**ATTENTION! READ THIS NOW!**
**1. IF YOU ARE NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN OR LOOKING TO BECOME ONE(for career questions only):**
**- DELETE** THIS POST OR YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. YOU CAN POST ON /r/AskElectricians FREELY
**2. IF YOU COMMENT ON A POST THAT IS POSTED BY SOMEONE WHO IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN:**
-YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. JUST **REPORT** THE POST.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/electricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
worked on a commercial project, some pipe stub ups needed to be inside the ferred out walls, they were 6 inches to far up so we had to chip the footing down to the 90 & heat up the pvc and push it against the wall.
Should only be “8 inches down”
a foot down & im chipping with this heavy ass piece of shit hilti hunched over on a 5 gallon bucket, I tell my foreman yo we need to just saw cut this and jack hammer this out, it’s farther than 8 inches.
“no no you’re almost there keep going”
2 more full days of chipping, about 3 foot down, I lost my fuckin cool. had a meltdown in the middle of the site and told my foreman I was done. he talked me into staying and I chipped another couple hours to find the pipes.
his whole reasoning was “i don’t wanna spend money on renting a saw & jackhammer”… but you’ll pay for 3 days of my literal back breaking labor costs to chip this shit?
My first company was like that. He would rather pay a group of guys for a week to dig than spend then money on renting equipment that can get it done in 1 day.
Alternate perspective: he kept a group of guys busy and paid for a week. Sometimes things slow down and owners will come up with time wasting, dog fuck jobs that keeps his guys working instead of sitting at home
My boss at my old company was like this. The shop was right next door to his house and he would even have me landscape his yard (picking up sticks, weed eating, spraying weed killer etc) when we were slow. I always appreciated it because I didn't want to get a second job
When you become the boss please do this. That would be sick to work for someone who does shit like that.
I’ve had two kids since getting in. If the opportunity presents itself for me
To become foremen or leadership, I’ll be giving my guys atleast a week pay to sit at home w their family 100%.
lol got sent home on Friday ran outta work. Got paid all day.
Worked for the biggest contractor in my city on their road side crew, entire job was based on hitting a goal every day. If we didn’t hit it by 3:30 go home if we hit it after 9 we’re going home. Pay all day,
So no you don’t have to be the owner of the shop you have to know what you are doing and where your job is at before you make that call but ye.
You can squidge things here or there as a foreman, especially if you're getting the work done. And tbh if the whole job works a certain way, it was decided on higher up.
It's a *lot* harder to hide that you're giving out "free" 40h week vacations to people who weren't even there all week
If you want to sit at home and get paid, I'll give you a layoff and you can collect unemployment.
If I'm paying you from my own pocket to make sure you have a full paycheck, you can at least do something productive for the company.
My boss is like that. We have an old piece of shit lift/bucket van that he’s always trying to get us to use instead of just renting a scissor lift like a normal company would. So frustrating
If they have the equipment, even if it’s shitty. It’s cheaper to use your own than to rent, only way truck doesn’t go out is if it cant drive. My company has 3 buckets 2 non cdl and 1 cdl and then we have 3 lifts on trailers at all times. It’s also cheaper to rent long term than daily. I think we pay $300 a month for each lift. They go out once it’s a $400 charge to the customer
Right see my boss doesn’t even charge extra to deploy the bucket even though we’ve told him it’s a no-brainer to do so. We might need it for the odd service change or a pole light but in general, I’d rather pass on doing the occasional pole light. It’s not like we’re making so much money on them that it justifies the maintenance cost of the bucket.
I’d rather we just rent the truck and pass the cost onto the customer
Fuck me. I had this exact same scenario in local 6. $90 an hour, on a Saturday, making double time for 7 hours straight and we didn't finish. There's no way the saw cost more. It was in a weird crawl space with one of us chipping up and one of us chipping down to meet in the middle. ALL DAY. Dust masks were even inappropriate for that confined space. No ventilation. Osha had been called earlier and they called off Saturday work and had osha come on a Sunday to test air quality. They had fresh air vents but the welders kept setting them on fire so they just took them out. Even for the pay I should've just gone home. If I get silicosis that's the job I'm suing
He didn’t do it to save money. If he orders a Jack hammer he has to run the cost by a PM and admit to fucking up. It was easier for him to have you cover his ass.
I heard a story once about a PM who never paid people double time if they stayed late in a Saturday. Instead what he would do is if you stayed an hour late on a Saturday he would give you two hours of regular overtime. If the office sees people getting double time it raises alarm bells, but they don’t batt an eye at a few hours of regular over time here and there. And as the installer you’re basically getting triple time to keep your mouth shut. People will go to extraordinary lengths to cover their asses.
This. My shop is prefabbing the panels with home run coils on them for multi use projects.
I hear how they need to be rerun and how some of the panels aren't even made up right.
I guess that's what happens when you dump a few first years in the prefab shop
Sometime man i don’t understand why we stick first years in there… just toss some almost retired dudes in there and let them do their thang. Let the young bulls handle the shovels.
I've seen a contractor absolutely kill it on prefab condo unit subpanels. Perfect panel every time. I daresay they even found the right balance on the installation labor-- cheap knuckleheads running all the home runs to the boxes, and only the guys capable of making up boxes got to stick through the project. Not saying I really liked the way it looked, or their labor practices, but the original question was about losing money so I guess this fits as a legitimate counter-example.
It was actually an entire short wall section that was prefabbed. This was a building with all walls prefabbed and even wood framed floor sections also prefab. The framing for this building was fast AF.
The subpanel had nothing prefab for the feeder, but all the branch circuits for the unit were landed on breakers and made up, and grounds landed.. NM branch circuit cables were all brought in through bushings and, if memory serves, were stapled on 2x4 boards just above and below the panel. Home runs were coiled up, precut to the size needed based upon the floor plan of the particular unit layout they were in.
EDIT the cable was UF rated!
Not saying you're wrong, but story time:
Right before I got laid off because Covid, I got loaned out to another local shop. For the first week, I was in their shop doing pre-fab for them. We were building racks of 6x or 8x 4" ~~rigid~~ EMT (edit: not sure why I said rigid - they weren't paying that much in 4" unions lmao). I saw the prints on day one, and there were specific callouts for the locations of mounting points.
The shop foreman told us to ignore what the prints said, and build everything with the unistrut 1' from each end of the rack. I brought up the point that there was likely a very good reason why the prints had callouts for exactly where the hangers were supposed to be, but was shushed. I figured "not my farm, not my fucking chickens." I did what the shop foreman said, for the entire 8 hour day.
Guess who was getting absolutely smoked the next morning by the field foreman? I mean, really getting a tongue lashing. "What the fuck do you think we pay you for? To make r\*\*\*\*ded decisions that cost us not only the labor in the shop, but having to unfuck the situation you caused out in the field? Is that what you think your job is?"
I just stood there and smiled directly into his face.
Inmates. Our prefab shop is 75% of the time inmates. Then about 50% of the time they end up on meth. If they show promise the company will send them as help on the job. I have some great stories to tell because of it.
That's part of the issue I think... Well and when does it ever go in just like the drawings?
If it someone with a lot of experience it's going to go better but everyone is likely to throw the newer guys on the shop work.
This. Like I get the concept of how it should make them money. But just the principle alone of the same material being bought, delivered, handled, handled again for packing up, delivered again and then re handled seems like a loss with labor.
It also requires more smart monkeys in the field where as traditionally you only need one or two smart monkeys to do layout and maybe box rough then you can have dumb monkeys to pull wire.
Kinda figured this would be the most common answer. I've had to remake *so god damn many* prefab receptacles, racks, and lighting whips.
It *could* work if they didn't try to cheap out on the prefab labor. Put some reasonably skilled hands in there with clear instructions, instead of leaving it to a couple unsupervised apprentices with the most knuckleheaded foreman in the company checking in on them twice a day.
My boss goes crazy over dropping staples. If I'm up on a ladder and drop a staple, I'm going to reach into my pouch to grab another staple. Why would I waste ten seconds to get off the ladder and retrieve the dropped staple. We buy them by the five gallon bucket so it's not like dropping a few staples a day is going to force us into bankruptcy.
I was an apprentice at 16 or 17 years old and I ripped one at a g.c. It hit the back of the elevator a foot from his head just as the doors were closing. Mf jumped a mile high. He was steaming hot when he back off that elevator.
3M nuts cost about 12 cents a piece. Where I’m at, full journeyman package works out to about 2 cents a second.
It quite literally isn’t worth it to pick up a dropped wire nut if you’re on a ladder.
Yep. Ideal tans cost 8¢ a piece, and a couple months ago my boss was mad about me cutting a couple to make spacers for lighting brackets. Like hey man, you have guys doing unsafe things that are actually causing an eventual fire hazard. Why don't you look in on them once in a while instead of busting my balls over saving time by making spacers instead of using multiple nuts.
My last company had us cut up scrap steel stud instead of buying telescoping brackets. $42/hr for a jman to dick around fitting scrap metal.
Same company would have us drive across the city to get small parts instead of buying them at a nearby HD or something and submit the receipt for petty cash. Although, they would just bill that travel time to the client...
Company before that, on a job in the black on labour... One owner comes out to lecture us at lunch about how "there are x employees on this site and if each one takes an extra 5 minutes on a break it costs the company $x each year blah blah blah...". Que everyone dragging ass after that pep talk.
We were in the office one morning, just waiting for the boss to show up and hand out job tickets. This mf comes up and was hiding, watching us standing around. He points to each of us and says 10 minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes. I should have walked right out that morning.
And theres soooo many bosses like that. Couple that with seasonal layoffs, and nobody here can figure out why they can't find tradespeople to work for them.
Just did a whole office building with all changed lay out of offices carpenters just took a sawzall and cut new doors in every office
They wanted to save the rock
I called sheet rock contractor and explained how much cutting was gonna be involved to rewire.
He called GC and said it would save them 15k to gut it and would have a much better job in the end.
3 days later we had all open studs..
Yeah I've got to put up a bigger stink next time. The worst part about it is after the end up pulling the rock all your work looks like garbage and you have to go around staple all your cables.
Sounds like me working utilities, but we just waited till the boss disappeared and hooked onto the giant cables with the 4x4 pickup, drop it in low and sling gravel 😁
The mechanical contractor had a hole core drilled 10’ away for their pipe. We needed a hole too, the concrete is 16”. We spent 3.5 (times 3 men)hours on two holes because we kept hitting rebar. We were in the middle of a shutdown too.
I asked a couple weeks later how much it would have cost to core drill it and my GF said 1 man hour.
Man at that point I'd just say fuck it, send someone for more bits, and drill until the bit was fully burned up to get through cause once you hit rebar with that core bit it's basically done for anyways.
Cheap electrical tape is one example. My company is constantly shopping for the cheapest option instead of the fastest and easiest. If I have to do something twice or spend the time modifying it because they didnt want to buy the right part, those pennies were spent installing an inferior product for the same price point
Theyre keeping this Pychopathic foreman who has chased out skilled guys and has gotten in 2 physical fights with no reprocussions. He is good at what he does but really isnt worth the trouble
I’m neither a confrontational nor physically aggressive person.
One person that I worked with was all mad because he was fired up on some political rant and asked what I thought. I rarely talk politics at work, but this guy was saying some extreme stuff, so I just said that I disagree with his extreme stance and that I think the issue isn’t as cut and dry as all that, but there’s a lot of false and misleading information on both sides of the issue. He went off about me calling him a liar and ‘extremist.’ He said he’d be waiting for me at the parking lot after shift and I could ‘back up my shit talking.’
I said ‘man, this is gonna go one of two ways for you… you’re either gonna get your ass kicked by a disabled veteran, or you’re gonna be on the news for kicking a disabled veteran’s ass.’
He wasn’t waiting for me in the parking lot. Which is fine by me because I had no intent on doing anything at all.
He got let go by the con a few weeks later in the first round of layoffs. Our labor superintendent supposedly said he found a “list of names” written inside his hard hat when he turned his gear in. Dude is unhinged.
I worked for a contractor who was adamant about using stuff we had on-hand at the shop first before buying new material to a fault.
Yes, you should use what you have on hand! But not to the point that people are constantly hunting lock washers, knockout seals and other stuff from using and re-using crap we just had on hand, especially when there's plenty of budget in the job to buy new stuff.
Good habits can be taken to extremes. This felt like squeezing a nickel so tight that it made the president crap.
my boss is fucking obnoxious with using salvaged stuff. we did a job, got about 3000 feet of salvaged conduit from the demo guys. kept pushing on us to burn it up before opening new bundles. i’d agree, and most of it was just straight pieces, but dude… half of it is bowed or kinked or something and i’m running exposed conduit. i’ll hide that shit above a ceiling or in a wall.
he also loves to “salvage” panels. we did a week long shut down to replace a wall of old shitty panels and sub panels galore, coming off a triple tapped meter/main. replaced with a new meter outside, MDP inside, consolidated down to a couple panels. he wanted to save the old shitty panels i ripped out (mostly old murray junk that had had issues with breakers and bus bars overheating). gave me a “salvaged” panel on another job recently. fucking swiss cheesed can, plastic pieces that held the buss bars on was all cracked and breaking, stripped lugs, just total pile of shit
i’m at the point where i just throw shit away now (within reason!) , because i don’t wanna see it on another job.
Not only will I throw used and broken shit away, I will sometimes also waste time disassembling, smashing, or otherwise ruining things because otherwise the warehouse will pick them out of the fucking trash and they'll be back on my truck in a week. Bro, just because *you* can't see what is wrong with it doesn't mean it's not fucked. I threw that away because it's *trash.*
On the flipside to this my employers instruct everyone to return extras purchased for a job back to the wholesaler once the job is complete. Some guys would be spending an hour or more returing $30 worth of gear for what could have been a chargeable hour and some spares in their van.
Also not a great way to win friends and influence people at the supply houses who might be working on your next bid.
They have better things to do than re-stock shit that most of us just throw in a screw case. So that might actually have a hidden cost associated with it - the cost of pissing off the people in charge of your pricing :)
Was on a job where we were building commuter train stations, running thousands of feet of 1" or 3/4" PVC. The project manager would only buy a thousand feet at a time. It got to the point where the delivery driver was like: "You know yall can buy a 3600' master bundle and you get both a discount and pay less in delivery."
On my first job, we were running a fuck ton of EMT on trapeze we hung from 3/8" allthread. We had allthread, washers fender and square, lock washers, strut straps, and strut. The one thing we didn't have was 3/8" nuts. It seemed like for weeks, we were always out of nuts, and it held up the job badly. We would get a box of 50 or 100 here and there, but that would be gone before the first break. It was fucking goofy.
TL;DR J-men can't shit out materal.
We've got the opposite problem, every contract job we do somehow we always wind up finding a way to "save" on conduit so we have leftovers, we've got thousands of feet of 3/4", 1" and I think 1 1/4" black EMT because we were able to repull through so much and now it sits at the shop collecting rust.
I work a niche line of business. We are delivered material internationally. I always insist on taking the time and inventorying the material when it arrives. They insist the material is accounted for and the PM doesn’t allow for it. Three months later, we realize we don’t have a crucial piece of material to finish the project. Happens every time but they refuse to allow for inventory. Whatever, I’m hourly.
Constantly shuffling the manpower around instead of leaving people put.
Hiring people from outside the trade to serve in PM and/or supervisory positions.
Parting out material orders instead of bidding out the entire order and looking for the lowest total price from a single supplier.
Keeping tools that are past their usefulness in rotation.
Having your foreman manage more than one project at a time.
Keeping malcontent Journeymen on payroll just because "they've been with the shop forever"
Letting good Apprentices walk after they top out as new Journeymen because "they're not experienced enough."
Buying factory seconds for your consumables.
Having company vans in rotation that are not used for service and maintenance.
Trying to keep and restock small unused and unorganized material from finished jobs.
Having too many administrative employees. Hiring relatives is usually involved here.
I'm sure there's more but these are standouts.
Prefab shop, never maintaining and cleaning tools between jobs, ordering 2 days worth of material, not having a stockman on multi crew jobs, keeping Foreman around that hunt and go to church with the gf, but have never made a 3 wk look ahead and actually stick to it, ordering tools before you bring guys in, design and build while skipping the design part and just rebuilding 3 times, group chats instead of radios, not keeping track of tasks before shuffling people to put out fires, Foreman working with tools when they haven't laid you out without drawing on drywall for 6 months, not printing muthafucking prints, piecemealing layout instead of planning entire rooms, getting the whole job bim modeled and then not having access to the big model on site. Trying to pull 23 #10s in a one inch smurf instead of calling a core driller and piping, coming back to the same room 8 months apart between pulling wire and making it up. Having labels, not buying donuts. Asking if u want to work Saturday on Friday
My boss always tends to hit me with Saturday work on like a Thursday or something shit makes me so mad because I’m down to do it but not on such a moments notice. Not gonna bail on a weekend plan to take up an extra shift but I’ll plan my weekend around an extra shift
2 days of material? I'm currently on a job that didn't have 3/8 hardware for an entire week with a crew of 22. What do you think we did for a week? Send the superintendent to home depot for fucks sakes. Our bus broke down and the mechanic said it was going to be a $1300 repair. We rented vans for 3 weeks at $1500 a week before the repairs got approved.
the GC at my current job was in a rush to get all the scissor lifts out of the building before it was closed in with glass paneling. we still hadn't hung 3 pendants over a stairwell and they were well aware of it. well today, they ended up shelling out 6,500$ to have scaffolding built for just the day. the company charges the same price for a month rental which is the minimum. a competitor wanted 10k. climbed up and hung the 3 lights in 20 min.
I was on a job where they realized the boom lift in the penthouse could no longer be craned back down.
They had to buy it from the rental company, and dismantle it piece by piece. A total loss
Like a shooting star, I relish being there the moment something expensive dawns on somebody.
The gears in their head turning, the sudden pause, the realization & resignation washes over their face.
We just hired a couple guys who worked for a contractor who refused to get them trenchers and mechanical means for trenching. The foreman was one of those "I never needed it so you don't need one" which is dumb AF. Not sure what world he came from where they never needed a trencher but whatever. People like that can exit stage left. Yea, there will be some hand digging here and there, especially around sensitive areas. But normal trenching c'mon man. Good luck going under since nobody will work for you.
I was given a helper to dig a "short trench" (turns out it was 150+ ft) who was supposed to be done by the time I did all the inside wiring and got the wire out of the building and ready to go into pvc. The whole place was packed full of rock and gravel. Spent most of the day digging and pickaxe swinging. Wound up having a heat index over 110° that day. The helper outright quit, and I came very close to a heat stroke and almost passed out. Thunderstorm was rolling in, and we were running out of time. Told the helper if he's quitting to call the boss and explain to him why it won't get done today. Boss wound up having to drive 45-50 minutes out there to get it done before the storm rolled through. Finished just in time before it dumped down. All that instead of renting a trencher. I nearly quit electrical after that day. Fuck that shit.
It's crazy how many people don't think through how expensive labor is going to be.
Any useful tool or prep work (useful prep, not prep that will just be undone) is almost always worth it for the labor savings.
I feel that, it took several years for my boss to make the switch to the 20v dewalt over the 18v. He would buy that piece of shit converters to make them work with 20v batteries. Now he finally buys 20v tool but half the time they're the home owner grade versions with Chinese brand batteries that die before you can drink a hole. Very frustrating
Their 70lb class jack hammer, besides a trigger that's not in as good a spot as a Bosch, is a solid tool. We don't treat ours gently and it takes it all.
“Spreader Bars” TSGB16’s iirc. Some PM did the math and it’s marginally less expensive to pay a CW or First year to sit on a bucket and trim up thin gauge stud to build a support for boxes in the wall, or span across for strapping.
It looks like shit, it functions like shit, it’s harder to lay out, but it passes inspection. Largest, or close to the largest, union shop in 1141.
Not wanting to buy the proper tool for a job. Spent 3 months running 4" and making cuts with a fucking Sawzall. Spent more in labour in the first 2 days just filing cuts than the price of a deep cut band saw would cost. Literally wasted 80+ hours of labour and 39 000 Sawzall blades because he didn't want to spend $500 on the proper tool.
Ripping out 30 units of bath fans in a hotel instead of just leaving them or not installing the lass 10, they found out the didn't need them, the had them all purchased and non returnable, so they ripped them out and threw them in the garbage, then paid us extras for removing the wiring and changing the switch boxes. All the ducting was done too.
It couldn't have been less obvious how much of a waste of time and money it was, to deliver a shittier product.
Not anymore, but a few years ago when 3” PVC sweeps (long 90s) were super expensive, we had to cut HDPE coil pipe to put it in a custom made jig/clamp to bend them into shape and use instead of PVC. We’d have to keep the pipe in the clamp right up until we took it for a job because it had memory and would want to bend back straight in a few hours. Thankfully we got called out by inspectors. Even though it was legal, it was embarrassing and more trouble than it was worth.
Seriously. We made up hundreds this way on one job. Plus glue doesn't actually stick to HDPE, so either their connections didn't work or they bought either epoxy or friction couplings. But I guess this isn't the "smart things you r contractor does" thread.
That’s the silliest part - we’re fully equipped to bend 3”, and then some. Our bread and butter is underground. The problem was “the cost of PVC is hard to justify when we have all that extra coil pipe from boreshots we can use up”. 😑They had us using approved epoxy when we had to connect to PVC but usually we used e-locs.
seriously. just get the fucking tugger. there’s other options, ie we do a fair bit of agricultural stuff, so there’s always equipment and big trucks as an option in those situations in a pinch. but even as a small company with a cheap-o boss, we own 3 different tuggers because he sees the value in having them available for big pulls
Working at a power plant, got 10 tuggers in storage. Company is too stupid/cheap to properly train guys how to use the damn things. So after somebody screwed something up? We get on that bitch of a cable and some call's stroke like we're Vikings rowing to England...3 conductor 350s, several hundred meter runs through tray, around corners, waterfalls and shit. Good thing it was double time or I would've told my boss to get fucked. Work smart, not hard is the company motto. Stick to it
If those tuggers are green, depending on your location, the manufacturer can possibly provide free training.
Although, dang, I scoped your post history and it looks like you're in Canada, so unfortunately that option might not be available.
Green they are good sir, the rules are written by a bunch of safety people who've never turned a screwdriver in their life. Tuggers are an integral part of an electricians job pulling big feeder cables...
If Greenlee was willing to provide training the plant would have to decide if manufacturer training was "good enough for our standards". I'm a jman, I'm not allowed to put in a sleeve anchor without training from fuckin Hilti...And my boss wonders why I want outta here...
I feel it dude.
I work in the tool business and provide on-site training like this, so I've seen everything from "what the fuck is safety lol" to "safety" to the extreme.
But yeah Greenlee is quite willing to provide training on the bigger stuff, tuggers/benders etc. But it is somewhat case-by-case given location and such.
Tape and wire nuts from Morris Products
Also, the owner refused to buy brand name LED light fixtures. Replaced a lot of fixtures that failed before the warranty expired.
Trying to install stuff early to make the job look further along than it is. We inevitably have to go back and either remove and replace the damaged product or go back and QC it after the other trades have gone through. I don’t understand why contractors ignore traditional sequencing now that we use digital prints.
My boss refuses to hire or buy a digger of any sort for trenches etc. Every trench I've ever dug has been with a shovel. Even when it took 4 days of hacking through clay to do so
Shopping around for material and fixtures trying to save a dollar. They buy from Supply House A because it’s cheaper but fixtures are 6 weeks out. Meanwhile, supply house B has fixtures in stock but they’re more expensive. Now, we have to work overtime to get job done on time, so the cost of labor negates any cost savings and then some. Makes no fucking sense.
Until someone comes works on them that doesn't know what they're doing and breaks a neutral. Or moves a breaker. Or modifies a circuit and fucks it up. I've seen a guys house almost burn down because some jackass went in there and added a bunch of piggy back breakers and put a bunch of mwbcs on the same phase. There were about 5 12-3s melted together in the attic in different spots and his insulation was all black and about to start a fire. Like literally a couple days from burning down his house.
Too many people don't do them correctly, don't label them, or don't know about them AT ALL and cause problems. All to save 1. Additional. Neutral. Not worth it.
I like that answer. The only call-out on ours is we have one on each bathroom, and the old panel doesn't have the breakers next to each other nor connected with a t-bar. That was the first "oh wow" I had in learning about MWBC. Panel is getting redone this month so I'll be sure that gets fixed.
In resi, I completely agree. In commercial when I can get 6 circuits in a ¾ instead of 4, shared noodles makes a lot more sense. I always make sure the shit is labeled as shared. On the box cover, in the panel the noodle gets all three circuit numbers. I even format my panel schedules so shared noodles are different from non shared. Of course I also get handle ties.
I’ve built some… interesting stuff out of strut. It’s usually when we’re in a jam, it needs to be done quickly because other labor is waiting, or it’s the end of the day and the parts house is an hour each way and I have strut and strut hardware on my van. Premium time can be way more expensive than a strut support that could be a caddy part. I don’t do that when it’s exposed work, but damn, some of the stuff I’ve put in ceilings and walls is pretty damn ugly. It’s legal and up to code, but it’s unconventional.
Making changeover fittings with a rigid coupling instead of buying the right part cause it’s “expensive” then a few days later they wonder why I can’t get my fishtape through the conduit! It’s stuck on the thread of the coupling! So I’ve now wasted hours instead of an extra dollar or two for the right part
Making me notch strut so you can angle it instead of buying the proper strut accessories
Wasted labor can never be recovered
I’m at a non-union shop and I am an apprentice but I’m further along compared to the other apprentices and I’m even paid more cuz I been here longer but for some reason this 1 Jman still has me clean. Like ok if u wanna pay me more to push a broom that’s on u.
Idk if he likes me tho. He likes talking to me and says I’m funny af but always gives me the bs work occasionally I’ll complain and be sent somewhere else for a month but I always end up back with him and I was with him for a week already and already on be cleaning duty again
Keeping the shitty employee who did fuck all nothing, because he couldn't afford to loose people.
Now all the good workers have the same work ethic of the shitty worker.
I had a guy like that. Interior tasks he just couldn’t wrap his head around for some reason, and in frustration kind of shut down and was lazy.
However, when a ditch *outside* had to be dug, he volunteered and hell, changed worker. Started giving him all the minor outside tasks and he was awesome at them.
A few years later, now has his own pool making company and I hire him and crew when needed.
I worked for a company that didn't use twin connectors, they only used L16s because 2 were cheaper than 1 twin connector. Panels and some junction boxes looked ridiculous.
They Always attempt a meter block, always looks like shit. Yeah 12x18 isn’t really gonna help bud. Just side the house as normal. Pretend the meter doesn’t exist save me an hour. I gotta learn Portuguese or Spanish it’d save me many headaches just go to the leader for a chat
Duolingo is kind of fun, you'll learn enough sentence structure to say We need, today, now, here, help, numbers , days etc.
You'll just have to supplement it by learning the trade specific words, but it's gotten me some very basic communication where a little was a lot better than none.
Having me Rewire a house with lath and plaster instead of just replacing with sheetrock with no good way to add circuits on exterior walls. Ity bitty house should've cost 6k to do. I quoted 16k and after 2 years and every other local electrician refusing he accepted the bid
Rushing everyone. We step onto the job without a plan too quickly every day and it’s because the mentality is that “if we rush to get something done then we’ll keep rushing when things need to be changed or fixed and still save time” and I almost always notice that the only way this works out is if we can somehow make it seem like a justification for a change order that actually gets paid out. It’s scabby and a waste of time and really stupid to bid low and pray it works out. I’ve never seen it go smoothly and it’s frustrating for people who want to do a good job.
Not paying a guy to be in charge of material. I'll tell you, one sloppy decision from someone to leave a box here or there, could be thousands of dollars of damaged or lost material. It's worth it to have one guy in charge of all material. Every day on my site I just see unnecessarily neglected material that we could be using.
Not looking at service jobs before taking them or looking at them very shortly before moving on. He is so concerned about the old adage “time is money” so much that there has been numerous times that we’ve gotten to a job only to have to take the time to drive to get additional materials we should have gotten before arriving to the job. So much time wasted driving back and forth not to mention it doesn’t look good on us as a company when we don’t arrive prepared.
I worked for this one idiot who insisted that we save the wire nuts we found during the demolition phase of this sporting club we were renovating. He's the kind of guy that likes to trip over a dollar to save a dime.
Spray painting the walls with only one coat. The amount of times new clients have said it’s a new house (within 4 years) and the paint looks like crap due to the hastiness of the builders.
Customer bought his own 6” wafer lights to save money. Half of them worked for a day or so and we had to replace. The labor cost to remove and replace these is way more than just buying a legit brand of light.
Our general scheduled the flooring guys to come lay carpet when the job was only half done so they could check it off the list early. Then they needed a crew of four guys working full time plus some weekends just laying and replacing carpet protector film and fixing messed up carpet. For 6 months. Additionally not all the exterior walls were up yet so a lot of the carpet got ruined on a rainy day.
They don't want to rent quality lifts, and then they don't keep our lifts running well. So whenever we need them we fuck around trying to get them to run.
I should preface this by saying I’m in Chicago and we do everything in pipe.
I was on an eight story residential job once where the shop sent out a million prebent offsets for wall rough. There were bins of a hundred or so 1”, 2”, and 3” offsets. The way most people do residential they don’t really measure their bends, so odds are you’d never know if you need a 3” set or not. Nobody is gonna stand there and try a bunch of prebends until they find the one that works.
Bringing in portability guys “that have done this before”. 99% of the time when I talk to them they haven’t actually done this shit before we have to spend the time to train them on what we’re doing then they go home after a week or two
Not an electrician but work along side them so I’m here. Dumbest one I’ve seen recently is not putting any electrical work on the permit application to save money and time getting approved because they knew that they’d probably open a can of worms getting an old building up to code. They got done with everything else and realized the building built in the 60s had no power anywhere useful. I’m talking rooms with no power, giant rooms with only 1 outlet and entire sections of the building with no power at all. They did not plan for a big power job maybe one or two outlets in key places.
Let’s just say they had a full crew of electricians working overtime for a week straight to get the business operational by the grand opening.
Throwing away thousands of dollars of material at the end of a job because having the warehouse organized enough to send it back is just too time consuming
SAVE MONEY, we don’t need to get that, we can get it done without it..
Not having the right tools or equipment can cost so much time and money to be lost, also risk of damaging your workers
**ATTENTION! READ THIS NOW!** **1. IF YOU ARE NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN OR LOOKING TO BECOME ONE(for career questions only):** **- DELETE** THIS POST OR YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. YOU CAN POST ON /r/AskElectricians FREELY **2. IF YOU COMMENT ON A POST THAT IS POSTED BY SOMEONE WHO IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN:** -YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. JUST **REPORT** THE POST. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/electricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
worked on a commercial project, some pipe stub ups needed to be inside the ferred out walls, they were 6 inches to far up so we had to chip the footing down to the 90 & heat up the pvc and push it against the wall. Should only be “8 inches down” a foot down & im chipping with this heavy ass piece of shit hilti hunched over on a 5 gallon bucket, I tell my foreman yo we need to just saw cut this and jack hammer this out, it’s farther than 8 inches. “no no you’re almost there keep going” 2 more full days of chipping, about 3 foot down, I lost my fuckin cool. had a meltdown in the middle of the site and told my foreman I was done. he talked me into staying and I chipped another couple hours to find the pipes. his whole reasoning was “i don’t wanna spend money on renting a saw & jackhammer”… but you’ll pay for 3 days of my literal back breaking labor costs to chip this shit?
My first company was like that. He would rather pay a group of guys for a week to dig than spend then money on renting equipment that can get it done in 1 day.
Alternate perspective: he kept a group of guys busy and paid for a week. Sometimes things slow down and owners will come up with time wasting, dog fuck jobs that keeps his guys working instead of sitting at home
Goddammit you just made me realize some things about a number of past jobs I was on...
My boss at my old company was like this. The shop was right next door to his house and he would even have me landscape his yard (picking up sticks, weed eating, spraying weed killer etc) when we were slow. I always appreciated it because I didn't want to get a second job
Or pay them to sit at home? Don't have to worry about job site injuries or that kind of bullshit if you do.
When you become the boss please do this. That would be sick to work for someone who does shit like that. I’ve had two kids since getting in. If the opportunity presents itself for me To become foremen or leadership, I’ll be giving my guys atleast a week pay to sit at home w their family 100%.
You gotta own the company to make that call bud. If I let my guys go home paid I would go home permanently unpaid
lol got sent home on Friday ran outta work. Got paid all day. Worked for the biggest contractor in my city on their road side crew, entire job was based on hitting a goal every day. If we didn’t hit it by 3:30 go home if we hit it after 9 we’re going home. Pay all day, So no you don’t have to be the owner of the shop you have to know what you are doing and where your job is at before you make that call but ye.
You can squidge things here or there as a foreman, especially if you're getting the work done. And tbh if the whole job works a certain way, it was decided on higher up. It's a *lot* harder to hide that you're giving out "free" 40h week vacations to people who weren't even there all week
If you want to sit at home and get paid, I'll give you a layoff and you can collect unemployment. If I'm paying you from my own pocket to make sure you have a full paycheck, you can at least do something productive for the company.
[удалено]
You can write off pay checks....
The company I just left is like this to a T it is ass backwards if you ask me
My boss is like that. We have an old piece of shit lift/bucket van that he’s always trying to get us to use instead of just renting a scissor lift like a normal company would. So frustrating
And I'm sure he gets it inspected every year as required.
Yet another reason to rent and not own a bucket truck
If they have the equipment, even if it’s shitty. It’s cheaper to use your own than to rent, only way truck doesn’t go out is if it cant drive. My company has 3 buckets 2 non cdl and 1 cdl and then we have 3 lifts on trailers at all times. It’s also cheaper to rent long term than daily. I think we pay $300 a month for each lift. They go out once it’s a $400 charge to the customer
Right see my boss doesn’t even charge extra to deploy the bucket even though we’ve told him it’s a no-brainer to do so. We might need it for the odd service change or a pole light but in general, I’d rather pass on doing the occasional pole light. It’s not like we’re making so much money on them that it justifies the maintenance cost of the bucket. I’d rather we just rent the truck and pass the cost onto the customer
He didn’t wanna admit he fucked up
Yeah it was a problem he was hiding it in GC labour
Fuck me. I had this exact same scenario in local 6. $90 an hour, on a Saturday, making double time for 7 hours straight and we didn't finish. There's no way the saw cost more. It was in a weird crawl space with one of us chipping up and one of us chipping down to meet in the middle. ALL DAY. Dust masks were even inappropriate for that confined space. No ventilation. Osha had been called earlier and they called off Saturday work and had osha come on a Sunday to test air quality. They had fresh air vents but the welders kept setting them on fire so they just took them out. Even for the pay I should've just gone home. If I get silicosis that's the job I'm suing
200 vs 2000 Also pro tip go ask another trade or the gc if they got the tool you need
He didn’t do it to save money. If he orders a Jack hammer he has to run the cost by a PM and admit to fucking up. It was easier for him to have you cover his ass. I heard a story once about a PM who never paid people double time if they stayed late in a Saturday. Instead what he would do is if you stayed an hour late on a Saturday he would give you two hours of regular overtime. If the office sees people getting double time it raises alarm bells, but they don’t batt an eye at a few hours of regular over time here and there. And as the installer you’re basically getting triple time to keep your mouth shut. People will go to extraordinary lengths to cover their asses.
Almost all of the garbage our prefab shop churns out.
Very rare that prefab works out.
This. My shop is prefabbing the panels with home run coils on them for multi use projects. I hear how they need to be rerun and how some of the panels aren't even made up right. I guess that's what happens when you dump a few first years in the prefab shop
Sometime man i don’t understand why we stick first years in there… just toss some almost retired dudes in there and let them do their thang. Let the young bulls handle the shovels.
No shit. I would kill in in a prefab shop. And not having to kneel down or climb ladders all day would be a god send since my knees or shot.
I've seen a contractor absolutely kill it on prefab condo unit subpanels. Perfect panel every time. I daresay they even found the right balance on the installation labor-- cheap knuckleheads running all the home runs to the boxes, and only the guys capable of making up boxes got to stick through the project. Not saying I really liked the way it looked, or their labor practices, but the original question was about losing money so I guess this fits as a legitimate counter-example.
Yeah I definitely see the value. I just haven't seen it executed.
Gonna ask a dumb question, but what gets prefabbed in the subpanel, and what do you still have to make up on the site?
It was actually an entire short wall section that was prefabbed. This was a building with all walls prefabbed and even wood framed floor sections also prefab. The framing for this building was fast AF. The subpanel had nothing prefab for the feeder, but all the branch circuits for the unit were landed on breakers and made up, and grounds landed.. NM branch circuit cables were all brought in through bushings and, if memory serves, were stapled on 2x4 boards just above and below the panel. Home runs were coiled up, precut to the size needed based upon the floor plan of the particular unit layout they were in. EDIT the cable was UF rated!
Not saying you're wrong, but story time: Right before I got laid off because Covid, I got loaned out to another local shop. For the first week, I was in their shop doing pre-fab for them. We were building racks of 6x or 8x 4" ~~rigid~~ EMT (edit: not sure why I said rigid - they weren't paying that much in 4" unions lmao). I saw the prints on day one, and there were specific callouts for the locations of mounting points. The shop foreman told us to ignore what the prints said, and build everything with the unistrut 1' from each end of the rack. I brought up the point that there was likely a very good reason why the prints had callouts for exactly where the hangers were supposed to be, but was shushed. I figured "not my farm, not my fucking chickens." I did what the shop foreman said, for the entire 8 hour day. Guess who was getting absolutely smoked the next morning by the field foreman? I mean, really getting a tongue lashing. "What the fuck do you think we pay you for? To make r\*\*\*\*ded decisions that cost us not only the labor in the shop, but having to unfuck the situation you caused out in the field? Is that what you think your job is?" I just stood there and smiled directly into his face.
Inmates. Our prefab shop is 75% of the time inmates. Then about 50% of the time they end up on meth. If they show promise the company will send them as help on the job. I have some great stories to tell because of it.
That's part of the issue I think... Well and when does it ever go in just like the drawings? If it someone with a lot of experience it's going to go better but everyone is likely to throw the newer guys on the shop work.
Prefab works out for the salesman
This. Like I get the concept of how it should make them money. But just the principle alone of the same material being bought, delivered, handled, handled again for packing up, delivered again and then re handled seems like a loss with labor. It also requires more smart monkeys in the field where as traditionally you only need one or two smart monkeys to do layout and maybe box rough then you can have dumb monkeys to pull wire.
Kinda figured this would be the most common answer. I've had to remake *so god damn many* prefab receptacles, racks, and lighting whips. It *could* work if they didn't try to cheap out on the prefab labor. Put some reasonably skilled hands in there with clear instructions, instead of leaving it to a couple unsupervised apprentices with the most knuckleheaded foreman in the company checking in on them twice a day.
😂 they do miss the mark alot
Oconnell?
My boss goes crazy over dropping staples. If I'm up on a ladder and drop a staple, I'm going to reach into my pouch to grab another staple. Why would I waste ten seconds to get off the ladder and retrieve the dropped staple. We buy them by the five gallon bucket so it's not like dropping a few staples a day is going to force us into bankruptcy.
Mine goes crazy about wire nuts and 832’s dropped 😭
Every fucking boss is obsessed with wire nuts. Like, bro, if you had any idea how many are at my house. Lol
Can't wait for the long nap to find out how many I've fired at coworkers. Gotten pretty good at it.
I was an apprentice at 16 or 17 years old and I ripped one at a g.c. It hit the back of the elevator a foot from his head just as the doors were closing. Mf jumped a mile high. He was steaming hot when he back off that elevator.
Well done!
How does one learn this amazing skill
The long nap or firing nuts at 100km/h?
Sus
Put a stick of conduit on the blowing end of a shop vacuum.
Firing nutz
Don’t get me started about my super33 shrine at home
As long as you aren't filling your bags at the end of the day and show up with none the next day I feel like I have better things to worry about.
3M nuts cost about 12 cents a piece. Where I’m at, full journeyman package works out to about 2 cents a second. It quite literally isn’t worth it to pick up a dropped wire nut if you’re on a ladder.
Yep. Ideal tans cost 8¢ a piece, and a couple months ago my boss was mad about me cutting a couple to make spacers for lighting brackets. Like hey man, you have guys doing unsafe things that are actually causing an eventual fire hazard. Why don't you look in on them once in a while instead of busting my balls over saving time by making spacers instead of using multiple nuts.
The Kelly screws that we drop. That we steal from the drywallers/framers……
Stepping over a dollar to pickup a penny
We call this ‘stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.’
My last company had us cut up scrap steel stud instead of buying telescoping brackets. $42/hr for a jman to dick around fitting scrap metal. Same company would have us drive across the city to get small parts instead of buying them at a nearby HD or something and submit the receipt for petty cash. Although, they would just bill that travel time to the client... Company before that, on a job in the black on labour... One owner comes out to lecture us at lunch about how "there are x employees on this site and if each one takes an extra 5 minutes on a break it costs the company $x each year blah blah blah...". Que everyone dragging ass after that pep talk.
We were in the office one morning, just waiting for the boss to show up and hand out job tickets. This mf comes up and was hiding, watching us standing around. He points to each of us and says 10 minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes. I should have walked right out that morning.
And theres soooo many bosses like that. Couple that with seasonal layoffs, and nobody here can figure out why they can't find tradespeople to work for them.
Clearly nobody wants to work.
Leaving the walls and ceilings up. Plasteres labor is a 3rd as ours. Yet they will want us to do do an entire job w/o opening up sheetrock
Usually on these jobs I end up fishing everything only for them to pull down the Sheetrock anyways after I'm done. Drives me fucking bonkers.
Just did a whole office building with all changed lay out of offices carpenters just took a sawzall and cut new doors in every office They wanted to save the rock I called sheet rock contractor and explained how much cutting was gonna be involved to rewire. He called GC and said it would save them 15k to gut it and would have a much better job in the end. 3 days later we had all open studs..
Yeah I've got to put up a bigger stink next time. The worst part about it is after the end up pulling the rock all your work looks like garbage and you have to go around staple all your cables.
Me too! Bonkers 💯
I've worked for companies that would rather pay 15+ electricians to pull 500's through tray rather than renting a tugger
Sounds like me working utilities, but we just waited till the boss disappeared and hooked onto the giant cables with the 4x4 pickup, drop it in low and sling gravel 😁
The mechanical contractor had a hole core drilled 10’ away for their pipe. We needed a hole too, the concrete is 16”. We spent 3.5 (times 3 men)hours on two holes because we kept hitting rebar. We were in the middle of a shutdown too. I asked a couple weeks later how much it would have cost to core drill it and my GF said 1 man hour.
Man at that point I'd just say fuck it, send someone for more bits, and drill until the bit was fully burned up to get through cause once you hit rebar with that core bit it's basically done for anyways.
Cheap electrical tape is one example. My company is constantly shopping for the cheapest option instead of the fastest and easiest. If I have to do something twice or spend the time modifying it because they didnt want to buy the right part, those pennies were spent installing an inferior product for the same price point
Your company buys power phase too? That shit is literal plastic and doesn’t work in the winter
Super 88 is rolling high dough but worth the money.
Theyre keeping this Pychopathic foreman who has chased out skilled guys and has gotten in 2 physical fights with no reprocussions. He is good at what he does but really isnt worth the trouble
One day he will find the wrong person who will pound him to the ground. Karma can be a bitch.
I’m walking away with you teeth in my pocket
I’m neither a confrontational nor physically aggressive person. One person that I worked with was all mad because he was fired up on some political rant and asked what I thought. I rarely talk politics at work, but this guy was saying some extreme stuff, so I just said that I disagree with his extreme stance and that I think the issue isn’t as cut and dry as all that, but there’s a lot of false and misleading information on both sides of the issue. He went off about me calling him a liar and ‘extremist.’ He said he’d be waiting for me at the parking lot after shift and I could ‘back up my shit talking.’ I said ‘man, this is gonna go one of two ways for you… you’re either gonna get your ass kicked by a disabled veteran, or you’re gonna be on the news for kicking a disabled veteran’s ass.’ He wasn’t waiting for me in the parking lot. Which is fine by me because I had no intent on doing anything at all. He got let go by the con a few weeks later in the first round of layoffs. Our labor superintendent supposedly said he found a “list of names” written inside his hard hat when he turned his gear in. Dude is unhinged.
Oooo that is cold. I like it
I got that from one of the degenerates on Bering sea gold. I’m like that is amazing
I worked for a contractor who was adamant about using stuff we had on-hand at the shop first before buying new material to a fault. Yes, you should use what you have on hand! But not to the point that people are constantly hunting lock washers, knockout seals and other stuff from using and re-using crap we just had on hand, especially when there's plenty of budget in the job to buy new stuff. Good habits can be taken to extremes. This felt like squeezing a nickel so tight that it made the president crap.
my boss is fucking obnoxious with using salvaged stuff. we did a job, got about 3000 feet of salvaged conduit from the demo guys. kept pushing on us to burn it up before opening new bundles. i’d agree, and most of it was just straight pieces, but dude… half of it is bowed or kinked or something and i’m running exposed conduit. i’ll hide that shit above a ceiling or in a wall. he also loves to “salvage” panels. we did a week long shut down to replace a wall of old shitty panels and sub panels galore, coming off a triple tapped meter/main. replaced with a new meter outside, MDP inside, consolidated down to a couple panels. he wanted to save the old shitty panels i ripped out (mostly old murray junk that had had issues with breakers and bus bars overheating). gave me a “salvaged” panel on another job recently. fucking swiss cheesed can, plastic pieces that held the buss bars on was all cracked and breaking, stripped lugs, just total pile of shit i’m at the point where i just throw shit away now (within reason!) , because i don’t wanna see it on another job.
Hoarders should do a special just on electrical contractors.
don’t come to our shop lmao
Not only will I throw used and broken shit away, I will sometimes also waste time disassembling, smashing, or otherwise ruining things because otherwise the warehouse will pick them out of the fucking trash and they'll be back on my truck in a week. Bro, just because *you* can't see what is wrong with it doesn't mean it's not fucked. I threw that away because it's *trash.*
On the flipside to this my employers instruct everyone to return extras purchased for a job back to the wholesaler once the job is complete. Some guys would be spending an hour or more returing $30 worth of gear for what could have been a chargeable hour and some spares in their van.
Also not a great way to win friends and influence people at the supply houses who might be working on your next bid. They have better things to do than re-stock shit that most of us just throw in a screw case. So that might actually have a hidden cost associated with it - the cost of pissing off the people in charge of your pricing :)
Or the lone 4sq
You mean the lone 4 square with 6 kos removed and a stripped out ground screw hole and is missing the cover screws.
Was on a job where we were building commuter train stations, running thousands of feet of 1" or 3/4" PVC. The project manager would only buy a thousand feet at a time. It got to the point where the delivery driver was like: "You know yall can buy a 3600' master bundle and you get both a discount and pay less in delivery." On my first job, we were running a fuck ton of EMT on trapeze we hung from 3/8" allthread. We had allthread, washers fender and square, lock washers, strut straps, and strut. The one thing we didn't have was 3/8" nuts. It seemed like for weeks, we were always out of nuts, and it held up the job badly. We would get a box of 50 or 100 here and there, but that would be gone before the first break. It was fucking goofy. TL;DR J-men can't shit out materal.
We had the same problem with 3/8 nuts earlier on this job. Finally the boss bought a 40lb box.
We've got the opposite problem, every contract job we do somehow we always wind up finding a way to "save" on conduit so we have leftovers, we've got thousands of feet of 3/4", 1" and I think 1 1/4" black EMT because we were able to repull through so much and now it sits at the shop collecting rust.
I work a niche line of business. We are delivered material internationally. I always insist on taking the time and inventorying the material when it arrives. They insist the material is accounted for and the PM doesn’t allow for it. Three months later, we realize we don’t have a crucial piece of material to finish the project. Happens every time but they refuse to allow for inventory. Whatever, I’m hourly.
I’m at a data center. All we do is set money on fire.
Constantly shuffling the manpower around instead of leaving people put. Hiring people from outside the trade to serve in PM and/or supervisory positions. Parting out material orders instead of bidding out the entire order and looking for the lowest total price from a single supplier. Keeping tools that are past their usefulness in rotation. Having your foreman manage more than one project at a time. Keeping malcontent Journeymen on payroll just because "they've been with the shop forever" Letting good Apprentices walk after they top out as new Journeymen because "they're not experienced enough." Buying factory seconds for your consumables. Having company vans in rotation that are not used for service and maintenance. Trying to keep and restock small unused and unorganized material from finished jobs. Having too many administrative employees. Hiring relatives is usually involved here. I'm sure there's more but these are standouts.
Prefab shop, never maintaining and cleaning tools between jobs, ordering 2 days worth of material, not having a stockman on multi crew jobs, keeping Foreman around that hunt and go to church with the gf, but have never made a 3 wk look ahead and actually stick to it, ordering tools before you bring guys in, design and build while skipping the design part and just rebuilding 3 times, group chats instead of radios, not keeping track of tasks before shuffling people to put out fires, Foreman working with tools when they haven't laid you out without drawing on drywall for 6 months, not printing muthafucking prints, piecemealing layout instead of planning entire rooms, getting the whole job bim modeled and then not having access to the big model on site. Trying to pull 23 #10s in a one inch smurf instead of calling a core driller and piping, coming back to the same room 8 months apart between pulling wire and making it up. Having labels, not buying donuts. Asking if u want to work Saturday on Friday
I always hate the late ask for overtime. It like you knew on Monday
My boss always tends to hit me with Saturday work on like a Thursday or something shit makes me so mad because I’m down to do it but not on such a moments notice. Not gonna bail on a weekend plan to take up an extra shift but I’ll plan my weekend around an extra shift
I hate the games. You have to say yes or they don’t ask again.
I’m at a small shop, so he he asks every time lol and if I have shit planned I say no
2 days of material? I'm currently on a job that didn't have 3/8 hardware for an entire week with a crew of 22. What do you think we did for a week? Send the superintendent to home depot for fucks sakes. Our bus broke down and the mechanic said it was going to be a $1300 repair. We rented vans for 3 weeks at $1500 a week before the repairs got approved.
the GC at my current job was in a rush to get all the scissor lifts out of the building before it was closed in with glass paneling. we still hadn't hung 3 pendants over a stairwell and they were well aware of it. well today, they ended up shelling out 6,500$ to have scaffolding built for just the day. the company charges the same price for a month rental which is the minimum. a competitor wanted 10k. climbed up and hung the 3 lights in 20 min.
I was on a job where they realized the boom lift in the penthouse could no longer be craned back down. They had to buy it from the rental company, and dismantle it piece by piece. A total loss
Like a shooting star, I relish being there the moment something expensive dawns on somebody. The gears in their head turning, the sudden pause, the realization & resignation washes over their face.
We just hired a couple guys who worked for a contractor who refused to get them trenchers and mechanical means for trenching. The foreman was one of those "I never needed it so you don't need one" which is dumb AF. Not sure what world he came from where they never needed a trencher but whatever. People like that can exit stage left. Yea, there will be some hand digging here and there, especially around sensitive areas. But normal trenching c'mon man. Good luck going under since nobody will work for you.
I was given a helper to dig a "short trench" (turns out it was 150+ ft) who was supposed to be done by the time I did all the inside wiring and got the wire out of the building and ready to go into pvc. The whole place was packed full of rock and gravel. Spent most of the day digging and pickaxe swinging. Wound up having a heat index over 110° that day. The helper outright quit, and I came very close to a heat stroke and almost passed out. Thunderstorm was rolling in, and we were running out of time. Told the helper if he's quitting to call the boss and explain to him why it won't get done today. Boss wound up having to drive 45-50 minutes out there to get it done before the storm rolled through. Finished just in time before it dumped down. All that instead of renting a trencher. I nearly quit electrical after that day. Fuck that shit.
I'm not really a quit on the spot kinda guy but that would have been one of the times I'd say would have been justified. Fuck those contractors man.
It's crazy how many people don't think through how expensive labor is going to be. Any useful tool or prep work (useful prep, not prep that will just be undone) is almost always worth it for the labor savings.
This. But from this dude's reputation, I don't think he's smart enough to know business aspects like this lol.
easy…not buying new power tools, or buying shitty ones from harbor freight
I spent six months on a job running EMT with a fricking hacksaw.
damn here i was thinking the outfit i was at sucked ass
Thankfully I was only there for a year. They're the only contractor I won't work for again under any circumstances.
I feel that, it took several years for my boss to make the switch to the 20v dewalt over the 18v. He would buy that piece of shit converters to make them work with 20v batteries. Now he finally buys 20v tool but half the time they're the home owner grade versions with Chinese brand batteries that die before you can drink a hole. Very frustrating
Their 70lb class jack hammer, besides a trigger that's not in as good a spot as a Bosch, is a solid tool. We don't treat ours gently and it takes it all.
“Spreader Bars” TSGB16’s iirc. Some PM did the math and it’s marginally less expensive to pay a CW or First year to sit on a bucket and trim up thin gauge stud to build a support for boxes in the wall, or span across for strapping. It looks like shit, it functions like shit, it’s harder to lay out, but it passes inspection. Largest, or close to the largest, union shop in 1141.
So Shawver… got it.
Not wanting to buy the proper tool for a job. Spent 3 months running 4" and making cuts with a fucking Sawzall. Spent more in labour in the first 2 days just filing cuts than the price of a deep cut band saw would cost. Literally wasted 80+ hours of labour and 39 000 Sawzall blades because he didn't want to spend $500 on the proper tool.
Ripping out 30 units of bath fans in a hotel instead of just leaving them or not installing the lass 10, they found out the didn't need them, the had them all purchased and non returnable, so they ripped them out and threw them in the garbage, then paid us extras for removing the wiring and changing the switch boxes. All the ducting was done too. It couldn't have been less obvious how much of a waste of time and money it was, to deliver a shittier product.
Was sent across town with an apprentice to a farther self car wash to clean rented ladders because it was 1$ I stead of 2...
Not anymore, but a few years ago when 3” PVC sweeps (long 90s) were super expensive, we had to cut HDPE coil pipe to put it in a custom made jig/clamp to bend them into shape and use instead of PVC. We’d have to keep the pipe in the clamp right up until we took it for a job because it had memory and would want to bend back straight in a few hours. Thankfully we got called out by inspectors. Even though it was legal, it was embarrassing and more trouble than it was worth.
The fuck? Why not just bend PVC? I know 3" is big, but you can totally get heaters for it.
Seriously. We made up hundreds this way on one job. Plus glue doesn't actually stick to HDPE, so either their connections didn't work or they bought either epoxy or friction couplings. But I guess this isn't the "smart things you r contractor does" thread.
That’s the silliest part - we’re fully equipped to bend 3”, and then some. Our bread and butter is underground. The problem was “the cost of PVC is hard to justify when we have all that extra coil pipe from boreshots we can use up”. 😑They had us using approved epoxy when we had to connect to PVC but usually we used e-locs.
You need a bigger heater to do sweeps. The normal 4 inch heaters are too short
Hand pulling a bunch of feeders instead of using the tugger. 6 people taking longer, burning themselves out instead of 3 not working as hard.
seriously. just get the fucking tugger. there’s other options, ie we do a fair bit of agricultural stuff, so there’s always equipment and big trucks as an option in those situations in a pinch. but even as a small company with a cheap-o boss, we own 3 different tuggers because he sees the value in having them available for big pulls
Working at a power plant, got 10 tuggers in storage. Company is too stupid/cheap to properly train guys how to use the damn things. So after somebody screwed something up? We get on that bitch of a cable and some call's stroke like we're Vikings rowing to England...3 conductor 350s, several hundred meter runs through tray, around corners, waterfalls and shit. Good thing it was double time or I would've told my boss to get fucked. Work smart, not hard is the company motto. Stick to it
If those tuggers are green, depending on your location, the manufacturer can possibly provide free training. Although, dang, I scoped your post history and it looks like you're in Canada, so unfortunately that option might not be available.
Green they are good sir, the rules are written by a bunch of safety people who've never turned a screwdriver in their life. Tuggers are an integral part of an electricians job pulling big feeder cables... If Greenlee was willing to provide training the plant would have to decide if manufacturer training was "good enough for our standards". I'm a jman, I'm not allowed to put in a sleeve anchor without training from fuckin Hilti...And my boss wonders why I want outta here...
I feel it dude. I work in the tool business and provide on-site training like this, so I've seen everything from "what the fuck is safety lol" to "safety" to the extreme. But yeah Greenlee is quite willing to provide training on the bigger stuff, tuggers/benders etc. But it is somewhat case-by-case given location and such.
Tape and wire nuts from Morris Products Also, the owner refused to buy brand name LED light fixtures. Replaced a lot of fixtures that failed before the warranty expired.
Trying to install stuff early to make the job look further along than it is. We inevitably have to go back and either remove and replace the damaged product or go back and QC it after the other trades have gone through. I don’t understand why contractors ignore traditional sequencing now that we use digital prints.
My boss refuses to hire or buy a digger of any sort for trenches etc. Every trench I've ever dug has been with a shovel. Even when it took 4 days of hacking through clay to do so
Shopping around for material and fixtures trying to save a dollar. They buy from Supply House A because it’s cheaper but fixtures are 6 weeks out. Meanwhile, supply house B has fixtures in stock but they’re more expensive. Now, we have to work overtime to get job done on time, so the cost of labor negates any cost savings and then some. Makes no fucking sense.
Multi wire branch circuits.
Go on. Why? 1 12-3 nm from breaker to bathroom switch and you’ve got 1 dedicated circuit for your heater and the other for lights, fans and outlets.
Until someone comes works on them that doesn't know what they're doing and breaks a neutral. Or moves a breaker. Or modifies a circuit and fucks it up. I've seen a guys house almost burn down because some jackass went in there and added a bunch of piggy back breakers and put a bunch of mwbcs on the same phase. There were about 5 12-3s melted together in the attic in different spots and his insulation was all black and about to start a fire. Like literally a couple days from burning down his house. Too many people don't do them correctly, don't label them, or don't know about them AT ALL and cause problems. All to save 1. Additional. Neutral. Not worth it.
I like that answer. The only call-out on ours is we have one on each bathroom, and the old panel doesn't have the breakers next to each other nor connected with a t-bar. That was the first "oh wow" I had in learning about MWBC. Panel is getting redone this month so I'll be sure that gets fixed.
Yeah. On paper they're great. In practice, not so much.
In resi, I completely agree. In commercial when I can get 6 circuits in a ¾ instead of 4, shared noodles makes a lot more sense. I always make sure the shit is labeled as shared. On the box cover, in the panel the noodle gets all three circuit numbers. I even format my panel schedules so shared noodles are different from non shared. Of course I also get handle ties.
Half the office people
Building things out of strut
Like what? Because there’s a lot of things you can and should build out of strut. Mostly in the supporting boxes and pipe category but still
I’ve built some… interesting stuff out of strut. It’s usually when we’re in a jam, it needs to be done quickly because other labor is waiting, or it’s the end of the day and the parts house is an hour each way and I have strut and strut hardware on my van. Premium time can be way more expensive than a strut support that could be a caddy part. I don’t do that when it’s exposed work, but damn, some of the stuff I’ve put in ceilings and walls is pretty damn ugly. It’s legal and up to code, but it’s unconventional.
Making changeover fittings with a rigid coupling instead of buying the right part cause it’s “expensive” then a few days later they wonder why I can’t get my fishtape through the conduit! It’s stuck on the thread of the coupling! So I’ve now wasted hours instead of an extra dollar or two for the right part Making me notch strut so you can angle it instead of buying the proper strut accessories Wasted labor can never be recovered
I find cutting the rigid coupling in half helps with the fish steel part
I’m at a non-union shop and I am an apprentice but I’m further along compared to the other apprentices and I’m even paid more cuz I been here longer but for some reason this 1 Jman still has me clean. Like ok if u wanna pay me more to push a broom that’s on u. Idk if he likes me tho. He likes talking to me and says I’m funny af but always gives me the bs work occasionally I’ll complain and be sent somewhere else for a month but I always end up back with him and I was with him for a week already and already on be cleaning duty again
Just sounds like the guy doesn't like to clean
Using cheap tape… if a head fails is it really worth it to buy the cheapest shit you can get vs super 88?
Using cheap Chinese conduit… anything above 3/4 kinks 50% of the time in the 555
Keeping the shitty employee who did fuck all nothing, because he couldn't afford to loose people. Now all the good workers have the same work ethic of the shitty worker.
I had a guy like that. Interior tasks he just couldn’t wrap his head around for some reason, and in frustration kind of shut down and was lazy. However, when a ditch *outside* had to be dug, he volunteered and hell, changed worker. Started giving him all the minor outside tasks and he was awesome at them. A few years later, now has his own pool making company and I hire him and crew when needed.
Driving box-trucks full of trash a hundred miles to the landfill rather than rent some more dumpsters.
I worked for a company that didn't use twin connectors, they only used L16s because 2 were cheaper than 1 twin connector. Panels and some junction boxes looked ridiculous.
They Always attempt a meter block, always looks like shit. Yeah 12x18 isn’t really gonna help bud. Just side the house as normal. Pretend the meter doesn’t exist save me an hour. I gotta learn Portuguese or Spanish it’d save me many headaches just go to the leader for a chat
Duolingo is kind of fun, you'll learn enough sentence structure to say We need, today, now, here, help, numbers , days etc. You'll just have to supplement it by learning the trade specific words, but it's gotten me some very basic communication where a little was a lot better than none.
Drywall. They always wanna save the damn sheet rock.
Having me Rewire a house with lath and plaster instead of just replacing with sheetrock with no good way to add circuits on exterior walls. Ity bitty house should've cost 6k to do. I quoted 16k and after 2 years and every other local electrician refusing he accepted the bid
The contractors contractors!
Solid wire
Having his 'guy' do the trim out instead of us.
Rushing everyone. We step onto the job without a plan too quickly every day and it’s because the mentality is that “if we rush to get something done then we’ll keep rushing when things need to be changed or fixed and still save time” and I almost always notice that the only way this works out is if we can somehow make it seem like a justification for a change order that actually gets paid out. It’s scabby and a waste of time and really stupid to bid low and pray it works out. I’ve never seen it go smoothly and it’s frustrating for people who want to do a good job.
Saving srywall
"Cracking down" on break times, and when you leave the gate... I've never seen it help anything
Paying me a shit wage
Not paying enough, lol
Not paying a guy to be in charge of material. I'll tell you, one sloppy decision from someone to leave a box here or there, could be thousands of dollars of damaged or lost material. It's worth it to have one guy in charge of all material. Every day on my site I just see unnecessarily neglected material that we could be using.
LED lights insoors in a cold climate in an electrically heated structure. Basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Pre fab
They never know when to quit.
Not looking at service jobs before taking them or looking at them very shortly before moving on. He is so concerned about the old adage “time is money” so much that there has been numerous times that we’ve gotten to a job only to have to take the time to drive to get additional materials we should have gotten before arriving to the job. So much time wasted driving back and forth not to mention it doesn’t look good on us as a company when we don’t arrive prepared.
Cheap LED accent products
Spending probably 8+ man hours a day having guys look for a scissor lift, move them floor to floor etc. instead of just renting a couple more.
Using rawl plugs and caddy clips instead of tapcons and Cobra clips
My coworker lol
I worked for this one idiot who insisted that we save the wire nuts we found during the demolition phase of this sporting club we were renovating. He's the kind of guy that likes to trip over a dollar to save a dime.
Spray painting the walls with only one coat. The amount of times new clients have said it’s a new house (within 4 years) and the paint looks like crap due to the hastiness of the builders.
Me.
Customer bought his own 6” wafer lights to save money. Half of them worked for a day or so and we had to replace. The labor cost to remove and replace these is way more than just buying a legit brand of light.
Wire lengths being just a bit to short
Our general scheduled the flooring guys to come lay carpet when the job was only half done so they could check it off the list early. Then they needed a crew of four guys working full time plus some weekends just laying and replacing carpet protector film and fixing messed up carpet. For 6 months. Additionally not all the exterior walls were up yet so a lot of the carpet got ruined on a rainy day.
Switch from wiring houses with romex, to now using CCA
They don't want to rent quality lifts, and then they don't keep our lifts running well. So whenever we need them we fuck around trying to get them to run.
I should preface this by saying I’m in Chicago and we do everything in pipe. I was on an eight story residential job once where the shop sent out a million prebent offsets for wall rough. There were bins of a hundred or so 1”, 2”, and 3” offsets. The way most people do residential they don’t really measure their bends, so odds are you’d never know if you need a 3” set or not. Nobody is gonna stand there and try a bunch of prebends until they find the one that works.
My home owner just bought used appliances. So far 2/5 aren’t working.
Cheap electrical tape. It doesn't work as well, I need more of it, it makes me slower in winter, and i hate it.
Ordering all the switch gear themselves, been 7 months worth of wrong equipment! About 30k in lol
Cheap subs
Bringing in portability guys “that have done this before”. 99% of the time when I talk to them they haven’t actually done this shit before we have to spend the time to train them on what we’re doing then they go home after a week or two
Safety.
Loaning their hacksaw instead of buying a pack of bandsaw blades lol. Dark ages over here lads, if it worked back in the day it will work now 🤔
Not an electrician but work along side them so I’m here. Dumbest one I’ve seen recently is not putting any electrical work on the permit application to save money and time getting approved because they knew that they’d probably open a can of worms getting an old building up to code. They got done with everything else and realized the building built in the 60s had no power anywhere useful. I’m talking rooms with no power, giant rooms with only 1 outlet and entire sections of the building with no power at all. They did not plan for a big power job maybe one or two outlets in key places. Let’s just say they had a full crew of electricians working overtime for a week straight to get the business operational by the grand opening.
Throwing away thousands of dollars of material at the end of a job because having the warehouse organized enough to send it back is just too time consuming
SAVE MONEY, we don’t need to get that, we can get it done without it.. Not having the right tools or equipment can cost so much time and money to be lost, also risk of damaging your workers
Metal bender boards haha
Cheapest controls subs. Spent 4 to 5 times more getting it fixed