Wondering if I'm nuts...

Nuts???????????????????

Hi, LowBoy.
"Just take their money and smile."

I have worked on jobs being run by people who would be flat out organising themselves into carnal satisfaction in a brothel with a grand in their hand. It's never a pleasant experience to see wasted time, resources, manpower and bucks going down the tube. All you can really do is to learn how NOT to do it while you are there and keep your eyes and ears open for something that can/will utilise your talents a little more productively, thus giving you a little more personal satisfaction.

Try not to let it get to you. Do what you are asked/told, as, when and how you are asked/told, make suggestions where you think they might do some good but also remember that some managers/supervisors resent any appearance or indication that any of the 'indians' might know more than they do as a 'chief'. It is pretty important as an employee to remember that somebody else signs the checks and that does give them some right to spend their dollars as they see fit.

The most important thing in this sort of situation is to not let the situation drag you down to its level. Always do the best that you are allowed to do. If it's not up your personal standards, just remember your own standards for future reference somewhere where they WILL be appreciated. Do what you can to lift their game.

I doubt that you are nuts at the moment. Whether that remains the case is mostly up to you.

I'm in the same boat. They want me as a foreman for a underground crew, but I don't feel I'm up to snuff. The questions I have to get me up to snuff can't be answered to my standers. The best thing is our safety meetings that are 45mins. long and not a word of it in English. Then I get ask if I have any questions and I just started laughing they didn't get it. Oh well I haven't worked for every company in Houston yet, so on to the next. I love my occupation, but its getting harder and harder to go to work every day. I've started taking off at noon once a week, hoping for rain, and praying for the day my wife makes enough $$$ I can be a stay at home husband.

Dozerboy said:

I'm in the same boat. They want me as a foreman for a underground crew, but I don't feel I'm up to snuff. The questions I have to get me up to snuff can't be answered to my standers. The best thing is our safety meetings that are 45mins. long and not a word of it in English. Then I get ask if I have any questions and I just started laughing they didn't get it. Oh well I haven't worked for every company in Houston yet, so on to the next. I love my occupation, but its getting harder and harder to go to work every day. I've started taking off at noon once a week, hoping for rain, and praying for the day my wife makes enough $$$ I can be a stay at home husband.

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Wow that sounds like you are really on a downer and not like you from other posts of yours I've read. Keep you chin up buddy.
I find it amazing that the safety briefing is not in English first then again in what ever is required for the other workers, I take it as an English speaker you are in a minority, in which case the briefing should be done again in English or issued in hard copy for your benefit.
If the company wants you as a foreman they obviously feel you have some experience to bring to the table, are you aware of what that is, English, leadership, equipment operating experience, your the biggest bloke there ?

My experience of underground work is big ££££$$$$ and although a new experience at the time not that different to what I had done before.
Good luck in your endeavours and keep you chin up :drinkup

Thanks AtlasRob, Deas and Dozerboy.

I am going through the "motions" every day and after my 3rd week in the trenches, it seems to be getting a little easier to handle all the nonsense. I am careful however, not to allow it to completely consume what little common sense I still possess.

At least I've been fairly busy with an excavator every day (almost every day.) That makes these 13 hr. days go by a bit smoother. In between I've been used as the mulch truck driver, the water truck driver, loaderman and a few other various tasks. Tuesday we were rained out while I was doing some common excavation on the haulroad, which is basically a road we are building out of the virgin material out of a 60 ft. deep cut, and is the consistency of talcum powder. Now drive 5 140K lb. haultrucks on this stuff all day in the rain, and it makes for a miserable deal not only for the drivers of them, but the guys like me who are trying to maintain this folly of a road.

So, to keep us working in the rain, the PM had 3 of us operators and 2 utility guys assembling and weaving wire into gabion baskets for 10 more hours.(Hate to see what that cost them in labor alone with 3 operators doing this.)
The baskets measure a meter square, 4 compartments. Thurday I was assigned to place them in a pond that has been an environmental nightmare to this project since day 1. The design calls for a gabion wall of 3 meters wide, by 3 meters high to segregate the fish in one side from the frogs in the other, and to chink the 4-6" stone in so there's no voids for fish and frogs to escape their domains. I wondered with deep, emotional thought... how come they were living together before we arrived with no problems...now we are seperating them. Isn't that a form of discrimination?:beatsme To top this all off, the specs say there must be 10 frogs in the frog pool once we have completed the wall. What if there's only 9? Now what? Where do you buy frogs? What if they don't match the spec's of the existing frogs? So much to ponder...

To make matters even more awesome, we have a fresh-outa-college, by-the-book young man with a white hardhat as an inspector representing the state of Vt. watching every move we make, and believe me, he is.
We pumped the pond dry, moved the 1turtle and the 10 frogs (work was shut down while the environmantal people handled this matter) over to the other side of the pond being held back by an inflatable water dam. Now it's my job in the 314C CR to get down in the quagmire, and establish a firm base as a subgrade for the gabion baskets.

They won't take my suggestion of using the same 4-6" stone that's going to be inside the baskets as a footing to firm it up, so they have me take what gravel I could steal from behind me that had to be cut anyways, and put it in the low spot which we just freshly pumped out.I mucked it out the best I could to hard ground to enable a wheel loader to bring me stone, but 2 trips down in there, and it was trashed. I don't have to explain to most what this looks like now. I build this "jello pad" to grade and set a basket, and begin to fill it with stone. They can only be filled a 3rd then need 2 wire crossties in each compt., then fill another 3rd, etc. Guys inside the compartments tamping this stone in with sledgehammers, too. Now the inspector takes a 4' level, and starts checking the level of the wire baskets. Right from the factory they're distorted, bent, and uneven, but here he is with his level. Then he shoots a grade, and what do you know...the jello pad changed elevation. Huh, who'd of ever expected such a thing?
Lastly, inspector Cluzeau determines that the gabion baskets are just shy (1/10th) of a meter high. Tried to explain without scarring his pride that once filled with stone, and nothing on either side to back them, that they bulge out, causing the shrinkage. He didn't care though...he shuts the project down and is making us remove the first one, and order 21 brand new baskets.They'll have to be special ordered, because these are standard 1 meter, but he insists that they have to be 1 meter WHEN FULL of stone. I pity the engineer at the mfg. facility who has to figure that one out.
This, and other hairbrained activites on this and many other jobs, are the sole reason why tigers eat their young.

Keeping a steady, calm and relatively steadfast perspective remains a challenge to me, but as Deas Plant said, "Just take their money and smile"...Good advice, Deas. I needed that.
I'm also under direct orders of a 23 yr. old brand new foreman who won't have anyone suggest anything either. Makes for a long day, but I'm determined to keep my cool, enjoy my 12 mile drive back and forth to home, and take my 33 hours average overtime every week, as long as I can now.:drinkup

There are different factors that play into how well compensated you are for a given job.

Some jobs pay for skill, some pay for hard work, and some pay for an ability to tolerate aggravation. Most jobs are some combination of the three. It's management's function to determine how they're spending their money.

Just remind yourself every day that this one is heavy on the latter of the three, and that, in one of those ways or another, you are earning every penny you take home....

digger242j said:

There are different factors that play into how well compensated you are for a given job.

Some jobs pay for skill, some pay for hard work, and some pay for an ability to tolerate aggravation. Most jobs are some combination of the three. It's management's function to determine how they're spending their money.

Just remind yourself every day that this one is heavy on the latter of the three, and that, in one of those ways or another, you are earning every penny you take home....

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Well said, digger. Early on in this project I determined I had to let go of my natural sense of trying to calculate costs and do everything as efficiently as possible. That doesn't pertain to this kind of jobplace. My current perspective now is of the latter you mentioned; I get paid to TOLERATE.

I said it, Lowboy, but I really don't believe in it. It's just a method of coping with what you can't change. By nature, you want to make them realize that paying people to "TOLERATE" is naturally non-productive at best. I'm the same.

That place would drive me nuts too. :Banghead



:beatsme

I'm with you 100%. I am surrounded by people that play the game and are way better at it than I could ever imagine to be.

Another form of toleration I find tough to cope with is the abusive operators. But unfortunately they are all part of a "clique" with the foremen involved as well. One kid in particular runs a brand new 850 Deere, a new PC 400, and anything else he can play with. It's always in high gear, forward and backwards, at all times whether it's on tracks or tires. He even wears his ballcap slightly cocked to the side, with a little **** eating grin on while he's beating on the equipment. I look at him and want to take a cattle prod with new batteries and show him the business end.

All my life I ran my family's equipment, friends and eventually my own...and learned one valuable lesson if nothing else. BE SMOOTH in every function. If it breaks, you don't work. This concept doesn't stand up in the crowd I'm surrounded by. Just because every piece of equipment there is delivered brand new from the dealer with 1-2 hrs. on the clock, doesn't give anybody the right to abuse it. There's a policy at work if you damage something and it costs $500.00 or more, you get an automatic 3 days off without pay. It's a shame to say that most of the damages to the machines there will show up long after they're turned back in off rental, and some other poor sap is going to be getting the short end of it's lifespan unfortunately. Driving a haultruck with your foot to the mat, then sliding to a stop for 10 feet doesn't help anything, nor does running track machines at full speed ahead/backward, or pounding on rocks with the bottom of a bucket with all it's force.

Agent...this is all good stuff to take into consideration. You want to seperate yourself from the crowd? Run everything like you own it, and would have to fix it yourself. You'll make the spectators like I just told of mad because of your smoothness and respect for the machines, but you will eventually be recognized by the right people for your actions and how you perform.:thumbsup

Thats is lowboy we need to learn to play the game. I wander where I need to go to school for that? Good luck I think if you can hang in there it would really pay off for you since the company you work for is just starting this division up. You may be able to get in to a position where you can straighten things out before they get accepted as the norm. Thats why I'm jumping ship I know there is no changing anything where I work. The guys have begun to accept me though I have earned a nickname "wheto". For those of you not familiar with "spanish" that is a slander for whites. Its ok I kind of get a kick out of the fact I bother them enough that they feel the need to give me such a nickname. Good luck lowboy

Dozerboy said:

Thats is lowboy we need to learn to play the game. I wander where I need to go to school for that? Good luck I think if you can hang in there it would really pay off for you since the company you work for is just starting this division up. You may be able to get in to a position where you can straighten things out before they get accepted as the norm. Thats why I'm jumping ship I know there is no changing anything where I work. The guys have begun to accept me though I have earned a nickname "wheto". For those of you not familiar with "spanish" that is a slander for whites. Its ok I kind of get a kick out of the fact I bother them enough that they feel the need to give me such a nickname. Good luck lowboy

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I hear you there Dozerboy, I just came from a similar deal 2 jobs ago myself.

Things are seemingly getting "better" by the day for me here. I've learned to adapt and overcome (I left out "improvise purposely, because that wouldn't be accepted,) the situations I'm in nowadays. After spending a couple of days doing some meaningless utility work with a couple laborers and getting to hear their perspective, I suddenly realized the way to beat the "can't take this anymore blues". One guy in particular stated, "If they want to pay me over $1,000.00 a week for doing NOTHING, I'm their man..." Once I looked at it from that angle it became a little easier to cope with the days when there's nothing meaningful to do, like today's probably going to be like.
There's several projects we're awaiting approval on, so it's pot luck when it comes to an implimented plan today and till we get a go ahead on some stuff.
Until then, I'll just "take their money and smile", as Deas Plant stated. It's not my personal attitude to do it that way, but it's all in your perspective how you'll survive this kind of sillyness. So far, it seems to work. I'm not coming home wanting to kick the dog, throw the cat in the pond, (although that is fun...they learn how to swim IMMEDIATELY,) and be a miserable sob 24/7.:drinkup

Wow.... this is quite the thread. I can sympathize with Lowboy on this one.

This year our company has adopted a no pot policy on site, which is great for people like me that don't smoke. Last week my foreman who is big on this policy smelled a couple of the pipelayers smokin up in the ditch. He went over they hid it and he let it go. Again a couple of others came up to him to tell him what was going on and he ignored it because he is afraid of losing a pipelayer that our main hoe operator likes. On friday morning someone wrote a lovely comment about our wheel loader operator in the port-a-john. He brought it up at yesterdays safety meeting and when the foreman refused to do anything about it he called Human Resources. They came out and we lost a operator thats been with the company for 15 years because he wasn't in the game to see a foreman that was an operator for the last 10 years and now won't stick up for his men.

As for abuse on equipment.... I have a brand new Dynapac packer on site, it has 300hrs on it. The woman running it shuts it down constantly during the day, at the end of the day she roars up to the laydown area and shuts the engine off at full throttle. 300hrs and already it pours out blue smoke constantly, the turbo is on the way out.

Burnout said:

Wow.... this is quite the thread. I can sympathize with Lowboy on this one.


As for abuse on equipment.... I have a brand new Dynapac packer on site, it has 300hrs on it. The woman running it shuts it down constantly during the day, at the end of the day she roars up to the laydown area and shuts the engine off at full throttle. 300hrs and already it pours out blue smoke constantly, the turbo is on the way out.

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Ouch:Banghead:Banghead Thats really bad, someone should say somthing to her for doing that, or just take her off that machine and put her on the old shovel for a day and see how she likes that. I cant stand seeing people treat equipment like that. How hard is it to stop at the end of the day, let it idle, while you do a walk around or go bs with the crew for a few minutes.

I have earned a nickname "wheto".

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Well you are kinda pale :roll:lmao:stirthepot. Anyway back on topic, I fell your pain Lowboy when I started my last job I was accustomed to the get it done as quickly as possible but still do it right and this company did not belive in this it was more like casualy walk over and wait . Well 3 years later I have gained 30lbs and become slightly lazy. Started a new job last week and fell like a truck hit me when I get home, luckly I still have my "go in and get it knocked out" mentality that I used to have but not the body for it . That will change with time if it don't kill me first, but I am much happier and I'm learning something not just going to work

MRM99 said:

Well you are kinda pale :roll:lmao:stirthepot. Anyway back on topic, I fell your pain Lowboy when I started my last job I was accustomed to the get it done as quickly as possible but still do it right and this company did not belive in this it was more like casualy walk over and wait . Well 3 years later I have gained 30lbs and become slightly lazy. Started a new job last week and fell like a truck hit me when I get home, luckly I still have my "go in and get it knocked out" mentality that I used to have but not the body for it . That will change with time if it don't kill me first, but I am much happier and I'm learning something not just going to work

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You're hitting close to home here, MRM99..

Today was a "down day", worked 13 hrs. and accomplished absolutely NOTHING in the process. There's no organization, plans, or communication whatsoever here on this job. I'm a "git er done" kind of guy, so this deal is like Chinese Water Torture to me. I try to maintain a neutral attitude about it all, but it's a tough act. I've got 21 year old supervisors who listen to "kill yer parents music" all day in their company supplied pickups, and don't seem to care about a guy who is looking for something to do to keep him occupied.
Being old enough to be their father is an awkward situation to be in.
The "foreman" today came over while I was getting a 3" pump primed to fill a water truck and opens the cap to the pump primer fill as I'm trying to get it to take a prime. I say "Hey, you're messing me up here"...he refused to take any advice and had me go do something else. I can't take those stupidity moments very well...:drinkup

Deere9670 said:

Ouch:Banghead:Banghead Thats really bad, someone should say somthing to her for doing that, or just take her off that machine and put her on the old shovel for a day and see how she likes that. I cant stand seeing people treat equipment like that. How hard is it to stop at the end of the day, let it idle, while you do a walk around or go bs with the crew for a few minutes.

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Actually for us, thats pretty normal behavior for equipment, almost all of our packers do that. A lot of the actual operators do the same. I was running our 710 yesterday for a bit when the service truck got there, I drove up, put my stabilizers and bucket down for greasing and let it idle. The service guy was in awe that the 710 idles, he thought as soon as you put the bucket on the ground the machine stalled. And lately I have had to take a new hoe operator under my wing... except he is 9yrs older than I am. He was sent to our site to run our Deere 270. His first day working beside the ditch he always walked his tracks parallel to the ditch with an unstable bank. I asked him what he would do if the bank gave way, he said put the bucket down. I looked at him and said no you can't there are guys standing there. I told him to put his idlers facing the ditch so that if something happened he at least had the chance to back himself out. At that point he got in a 5 minute argument with me that the idlers are in fact called bottom rollers.

Rant ON!.......
As for our crew.... Yesterday was an eventful day, we were cutting services for a commercial park and the kid cutting grade with the main hoe operator doesnt know how to read cut's on grade stakes so he cut a service around 6ft low on the far end so the sewer services were in fact draining to the building from the main. 17 guys stood around for over an hour trying to figure out what to do, with the foreman off playing in the dozer on the other side of the site because he doesn't have a clue whats going on most of the time. Their solution.... fill the deep cut up to grade with washed rock (3/4" stone) and then lay the services. I mean ok... yeah you filled it, but now you have used up a lot of rock at 1100 bucks a truckload and when they put the sand in for the bedding within a couple years the sand is going to creep into the cavities between the rock and the service is going to be all messed up again. I mentioned just let me backfill the service with a couple lifts and then re cut to the proper grade. The topman gave me a speech that it would cost too much money. It would have taken 15 minutes but nooooooooooo.

I know I have made many a pic posts here, and talked very well about the company I work for, and I am by far a company man. But over the last week or so I have been re-evaluating whether I want to continue with this crew... and if I can't be transferred to another crew... I'm goin to run a D10 on the pipeline. Make me some good money and go visit Alco up in Ft Crack!

Rant OFF.

Well guys I told you that I am now a civil servant but at this stage I feel like taking a long run off a short pier ,cant go into details but but lads if it appeared in police acadmey or some such comedy we would all laugh with the opinion no one would be that stupid but my god its beyond laughable with no one responsible and no one gives a dam ;in fact they live in an unreal world its so bad' well look there's ,one excavator is a 06 and has only 650hrs on it genuine ,no operator changes a bucket the fitter does ,etc dont know how long more I can stick it ,if they moved any slower they would be in reverse

Started my new job today. It was amazing there was communication in english even, and I didn't redo anything 3 or 4 times. Might just have a winner.

Dirtman2007 said:

I've yet to see another 20yr old who has abilitly or willingness to do what I do on a day to day basis.

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hey hey now....lets not generalize...sure 99% of people our age are lazy xxxxs...but you've seen all my pictures on the "other site"...HAHA...that was all my work

you don't look too willing to do "anything" based on your comments in that manure thread in the Ag. Section of this site

LowBoy said:

The design calls for a gabion wall of 3 meters wide, by 3 meters high to segregate the fish in one side from the frogs in the other, and to chink the 4-6" stone in so there's no voids for fish and frogs to escape their domains. I wondered with deep, emotional thought... how come they were living together before we arrived with no problems...now we are seperating them. Isn't that a form of discrimination?:beatsme To top this all off, the specs say there must be 10 frogs in the frog pool once we have completed the wall. What if there's only 9? Now what? Where do you buy frogs? What if they don't match the spec's of the existing frogs? So much to ponder...

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OMG Lowboy that is funny!

Hang in there as long as you can, until something better comes along.

I feel your pain, we are currently working for a large out of state GC that only cares about the cost of the job not the quality. No change orders, just get it done whatever you gotta do, but it's me that has to give the warranty.:Banghead Needless to say, this is the one and only job I will be doing for these guys.

I work with a pretty good group most of the time, well alot of the time I am alone, but the other guys I do have to work with are all pretty good. Only beef I do have is when they run MY excavator. Now being in a rock quarry is not easy on things from the start but pulling rock down off a face with the drive motors facing it is bad enough, have had one time guy wasn't on it for 10 mins and ran a rock between the tracks and under the cab ripping the travel lines(took 4 days to get them). Amazing as it is, the counterweight is NOT that bad, the guy who ran it before I started had repainted it before and in the year I've been here it only has the very bottom scratched up(I will fully admit getting into some rocks at the quarry myself). Anyone who runs equipment and says they have NEVER done any of those things are lying through their teeth. Even good operators have some things happen once and a while. I didn't get mad at the guy running it when he tore the travel line, I explained to him what the best way was to go about what he was doing. He hasn't had a rock on the tracks since. Some just dont' know what is right and wrong. Others just DON'T care.

Trbo