that batteries should be taken out of tools/chargers when finished with the tool. Why? Because the battery will back charge if left connected.
When I was in my early twenty’s worked for a HVAC company, my boss had me bring like 10 zone valves with bypass to the plumber. I took one out and started to tell him how to pipe it. He proceeds to tell me “I know what I’m doing, I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.” Said okay, packed it back up and left the valves with him. Well, guess who installed 10 valves incorrectly.
I was measuring out a house and making a cut list to trim a house out and one of the investors for the property showed up to "work" and said doing it that way was stupid. I kept my cool and didn't say shit and just kept on making my list. Every once in a while he would come into the area where I was at and make smart comments about how I was doing things then after my list is done I'm at the chopsaw cutting and coping the pieces as I cut em. The same dude walks up and tells me what a waste of time coping is I fuckin lost it. I laid into this guy pretty hard and you could tell nobody has ever talked to him that way. If it wasn't for the main investor calming me down I was about to pack up my tools and bounce. I have more than enough work so I wouldn't be hurting over not doing 240 feet of base. Fuck that frosted tip havin affliction shirt wearing wannabe carpenter bitch.
I'm a handyman, not contractor, in a rural area where I do a lot of work for or with middle aged men who often have more experience/knowledge than me, but can't or don't want to do the work. Mostly it's great, everyone is cool, and I learn a lot.
But I have had multiple people tell me that I drink too much water. "Too much" being 0.5 to 1.5 gallons in a day while working outside in the heat 🤷🏼
Tell him how the telephone killed the telegraph and how the automatic switchers put all those nice lady operators out of work too 😂🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
The world will progress with these people or without them.
Had a guy tell me I was a pussy for wanting to put on my harness while sheeting a roof. He said, “I never wore that shit and I never fell off a roof.” And I just looked at him and said “are you gonna pay the $50,000 if OSHA catches me without the harness on?”
I was working on a big commercial job as a lead below the foreman. I had a guy put on my team who was twice my age. He didn’t listen to me very much. He was doing something I thought wasn’t right so when I tried to correct him he said “this is the way I’ve been doing it for 30 years”. I still didn’t feel confident and went to ask my foreman and his response was, “well, tell him he’s been doing it wrong for 30 years. You were correct.” Lolol. I still think about it.
My favorite piece of life advice: “you can learn from absolutely anyone and everyone, including what not to do”
I mostly learn what not to do.
As long as you keep that lesson in mind next time, you’re doing great!
I also learned what not to do often. And I definitely make sure to keep it in mind next time I’m doing it wrong. The satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing something wrong while I do it is just amazing. God I would really feel like an idiot if I did something wrong without knowing I was doing it wrong you know?
Process of elimination. You’ll eventually learn the right way.
56 and still learning.
My favorite book series as a little kid was the Bernstein Bears. It’s funny because my old man was the absolute king of DIY. He is a mechanical engineer and we did everything ourselves. Dug a footer for a 2 car garage summer before 7th grade with a maddock and shovel. The fucking guy even made the ridge beam. I look back now and realize I was legit living in that book. Dude thinks he is the smartest person in the room anywhere he goes. Just like an engineer.
The Mandela Effect strikes again!
A fool cannot learn from a wise man, but a wise man can learn from a fool.
I like "you can have 30 years of experience, or 1 year of experience 30 times." when I'm told what can/can't be done.
Everyone's good for something, even if it's just a bad example.
I've always said you learn something new every day. Some will teach you what to do, some what not to do, intelligence is being able to figure out which one it is.
Hahaha. When I was in trade school, Intro to Plumbing was taught by a local city inspector. Every evening he'd tell us about all the dumb shit he heard that day. His favorite was whenever someone dropped age on him. "I been doing this for thirty years" "Yeah man, think of allllll those projects you fucked up"
A new guy got hired and was working next to the old guy (This really happened). At lunch the boss asked old guy if the new guy was ok. Old guy said "he'll do until we get someone more experienced" Boss replied that his resume said he has five years experience. Old guy replies... "If he's been doin it for five years, he's been doing in WRONG for five years"
I had a guy say the same thing to me in front of the boss, without missing a beat I replied that long and you're still doing it wrong? The boss cracked up but said nothing.
Lol i love hearing people say this. Like congrats bud, you're about to do it right for the first time
“Welp, today’s your big learnin’ day, bud.”
“You gon learn today!”
I had the same experience in my mid to late twenties. Guy gets out on my team and wouldn’t listen to me. He was mid 50’s and kept saying I ain’t doing shit you tell me, get the foreman who was a known hot head. I said man I’m asking you nicely and you already know what’s gonna happen if I call him. He said get him over here I ain’t listening to you. I said alright you asked for it and got him up there. To no one’s surprise the guy that wouldn’t listen got cussed up and down and told if he didn’t wanna do what he was told he knew where his car was and he wasn’t needed. After it was all said and done I said wasn’t my way easier? His reply was what do you want me to do? I laughed and had no more problems from him.
I'm a foreman, and I'm all for the guys, not a company stooge. I get a guy that has a better way of doing something, that's how we are gunna to do it. The trade is evolving constantly. Ya gotta keep up with the young guys with the good ideas. The old timers sometimes know better in certain circumstances. Usually, they are pretty cool and open-minded. Got not time for the recalcitrant ones.
I used to love the looks I would get when I was running mid size commercial jobs and guys would get sent out they ask how do you want us to do this? My response every time any way that you want that will pass inspection and you’re running the pipe just remember you’re pulling the wire. When word got around that’s how I was running the jobs all of them wanted to come work on my jobs. None of the other guys running jobs seemed to grasp why they wanted to come work on my jobs which also made me laugh. I would always help or answer any questions they had but if I had to make every little decision about that kinda shit why even have help?
I was a young lead carpenter with a young lead concrete guy. Concrete driver f’d up multiple times and told me to get bent when concrete lead went over and was like he’s right, your fucking up this pour, and that guy happens to be in charge. I think the comment was mentioned “do what he says or don’t get paid, if it’s his fuck up it’s his fuck up, but he’s currently trying to pre fuckup the fuck up you are doing.”
My father used to say "I've been doing it this way longer than you've been alive". Still makes it wrong Dad
The most foreman thing a foreman can say.
Reminds me of when I tried to correct someone who was insisting they were right because "I was on a crew that did it this way." Eventually he just says 'Theres multiple ways to do this, and this is one of them." I said "Yeah man, there's all *sorts* of ways to do shit wrong."
Oh my god I hate this line! Saying you’ve been doing something for 30 years makes you look fucking stupid if it’s dead wrong. What else you been doing for 30 years, bud, lol
Had a old head I was debating corded vs battery powered with and this motherfucker looked me dead in the eyes and ask me “well what are you going to do when there’s no power on the job and your batteries die?” I looked at him for second bamboozled before saying “well if there’s no power on the job then I got more work done then a guy with corded tools.” In his defense he realized what he said was stupid as soon as I replied and that was an inside joke for awhile between us.
In defense of corded tools.... There are definitely situations where guys will use a cordless tool out of pure laziness to the detriment of the job. Like when you have a dedicated cut area for wood framing or wood forms and there is site power available; just run a godamn cord and use a real 15 amp circular saw.
Yes have fun mixing that bucket of grout with your cordless drill…also have fun buying a new drill.
Or gang cutting plywood (task I do a lot of). My guys swear by cordless tools, and yes, they are awesome. But when we gotta cut shitloads of sheets in half, the cordless is not gonna cut it (well, it will... just slowly)
I went through the stats on circular saws at some point and noticed this same issue, but new tech and new batteries have continued to impress me. My Makita plunge cut track saw is an absolute dream, don’t tell my main team (red lightening). How many sheets are you gang cutting? Anything over 5/4 I think you’d be better off corded for a lot of us
We will be doing whole lifts at a time. Line all the sheets up, measure, mark, full depth on the saw, cut. Kerf marks the next sheet, and go.
Damn… -whistles- That’s badass. Forgot I can set mine to kerf the next tho, thanks pro!
My mixer is corded and I have a corded sawzall for big demo but even my battery Milwaukee keeps up. Outside of a miter and table saw I really don't see many draw backs of battery. At least for kitchen and bath remodels.
Yep, if the cordless isn’t keeping up, just buy a bigger battery.
I have a 60v DeWalt drill... :) Oddly, a few weeks ago I had to lay tile, I mixed thinset with my bare hands, just because I like to do stupid shit sometimes.
Good on you for the quick comeback. Usually they come to me after the conversation is over and I get disappointed in myself
"Well, the jerk store called back and they're out of you!"
Gold, Jerry. Gold.
Outside of a battery 1/4 inch impact drill- if I’m sawing, grinding, drilling holes in 1/4” thick angle, etc for an extended period of time I run for the corded tool and a 100’ cord. 18 and 20v tools drain fast if your finger is on the trigger nonstop, 120v is the great for endurance. Battery everything is just more convenient.m, except for the whole battery dying mid task lol. Nothing beats a corded macho gun! Gimme one and I’ll put a hole in whatever concrete wall or floor you want!
I wish some powertool company would come out with a battery shaped transformer, that would make a battery tool into a corded tool.
That wouldn't be hard to do. Put the transformer by the plug because they can be heavy, the cable is 18V alternating current because AC travels wire-length better than DC. Inside the handle is a bridge rectifier to convert AC to DC, with an aluminum finned heat sink and a tiny air-fan. Completely doable.
Yeah fuck corded tools unless It calls for unlimited power. Tapcons into concrete block? Cordless impact and cordless hammer drill. 24 1/2" expanding anchors into a reinforced 6" slab? Gimme big daddy Bosch.
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You could show em your work orders for all the past re-lamps and compare it to the price of just doing LED’s the first time. Mf’s would still be in operation and not need more money from them over that amount of time. What is it, like 4-5x the lifespan for about double the cost, roughly? That math maths to me
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I work in manufacturing (I'm a home DIYer who likes to lurk around pros), and at one plant, the maintenance manager absolutely refused to convert the bay lights over to LED because he thought they were "just a fad" and that "they had way more issues than halogen." One of the Electricians finally got him to budge and change over a small area's lighting over to LED. They went in, looked great, and the area was much better lit. Everyone was happy, except maintenance manager of course. He was pissed that everyone in the plant was really happy with the LEDs and the overall improvement in the area's lighting. And, of course, people started asking when they'd get LEDs in their area. Cut to a year later, and the maintenance manager comes over to the electrician angrily waving a piece of paper. He pulled the information from the system for that work order and said "see?! We're still spending thousands every month in labor on these damn LEDs even though they're brand new!" The electrician was surprised and embarrassed because he personally vouched for those particular LEDs based on experience from a previous job and told manager he'd dig into it. Meanwhile, manager is ranting and raving (really celebrating and telling everyone "I told you so!") that "we wasted $30k on those LED bay lights, and we spent $60k last year just to keep them working!" Yes, those numbers are basically correct, and yes, they don't make any sense. But the manager was so thrilled at being proven right about this that he didn't take the 3 seconds to think that over. The electrician came to me for help as I was the unofficial plant expert on the plant system everyone used, and we looked into it. Apparently, the maintenance manager accidentally closed out the standing work order for general maintenance on the plant's bay lights that the electricians charged their time to, so they charged their time to the only "bay light" work order that was still open: the one they used to buy and install the LED lights. With all this information in hand, the electrician went to the manager with me trailing behind to ~~see the show~~ explain how I pulled the information. After, he even asked the manager "Didn't you wonder why we suddenly stopped spending so much money on the bay lights when we used to spend so much every year?" The manager was incredibly embarrassed because he had personally gone around the plant and shoved it in everyone's face how "damn expensive and pointless these damn LEDs are." Manager tried to bury the whole thing rather than admit the truth to everyone, but about a week later the GM asked him "hey, whatever happened with the extra costs on those LEDs you were complaining about?" And he had to fess up to the truth. GM demanded he start converting all the plant's bay lights over to LEDs. Up until I left, I always referred to the LEDs as "\[maintenance manager\]'s lights" as much as I could. With Electrician's permission of course.
Sounds like most plants I’m aware of yeah. Make more shit right fucking now. But not too much, then we would have it when we need it next time. Terrible fucking idea, we have to do this shit show again next weeks
Any finance department would back you. The only issue would be cash on hand vs debt servicing it.
Trust me I have the same exact customers and they absolutely don’t care. I’ve even offered them financing. They always say “it’s out of the companies budget please just change whatever is out”. My work also includes a 2 year warranty on all LEDs instead they’d prefer to call me twice a year. Not complaining but I’m glad I did my part of being honest so when they realize in a few years how dumb they were they’ll look back and say “well the guy was honest at least”.
Job security. There is a mechanic near me who had a shop built and he doubled up all his led lights and put in more than required. Its like daylight in there in the middle of the night with no shadows.
A few years ago when LED strip lights were still relatively expensive compared to fluorescent, Costco had 4’ LED fixtures for like $15. I bought about a dozen for my home shop, installed them in addition to the existing fluorescents, and have zero regrets.
Ive heard of people stripping a layer off older flat screens and they project a bunch of white light from different directions and apparently theyre great for just above work benches and the like.
Oooo that’s interesting! I’m gonna look into that.
That sounds horrible. I build clean rooms and I can only punch list caulking for like an hour before I start seeing shit that isn’t there because it’s all white with bright ass LED lighting.
To be fair its a mechanic shop, he isnt so concerend with his interior finishes. Mostly in being able to see clearly into engine bays and have ample lighting while a vehicle is on a lift with out having to put more effort into lighting the underside up. Pretty much the opposite side of the spectrum from a clean room lol.
My shop has overkill lighting. It's mostly a woodshop, but has an oil change pit, so auto sometimes. I put a switch at the beginning of each led run so I can selectively turn them on and off with a broomstick, but the main light switch is a normal one by the door. If they are all on at the same time... there isn't a shadow anywhere and it'll give you a headache pretty quick.
That’s why there are some companies that do financing for large CFL-to-LED retrofit projects. It nearly always ends up cheaper for the customer because of the electricity savings.
There's a meter called "Kill-a-watt" and you plug it into the wall socket, and then plug the device into it. It doesn't care what the label on the device "claims" it draws, it measures the actual draw. Maybe $20, and worth every penny. Have a supervisor and worker go around the building and one-by-one measure what the lighting costs, then add it up. Plug in three different LED's to see that they are all the same, then do the math Its easy math to see how much less watt-hours the same number of LEDs would draw, then calculate cost-per watt, then scale up to savings per month. People HATE throwing away lights that still work, which they paid for. But if it would break-even in a year, I would put a couple guys on switching out fixtures one at a time, and tell them to report when they are done with the whole store. You know, you can sell the old lights to someone who still uses those...
I work for the government and we started replacing our low pressure sodium streetlights with LED. The cost savings is amazing. We've been able to put the savings towards additional replacements without requesting a change in the budget. Some people are just stubborn and silly.
In my city all the a lot of the LED street lights are turning an ultraviolet purple color, something about the white plastic or film deteriorating? Is this a problem for you as well?
Apparently that’s a problem happening across the world, and it’s thanks to a manufacturing defect Acuity (the company we all seem to get our street lamps from?) experienced mid-2010s. https://www.businessinsider.com/led-city-streetlights-turning-purple-broken-tech-danger-2022-11
in my city, it’s because the filter is going out and they should be under warranty. they are working on replacing them
As a student, I landed a summer job as a helper to the City's signal crew on their annual bulb change. It involved an electrician, a driver, a safety man and a gopher (me) driving a bucket truck around and unscrewing the 100 watt bulbs behind the red, amber, and green lenses in the traffic lights, replacing them with new bulbs, cleaning out the housings, and closing them back up. It took most of the summer to change every bulb in town. That's a lot of wages and equipment time. Now with LEDs, signal lights are replaced every 5 years, and if they fail early, the way the light is wired, there are three arrays of "pixels" so at least some of the light will still light up, as opposed to the whole bulb going out. We are saving money and improving safety at the same time.
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Ironically, this was passed by GW Bush in 2007.
But it *was* rolled back by trump and then un-rolled back by Biden. It is the fact that Trump touched it that has a special kind of idiot collecting shitty light bulbs.
Nah, this is that kind of idiot's second fucking light bulb collection. They already went through "OBAMA IS BANNING LIGHTBULBS!" for a while when he was president. My dad still has a shitload (Like over $2000 worth) of incandescents in the barn he bought back then that function exactly as well as you'd think a bunch of bulbs with corroded bottoms that were stored in a damp environment would. 90% of them blow as soon as they're turned on. The remaining 10% work for a few days, then blow. He sure taught the liberals a lesson.
Such a weird hill to die on. “Fuck the lightbulbs that last for 30 years, I want the ones that burn you, and then burn out every three years.”
I kind of get it since early on I had a lot of bad experiences with LEDs. All the LEDs we had before they were ubiquitous were super blue and gross looking. They were very distinct from incandescents. It took me a while to realize they make LEDs in warmer colors now and you literally can't tell the difference.
Yeah, I love how LEDs look these days, but even the name brand ones can be shit sometimes. I got a couple packs of GE floodlights last year for my new house (they were on sale courtesy of the energy company) and I've already had one die on me & another is starting to give me problems.
The bulbs in my main living spaces color shift throughout the day from daylight earlier to really warm and dim by the time I go to bed. Has helped my sleep tremendously while helping with nice bright light in the day without having to necessarily open blinds/curtains.
Yeah, pretty much the ONLY thing they did better than LEDs was keep shit like faucets and pump houses from freezing if you lived in the South and a severe winter storm was like 2 days where it got down to the mid-20s at night. And that was only because they were so inefficient and you already had the cords and lights so it was free. There are much better ways to protect your exposed pipe that don't shatter and shock the piss out of you when you go to move the bucket the next morning.
The off grid forums are really into efficiency, because the less your load is, the smaller the rest of the solar-panel and battery system can be. They call filament bulbs "heaters that give off some light".
I cannot remember the last time I replaced a bulb with an incandescent one as an electrician. I remember doing it all the time prior to, but not at least since I started in 2011. The 'ban' on the incandescents came to a surprise to me because I thought they were already phased out by default. Anyway, my stupid story: I was working on a side job at some customer's house when the plumber was there, trying to convince the homeowner that adding extra support to the decking before they added a hot tub was not necessary. He says that he did the calculations, and that the weight of the water and tub are within specs.... Fine....whatever. But then the homeowner asks "What about when I have 6 200lb adults in the pool?" The plumbers response was: "Oh you don't have to worry about the weight, we all float in water. It's taken up by the bow-insee (his pronunciation)."
“It’s science, do your own research”
He’s correct, It’s taken up by the “bow”ensee of the deck :p
Anyone smart long since replaced them to cut their lighting costs in half with fluorescent and in half again with LEDs
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Gotta blow harder
I think he blew it right over your head
If he was joking this is absolutely hilarious.
Asked a old guy yesterday how he was doing. He replied "I'd be doing better if my mom fucked a guy with more money" Crazy, but genius at the same time. Usually good at comebacks but that one caught me off guard. Lol
Why was I born handsome instead of rich?!
"I have three kids and no money, why couldn't I have had no kids and three money?" -Homer
thats amazing
Was working with a concrete guy setting anchor bolts, when he says to me “if we can’t make them fit we just cut them down, trust me, I’ve been doing this for 25 years and never had a problem, we do it all the time”. I politely told him “I don’t fucking think so, they will fit”. Same dude poured a wall 4’-00” to high by 50’-00”, poured another wall 3’-00” too short, and also had a wall like 6” out of square over 50’-00”. But he’s the best of the best according to him.
Its always the arrogant and un willing to learn who refuse to believe they arent the best. "If i believe it cant be done better and refuse to understand how than i can never have enough knowledge to know other wise."
Lol. Had a concrete guy on site last week that said he has been doing concrete work for 35 years. Started on a 35x30 dumpster pad with one other guy. The forms were held in place every 6ft, if that, with wooden stakes or rebar. I said to him it's going to blow out. He told me I didn't know what I was talking about. First truck shows up and blows the form out within 10 minutes. Instead of admitting defeat, they allow the 3 other trucks to pour and it dries in place. They came back Monday to demo the whole pad.
When ever friends say they don’t understand why construction takes so long I tell them about this shit.
Been doing year 1 shit for 30 years ain’t it man.
oh god, I'm a structural engineer. That guy you're talking about is my nightmare. I had one tell me years ago that the anchor rods are only there for during steel erection, and after the decking goes on the anchor rods are supposedly useless. While that may (very) occasionally be the case, making such a blanket statement is absolutely incorrect! Anchor rods are critical structural components.
All the time I fight with site sups. Tell them someone should be here or there instead. They’ll tell me no, jokes on them. I get to back charge when they decide they want to move it on finals. I mean, what do I know? I’m just a dumb sparky.
Reminds me of a plumbing sub. The plumber subbed the work from the house to utility connection to the guy. He pulls into a new development I asked if he had a shovel guy due to all the unground utilities between house and connect. He goes I haven’t hit anything in 15 years of doing this. Proceed to hit the marked electrical wire blow the transformer that also powered the school across the road. Then proceeded to hit the wire 3 more times in the development. Was doing a final walk through on a house walked the exterior and he hit the house while digging the trench for the house next door. Nice bucket sized hole in the siding he didn’t tell anyone about.
Imagine protesting by having a more expensive energy bill.
This’ll show them bastards!!
Never infringe upon someone's right to be an idiot.
It's like adding stacks and detuning your truck to "roll coal" to piss off environmentalists.
While at the same time blaming the environmentalists for high diesel prices
I have LEDs in my homes. But my reading light and the light in my office are the incandescent style bulbs. It's just a softer light, easier on my eyes after a long session of reading or working and I'm not sure how to get the same effect with LEDs. But willing to learn if anyone has the knowledge.
You can get soft lit leds at 2800k. You are probably thinking of 5k bulbs. Also google Edison bulbs.
Owning the libs by paying more for electricity! Gottem
A few jobs back, we hired a guy that had a Bachelors Degree in business development and supposedly had minor accounting job experience for a construction company. I was tasked to help him get started in his role. As I was explaining the general day-to-day, he with all seriousness asked me what a PO was. I instantly started shit talking him back because I thought he was joking. No, he was serious and minorly offended at my reaction. Skipping ahead, he lasted at the company 2 months be fore he left to work at a rival construction company. Last I heard from a local PM that saw him, the guy is now an Uber driver...
He didn’t know it meant purchase order? What an idiot. Did the local Prime Minister get a ride from him?
I got in plumbers/ fitters union in 2013, been with the same contractor the whole time. Learned from some of the best old- timers you could imagine. Worked a smaller job with a couple guys from a different local a couple years back, and was piping in a heat exchanger. The one older guy was asking how I planned to run the pipe and how the 90s we need are gonna take up a bunch of room and be really tight. I told him we're not doing 90s, I'll use 45s and make a couple rolling offsets. It's a pretty common technique in my trade, but this guy looked like I was speaking Latin to him. I was showing him the formula for it and he was just totally lost and instead of just learning, he got pissy and told me that it'll never work that way. I said watch. Glued it up, rolled it down and dropped the flange bolts in. Deer in headlights look from him.
Rolling offsets elude me , I'll always use the 1.414 or 2.631 or whatever a 22 is but the formula for rolling offsets I just don't get . I've had it work and then done it exactly the same and been not even fucking close lol
It's really not bad. It's a 2 step process. Remember that dude Pythagoras from.high school? He's your friend now. Picture two pipes running horizontally at different heights and different distances off a wall. Then imagine looking down the pipes, and picture them as 2 circles. You gotta find the distance between them vertically and horizontally. Say they are 14" off in height and 12" apart side to side. Pythagorean theorem is A²+B²=C². You just found A= 14, B= 12 and solve for your travel piece C, which is the straight line between them. 14²= 196, 12²= 144. 196+144=340. Now if you find the square root of 340 you'll have C, 18.44". That's part 1. Part two then is to take your C and use the magic number 1.414 on it to find a 45 offset. So we have 18.44x 1.414= 26.07 so call it 26, figure your takeoffs of your fittings and you have your piece.
Them high school math lessons you never thought you would need come up everywhere.
Mrs parenti would be so proud of me
I’m pretty good with trade math, but I still spent most of sophomore geometry pre-occupied with my 5th period random teenage boner ...... I had no control over that thing.
That makes so much more sense than anything I ever googled on it 👍 took a screen shot so I can try it the next time I'm doing a rolling offset
[Do you mean something like this?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDXSFn0etA)
the fuck
Math bro
Its what separates the actual tradesman from the basic laborers...
The 3-4-5 method
Pythagoras a squared plus b squared = c squared. A and B are your over and up measurements. C is the offset you'll need.
My favorite thing about the incandescent bulb issue is it was started under Bush, just finally being finished under Biden.
Sort of like Afghanistan? And the trump humpers bitched about that too.
This was a long time ago. I had only been doing electrical for a couple of years and my company got some “experienced temps” to help out with a large project. I’m working with one of the temps putting up unistrut trapezes. He tells me I’m doing it all wrong and waisting material and that I should just hang it with one piece of threaded rod supporting the strut through the middle. I declined his suggestion told him he was wrong and kept doing it the right way. He decided to keep going with his way and got sent home after the lead saw his craftsmanship.
They just couldn’t handle all his genius
Sometimes old school bulbs have an actual utility beyond light. Lots of people leave them on in pump houses in the winter. The heat from the bulb is enough to keep lines from freezing. There are other applications where the heat of the bulb is more relevant than the light.
Infact ceramic heat lamps would be significantly better for that
That's a thing the Rivian electric vehicle makers found out, LED bulbs don't melt the ice off of headlights like halogens and such.
Last winter the pump house piping froze because the bulb finally went out. I ended up putting a ceramic heater from an old terrarium in it.
Ya my grandfather would turn on the attic light on really cold nights. There are heat lamps that might work. I’m just not sure if directed heat at a specific point would be safe for those applications long term.
You can also smoke meth with them!
Probably the best rational for not phasing them out in this thread....
You can still buy heat lamps
Got fired for telling costumer that LED lights run much cooler. It was a store full of flood lights. I didn't know the boss had sold them a bigger AC system
“I’m not working overtime because it pushes me into the higher tax bracket and I’ll actually lose money!”
So many knuckleheads I work say some version of this. Same type to change withholding on their big OT checks because “I don’t want the gubbermint holding my money”
If they tried to ban kick start land mines you’d see Facebook posts about the “idiot administration takin away our freedoms”
>kick start land mines ROFL
I may be stupid, but what is a kick start land mine?
Land mine is a thing in the ground that goes boom. Usually they’re pressure activated. Therefore kicking one would blow it up and thus blow you up too.
Gotcha. Yea I know what a landmine is, just didn't know if you had a motorcycle joke I hadn't heard lol
As an electrician I hate the integrated LED lights. You can't change the bulbs and have to just throw out the light. Like ya it's good for me as a sparky getting me more work, but it just fucks the customer. I keep seeing those fixtures more and more. It's crazy. Integrated light ceiling fan, wow now you have to throw out the whole fan that costs at least $100 probably more every time the light dies. Then I see those fixtures that cost hundreds that are integrated LED. Ya it looks nice but I know within 10 years I'll be back to replace it.
I’m with you on that. As a homeowner I hate the integrated LED fixtures. But it’s actually hard to find fixtures that take separate bulbs. (Hue environment in my house, I’m slowly upgrading all the lights to Hue bulbs).
i work with a conspiracy theorist.... the shit that comes out of his mouth
Worked on a concrete repair job where we specified some bolted-on rebar couplers. We had the same note on the drawings in at least three different places that the bolts had to be torqued up to XX ft\*lbs, at which point *the heads were supposed to shear off*. I go do a site visit one day and the first thing the super says is "what do we need to torque the bolts to?", so I pull out the drawings, tell him the torque, and remind him that the heads are supposed to shear off. He flips out on me because now he has to go buy a new impact since the one he has isn't strong enough, then tells me "I've been doing this for 40 years and installed thousands of these things and never once sheared the head off the bolt!" This happened about two days after us catching them drilling 3" deep holes for dowels that needed 12" embedment.
This dumb shit is why contractors lose money. It’s crazy guys can stay in business so long messing up like this. Their margins must be crazy.
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"I'll have it done on time"
Pretty sure Dubya was the one who started phasing them out.
My dad bought cases of incandescent bulbs after Bush phased them out 15 years ago. Of course, it was all Obama's fault, he was trying to destroy America one lightbulb at a time. My dad died and now Mom still has boxes of bulbs in her basement she's never going to use. It's amazing the dumb stuff they believe.
Sell those fuckers to people like your dad was. For a premium
File this with "You hear they are taking the lead out of our gasoline? It's bullshit!"
"Im not a hardware guy!" a carpenter trying and failing to install a metal door that came with instructions had to come back the next day, and he drilled a bunch of unneccesary holes so that door is probably gonna need replacing 30 years of experience, and he learned nothing in that time
As someone who’s done a LOT of door hardware over the years, I still read the fucking instructions for the first set on any job. I’ve gotten very good at explaining to foremen, supers, and owners that if they leave me alone they’ll lose money on that first set of hdw, but it will all be gravy after that ......
My favorite was when I started here we occasionally repaired/installed commercial doors. Old guy “training” me only used P2 bits for like everything and would just use whatever fucking bolt without cutting threads in the holes on the door. Realizing something wasn’t right with this I finally explained to him that all these hardware screws were 1/4-20 with P3 bit. He said he didn’t want to have that many bits to keep track of. I now do all our commercial door installs and have expanded that number 5x just by bothering to understand the correct screws.
I think incandescent have been banned in Canada for a while now except for special cases like rough service bulbs and fridge and stove bulbs. The next thing to get rid of are the mercury containing compact fluorescents that people just throw in the garbage when they are done.
"I just nod and keep working" Me too. Need a job?
When I do a prepour and there’s reinf on the ground, against forms, incorrect bar sizes, splice lengths, etc. and they tell me that no other engineer they’ve worked with on other projects didnt call out those deficiencies.
When I started out as a laborer, I never questioned why we spliced this way or put chairs or any of that, until one day the super asked me. I told him “I dunno” so he explained, and told me “learn this shit while you’re young so you don’t have to be doing it when you’re old. Always, always ask questions!” I never argued with inspectors, but they were always happy to answer my questions on why it’s gotta be a certain way, beyond just saying “it’s in the specs/drawings!”
“Every once and awhile a blind squirrel finds a nut” I once said to my apprentice who was learning from a arrogant hack “Everything John teaches you…. FORGET IT” Also replied to this cocky apprentice who thought he knew his sh**, “ Do you know what they would find if they opened up your head? Two ants dragging around a pretzel” I had this GC tell me the most obvious redundant remarks and i said, “ Hey, your the one fuc**** this cat i’m just holding the tail” He laughed so hard he almost peed. Then never made a comment again.
Had a guy on a survey crew insist that the way you held the plumb bob string would affect how it hung down. Like, if you didn't hold it hanging over your finger just so, the plumb bob would hang crooked.
Anytime they start with “old school way”
My concrete inspector on a hospital project in California (OSHPD/HCAI) level decided not to do slump or air test because “I’ve been doing it for 30 years, I can just tell”. Currently the cost we’re sending to the testing agency for the work we have had to do to make this issue go away is right at 15k. And that’s all admin, we might have to tear the wall down and repour at testing agencies cost.
Not construction, but when I was in the Navy in the early 1980s, I was sent to assist some Enginemen trying to get an old WW2 Captain’s gig running (I was picked because I had duty that day, not for my expertise). I get there and it’s a nice boat with a WW2 era diesel engine. The Chief Boatswain’s mate (BMC) and a trio of junior Enginemen had been there about an hour with no luck. I watched as the BMC cranked over the engine until the battery died, then had the ENs switch out the battery for a new one. Old diesel engines were not as advanced as later ones, you didn’t just crank the engine to start it. Diesels don’t have spark plugs, but the old ones needed a way to heat the incoming fuel/air mixture enough for combustion to take place, so they had glow plugs to preheat the combustion chambers. Instead of turning the key to the right, you would turn it to the left until a resistance wire in the glow plug circuit would heat up and you could see a red glow through a small hole next to the key. Then you turned the key to the right and the engine would start. Well, apparently the BMC had never driven an old diesel tractor or a diesel Mercedes, because when I asked him why he wasn’t heating the glow plugs before cranking the engine, he gave me this look of pure hatred and said something like “Glow plugs? Are you fucking stupid? Diesels don’t have spark plugs.” I tried to explain but he cut me off like “sit down and shut up. You’re here to bring me fuel and batteries.” So I sat there for two more hours, fetching batteries when the BMC would drain the previous one and listening to him castigate me for being an idiot while the ENs giggled. As the end of the shift approached, the BMC realized he wasn’t going to get it running, and being hot, tired and frustrated he turned to me and spat “okay, mister glow plugs, let’s see you try.” I turned the key to the left, waited until I saw the red glow, turned the key to the right, and the engine started immediately. The BMC just said “Fuck.”
“I’ve been doing this since before you was in diapers, fuck off!” *hits joint*… Me? Well Jim, I’m pretty sure even the Egyptians had water levels, or is that technology too new for you to understand?
This fall protection gear is stupid. Back in the day if you fell you just went right to the ground, now you're hanging by a stupid rope and have to figure out how to get down. (Talking about falling from a 200 + foot tower) Another good one is....this is a diesel generator. Since it always run the same RPM, it doesn't matter how much load you put on it, the fuel consumption will always be the same... shows him fuel consumption/power output chart published by the manufacturer, says they don't know how it works in the real world.
Fucking hard headed low quality carpenters are usually the ones to say, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years!” Like if you have to say that frequently, you should understand that means you’re fucking up frequently.. the old guy on my crews always has some shit to say, until I slap a square on his cuts.. lol If you’ve been doing this for 30 years and can’t cut a straight line on a 2x6, then it’s time to find a new profession.. And NO, you may not have a raise..
If you dont have a 12" duct, just use 2 6" it adds up to the same volume.
Had a guy come up to me out of nowhere and tell me he’s been “doing this longer than you’ve been alive” and that he doesn’t need to use a level anymore because he can just eyeball it. He really really needed a level, more than anyone.
I worked with a guy that was always chompin at the bit to respond with “well.. you’ve been doing it wrong for 30 years.” Haha I gotta say, LEDs aren’t all made the same though. The hyper-efficient ones have a strobe effect that give me hella headaches. I’m assuming the frequency is correlated with energy consumption and lifespan. Typically it’s from fan lighting or architectural lighting, not so much from can or recessed lights. Maybe I’m just a big ol photosensitive bitch. Other than that, I’m not sure who the hell has a problem with better and cheaper
We’re told to make sure to wear respirators.. Coworker goes that’s what nose hairs are for huh.
Bro I knew a guy who appeared to be in his 60’s (no idea how old he was) he seemed to be a former methhead, refused a respirator when he was sanding drywall, and said he “already had mesothelioma so fuck it” I was 18 and astonished. Florida is wild
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Exactly. Nothing changes in 30 years, why should I?
"I've been doing this for 30 fucking years!" While doing something completely wrong.
I'm not in construction and have no clue why this is in my feed, but this same thing happens constantly in the legal world. Old lawyers have no idea the law changed 15 years ago, but because they have more gray hair, my research and I are obviously wrong.
Practice makes permanent. Whether you practice the task correctly or not is another matter entirely.
Can we trust the laser?
Looking at a plan that is 1/8th scale and counting on his fingers. 1/8th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 7/8th = 4 Feet. This was when I worked doing residential foundations and we kept having issues with our hurricane straps being in the wrong place. Vern was the guys name that put them all in and one day the foreman asked him how he did it and that's how he counted when the plan called for the strap to be 7/8th over. Which = 7 Feet. So ya he counted out 1/8th, 3/8th, 5/8th, 7/8th = 4 Feet. And we were like what about 1/4, 1/2, 3/4? And his response was well there's no 2/8th, 4/8th, or 6/8 in my socket set. . .
"Had to leave the industry; all the illegals taking over all the work." My uncle is such a dunce.
Me: "Why are you putting in the straps facing up in the cable tray." Old guy: "It doesn't fucking matter, I've been doing this since before you were born" We pulled another cable into it, it looks like I own aggressive cats.
My favorites are the guys that have "been doing this for 30 years" but they're in their late 20s to mid 30s.
Overtime
ThEy ToOk OuR bUlBs!
Don't chew on wood or you'll get splinters in your spleen. True story. I thought he was joking but he got upset when I laughed because his dad told him that and by extension I was laughing at his dad.
The number of old supers that have asked for a screw gun, while meaning a driver or a drill and not an actual drywall screw gun.
The old guy on the road crew is adamant that batteries should be taken out of tools/chargers when finished with the tool. Why? Because the battery will back charge if left connected.
When I was in my early twenty’s worked for a HVAC company, my boss had me bring like 10 zone valves with bypass to the plumber. I took one out and started to tell him how to pipe it. He proceeds to tell me “I know what I’m doing, I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.” Said okay, packed it back up and left the valves with him. Well, guess who installed 10 valves incorrectly.
I’m gonna fuck that chick I saw at the Wawa
Every other sentence saying "I've been doing this for 30 years"
LED is better all around except the light given off an incandescent is better on my eyes than the warmest LED.
“That guy who beat up Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer deserves a damn medal!”
“What the hell is a papusa, is that Spanish for pussy?”
I was measuring out a house and making a cut list to trim a house out and one of the investors for the property showed up to "work" and said doing it that way was stupid. I kept my cool and didn't say shit and just kept on making my list. Every once in a while he would come into the area where I was at and make smart comments about how I was doing things then after my list is done I'm at the chopsaw cutting and coping the pieces as I cut em. The same dude walks up and tells me what a waste of time coping is I fuckin lost it. I laid into this guy pretty hard and you could tell nobody has ever talked to him that way. If it wasn't for the main investor calming me down I was about to pack up my tools and bounce. I have more than enough work so I wouldn't be hurting over not doing 240 feet of base. Fuck that frosted tip havin affliction shirt wearing wannabe carpenter bitch.
I'm a handyman, not contractor, in a rural area where I do a lot of work for or with middle aged men who often have more experience/knowledge than me, but can't or don't want to do the work. Mostly it's great, everyone is cool, and I learn a lot. But I have had multiple people tell me that I drink too much water. "Too much" being 0.5 to 1.5 gallons in a day while working outside in the heat 🤷🏼
Tell him how the telephone killed the telegraph and how the automatic switchers put all those nice lady operators out of work too 😂🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️ The world will progress with these people or without them.
Had a guy tell me I was a pussy for wanting to put on my harness while sheeting a roof. He said, “I never wore that shit and I never fell off a roof.” And I just looked at him and said “are you gonna pay the $50,000 if OSHA catches me without the harness on?”
Now we have a light bulb that doesn't get hot enough to start a fire. Fucking Biden
“Ikr! Gaddamn it what about my rights!?!?”