Dumb Employee Stories ?

ajbackhoe

I just rebuilt my diamond blade demo saw, new cylinder, piston and rings. Thing ran like brand new.
My guy chose the gas can that didn't saw two stroke mix. You know what happened next.

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A O Construction Inc.
Attleboro, MA 02703
Email: alan@aoconstruction.net
www.aoconstruction.net

loneframer

I'm guessing he got a two stroke enima?

strathd

Hired a friend of mine's son as a laborer. Told him to start scraping the stickers off the windows. This was back when you had to scrape them off with a razor blade. I gave him some blades and go in another room to run trim. The blades I gave him were the kind you see in body shops. They have a knurled edge for a handle and a cardboard wrap on the blade.

An hour and a half later I decide to check on him and he's on the second window. So, I decide to watch him and see what the problem is. Did'nt take long. Jake let me see the blade. He hands it to me and I pull the cardboard wrap off the blade. He says DAAAAAMN no wonder it was taking me so long. He was holding the blade side and scraping with the knurled edge ! I dont know how he kept from cutting himself.

A few years later he comes over to my house says he just got back from tennessee. Been doing log homes down there. So we go down to the basement to shoot a game of pool and shoot the s***. I was doing a log home at the time, I think to myself maybe this kid has came around. He breaks I take a shot and scratch. As we're talking he places the cue ball at the wrong end of the table. Nah........ some things never change.

bwalley

I clearly mark all of my cans for pre mix and do not allow any non mixed gas out when using a 2 stroke, many times I won't even have regular gas on the job at all, as I have used mixed gas in a 4 stroke with no problems.

jamestrd

I had one guy worked for me for a few years..he was a train wreck...very loyal, but a black cloud of stupidy loomed over his head.

one time, he was walking through a kitchen, said hello to the homeowner and as he was walking by the kit cabinets, his carpenter pants hammer loop caught a knob of a cabinet door and he ripped it right off.

same kid decided he wanted to do pull ups on casing molding around a doorway and ripped it right off the wall..

heres a real good one..long time back, my old boss was carrying up a large 5 gallon pail of poly up a set of circular steps..the wheels of the container caungt a nosing and he dumped the full pail over the steps,,,ran like a river down into the foyer all over the marble..

know anohter guy who decided to coat with moisutre cure poly with no respirator..passed out face first in ther finish....lol


i got a ton of em

strathd

I had a guy come in late to work, took a 1 hr. 15 min. lunch on a 1/2 hr. lunch break, wanted to go home early and ask for a raise in the same day!

bwalley

I had a guy who I hired because a Pastor friend of mine wanted me to put him to work, later I found out he was a heroin addict.

So i started calling crackhead Bill.

We were carrying in a piece of 1/2" tempred glass and he let a corner drop and it caused it to explode, he then sisaid he had a hard time breathing because of the fumes.

I told him a solid piece of tempered glass does not have any fumes, then I asked him, you have no proplem shooting heroin into your veins, but a piece of glass breaks, now you have a hard time breathing?

He eventually started showing up to work late and leaving early, even though I was giving him keep busy work, so I told Pastor Scott about it, he said he would let Bill know I had a problem with him leaving early all the time, I told Scott I didn't have a problem with him leaving early, I had a problem with him coming back.

A few eeks later I saw Bill on the side of the road with a Will Work for Food sign.

Months later I was talking to Pastor Scott, he said Bill had relapsed and stole a bunch of his stuff.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Aggie67

We're in this monster one story building, 300,000 square feet. Engineer called for 32 HVAC units mounted up on the roof, and we had to reinforce the curbs with W14's, girder to girder. So 32 spots, 4 W14's each spot, plus some 10 inch channel to frame out the opening. We get through the first 16 spots just fine. We hire a new kid as a helper, relative of one of the senior foremen. Foreman convinces me the kid went to 2 years of college, is a draftsman, can take the load off me, self sufficient, can give instruction to the guys cutting the steel, blah, blah, blah. Man was that a mistake. I give him the structural plan view drawing, and the steel shop drawings (what we needed to cut them to and where the holes go, clip sizes, etc), explain what a kerf is and show him how to confirm the girder to girder dimension, he tells me he's got it. The kid somehow mixes up the girder center to centers on the plan drawing with the beam cut lengths on the shop drawing, and subtracts the girder flange widths and kerfs from the shop drawing dimension. A whole bunch of completely unnecessary math. He ends up marking 64 beams TOO SHORT. Luckily we caught the mistake 6 beams into the abortion, when the erecting crew (couldn't bring myself to type "erection crew") slings the first beam up and it's almost 2 feet short.

I tear into the kid, take the drawings, and we end up having to repair 6 beams. Cost me 20 man hours and another length of W14. That foreman told me the kid cried for a half hour in his car. Sure he meant well, I guess, but cripes. Don't sell me on your skills, and then cry when you eff up and I tear you a knew one. I gave the kid an older edition of the AISC LRFD manual, and told him "Everyone at some point has a monumental screw up, and they learn from it. Hopefully, you will never screw up a measurement again."

He ended being an average employee, as long as we kept him away from the drawings. But a few years later he tried to pull the old "um, I got a better offer and I'm quitting, but I'll stay if you can match it." We had heard through the grapevine that he was going to pull it. So we said "mmm, sorry we can't, but we wish you luck." He was on unemployment for 5 months.

Miscalculation must be in his DNA.

wirenut1110

We were wiring a friend's garage, finished for the day, went back to the shop, employees disperse, friend calls later that evening and says "was my dog here when y'all were here"? I said yeah, he says"he's not now".

Couple days goes by and my friend asks where "x" employee lives, goes and "stakes out" his house, and low and behold, here he comes out the front door with the dog.

Friend gets his dog back, I called the guy and said that he no longer worked here. He shows up the next morning and I say " What are you doing here, I told you no longer work here" He says "WHY"? I was like " YOU STOLE MY F'N CUSTOMER"S DOG" He goes " I didn't steal it, when I was on my way home I saw the dog wandering around so I took it home so it would be safe"

22rifle

Well, one of my friends caught his employee in a compromising position with the customer's dog.

Wolfgang

My first year of painting I was working for a guy who had a maintenance contract for a University Med Center. They owned a bunch of houses that the students could live in. I finish my job and the boss is taking me over to help the other FNG on his. We walk into the house and hear the guy talking a mile a minute, we walk upstairs into the room and the guy is standing there butt naked talking to his roller. Seriously, the guy had a complete mental breakdown. I would see him as a patient on their Psych Ward for the next couple of months while I was still learning the trade.

And of course the rag soaked in paint thinner tucked in the pocket was seen so many times.

Mrmac204

workin on a large concrete home last summer- one of those gawd awful designer things, with a whole lotta walls that were going to be floor to ceiling glass, sorta like a commercial building. Anyway I needed to shim down at the top where the glass would go cause the height was "variable" and needed to be within a certain spec. (HO kept changing his mind on the glass etc so I don't really blame the concrete guys) so I have my builders level, found the 5' elevation line (marked through out the whole structure) then got my helper. told him, hold the tape measure up to the ceiling real steady, and I will read the elevation... well I go back to the builders level, look thru the lens.... ??? can't see the tape! huh?? I look over top- where is he?? I says (name omited) where are you? then I hear his voice from over at the side, he's down on his knees in front of the table saw- He says "wow come and look at this huge spider!" sigh......
he wasn't workin for me directly so all I could do was "encourage" him back to the project at hand.
this is the kid who showed up at the company picnic with his hair in "spikes" he'd used carpenters glue to hold the hair in place!!!!!
next day he was bald, he couldn't get the glue out! LOL

he's real good at takin out the garbage though!

JumboJack

SHUT UP!

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in texas with framing and cornish people will do it for 3.00 a foot. What do yall think about that? Just laber

simplejack

Not so dumb as it was a rookie mist...No never mind it was stupid!

My buddy and I were about 1 year into our "Summer job" when he and I were given the task of insulating the partitions in an office building. we where well into doing this when I was called to help on a project on a different floor in the same building. well when lunch time came around I came upstairs to the floor where he was insulating, to get him to break.

This project had several Low wall work stations (drywall cubicles) I'd say maybe 300 l.f if memory serves, anyway among the full height partitions he had Insulated the low walls too!

This is the same guy that years later on a power strip demo; taped and wire nut (safety-ed off) the demoed wires, on the floor as well as the wires left in the surface mount J boxes!!

as for me...I gave myself a shiner removing a 2x8 balcony floor joist! we were on a scaffold on the exterior of a three story home, and after cutting and hammering away the stucco we began to demo the joists. their was one that was so rotted out that I began to pull and hang on the 2x8...well it gave way and knocked me right in the eye! it swollen up and to my embarrassment the Boss showed up with the home owner! in the days after when i showed up on other jobs with the rest of the crew...no one believed my story...

the running joke by the guy that was with me when it happened was that my girl friend (wife now) beat me up!

dirt diggler

LOL I've had that happen before --- it's always somethin stupid like a spider, or a woodpecker or somethin


it's not funny at the time --- but sure is funny to hear it happen to someone else

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Thanks in advance!!!

Bkessler

The day before my first day as an electrician apprentice my cousin (his company)took me out to buy all new tools, great. The next day, my new tool belt was long enough to go twice around me, so I put it around my waist buckled it, then grabbed the end of the extra belt with my left hand, took my new razor knife and made a cut downward on an angle then turned the knife around to finish off the job and have a nice pointed end to my belt, needless to say that knife went through the belt easier than first cut and my momentum carried through and I stabbed myself in the left forearm requiring 14 stiches, some how I spun around and got blood on the floor two walls and somehow the ceiling. They tried to call me slash for a while but thank god it didn't stick. For a while I was "the kid", as at the time I was 17 and about 125 lb's and probable could pass for 14.

simplejack

We were a sub contractor for Fox 11 news in or close to Santa Monica, California (1999 south Bundy drive) Anyway... we had months on the job installing about 600 doors.

when we got to the stairwell doors I decided to challenge a guy who called himself the "Door dog" and his helper to see who could prep and swing more metal 90 min doors. my helper and I had less years Combined (about 8 years)than his helper! and he was in the trade much longer than that (25 years), but between his coffee in the morning his cigarette breaks every 40 min and his talking to any one who would listen, I figured I had him beat!

So we make a beer money bet, he takes one end of the building and I take the other, I set up shop on one floor and have my helper take the finished door (hinged and under cut where necessary) to the openings. I then bore and installed the lock and cylinders in place. I found out that he decided to move his tools around to the openings and took longer, but the problem was he had installed the Key cylinder on the wrong side of the door! he was locking people out of the stairwells!

Can you imagine needing a key to escape a fire! and since the GC would not accept cylinder blanks we had to get a company out there to fill the hole with steel plates, bondo and finish over 10 doors!

scwalsh

i was working for a painting/plastering contractor a while back we had a young fella working as a labour (not the sharpest tool in the shed). I was taking care of the crews hours for the week, this guy was getting 10.00 per hour and i told him that if he gave me $20.00 i would add an extra hour onto his pay for the week he was all for is but was afraid that the boss would find out. i nearly pissed myself laughing at him.
another time he was working with one of the other guys, plastering in a garage they had him taping the walls, the guy he was working with had to run out for a min and when he came back dude had cut small pieces of tape and covered every screw head with mud and tape

simplejack

I was only about 8 months into construction, we were working in a lawyers office in Beverly hills California, the Job was finished brand new carpet installed through out (a White wool like carpet, VERY EXPENSIVE) I got there just as the crew was detailing and I had to help, we were in a hurry because the tenant was coming for a walk through.

I didn't know that a can of WD-40 had opened up in my truck mounted Knaack box and had mixed with the rust and chalk at the bottom of my tool bucket. so I get to the suite and leave my scaffold outside so as to not mark the new carpet and set my bucket down in the center of the room.

after some cleaning I had to move my bucket when I saw what made my balls climb up my throat! a large black Ring stain on the brand new carpet! My the boss shows up and reamed me so bad that he had to walk away without saying any more than; "If that stain doesn't come up in the next hour, YOUR FIRED!"

I jumped in my truck and couldn't find a hardware store much less a Home depot! (Beverly hills) I ran into a super market and found a plain white bottle named FOLEX...i purchased several products to work on this stain but FOLEX did it...saving my career!

I wrote a thank you letter to FOLEX a few days later. (my first letter to a corporation)

22rifle

Sorry. But you have to admit, it falls under this thread classification.

The dude was a married Amish guy too.