Don Cherry said it right with the all encompassing “ You People”.
"Incompetent people" rant
- Thread starter CharlesInCharge
- Start date
This post is one of the reasons I tend to DIY a lot of stuff. Do it once and do it properly.
Keep your stuff maintained and it should last longer and cost you less to keep it running.
Keep your stuff maintained and it should last longer and cost you less to keep it running.
That's spot on. I work maintenance for an apartment complex and Sears is offering more to start. It hasn't dawned on them that the initial investment in tools is $250-300.
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Really, truly, if anyone can't stand incompetence, DIY. This is EXACTLY why I do all of my own maintenance that I can. Whether it is an oil change or a toilet that runs constantly, I LIKE doing most of my own maintenance. I know how it is done and done right. NO ONE else in the world cares about my car as much as I do.
I recently did upper and lower intake manifold gaskets on the notorious GM 3800 engine for my daughter's car. I ran a tap down each bolt hole and used proper size dies to clean all the threads on every single bolt. Cleaned all gasket surfaces with plastic razor blades and a shop vacuum, followed by white rag and acetone wipe down. Followed GM torque sequence and torque specs, then double checked everything. I used dielectric silicon grease on all the electrical connectors and replaced O rings as necessary. As soon as I was done, I did NOT start the car. I pressure checked the cooling system and knew my work was good before starting the car. I spent most of last weekend doing this, but I'm not on a time clock with a "boss" pushing me to hurry; I'm working on a car for someone I love, and time/money don't matter; all that counts to me is doing it well.
I do so much agree with previous posters who have well said that when you find someone GOOD and honest, you preserve that relationship. I have happily paid good money to bricklayers and heavy equipment operators for skills I do not possess.
I recently did upper and lower intake manifold gaskets on the notorious GM 3800 engine for my daughter's car. I ran a tap down each bolt hole and used proper size dies to clean all the threads on every single bolt. Cleaned all gasket surfaces with plastic razor blades and a shop vacuum, followed by white rag and acetone wipe down. Followed GM torque sequence and torque specs, then double checked everything. I used dielectric silicon grease on all the electrical connectors and replaced O rings as necessary. As soon as I was done, I did NOT start the car. I pressure checked the cooling system and knew my work was good before starting the car. I spent most of last weekend doing this, but I'm not on a time clock with a "boss" pushing me to hurry; I'm working on a car for someone I love, and time/money don't matter; all that counts to me is doing it well.
I do so much agree with previous posters who have well said that when you find someone GOOD and honest, you preserve that relationship. I have happily paid good money to bricklayers and heavy equipment operators for skills I do not possess.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
You have a very lucky daughter.
Yeah, I got to agree with you and why my post above yours but there is one other thing about repair people, some repair people do take pride in their work and some REALLY try to do the right thing.
The problem is the darn company that they work for could care less, those companies have an attitude towards their workers of "get in there and get out" Time is money do whatever you can and get out of the job and onto the next.
More or less the repair people are under constant pressure to do things good enough so they don't need a return trip, adding to that pressure are insane daily schedules placed on them to get through the day, some, 1099 employees of those companies end up working far later then they should because they get so much work piled on them and they need to get to the next stop or they won't get home for 12 or more straight hours.
Sad but true. YES, like all employees some are plain lazy as well and why some companies are the way they are, feeling no matter how much time they give a worker to do a job he will jsut get lazy, do the min to get out of the house and goof off.
But this post is intended to tell another side of the good ones out there, whom would like to do better if they had the time from their company to do it.
Anyway, you never know what you are going to get and why I do almost everything myself.
Really?
When you have cities and States removing Honor classes because they want every student to cross the line at the same time, something is very wrong. You never purposely hold back children that are gifted. I guess that’s why all the engineers are coming from China and India these days.
I worked a summer job when I was at ASU in phoenix. It was at a GE service center for small appliances and electronics. We had an un listed quota that we were never told so they could get more out of us than was to be expected. One day when I came in to work I noticed the car of the oldest time employee was missing. Went in and asked the others where he was and they told me he had been fired for low production. He always took on the most difficult repairs and did them. His numbers were down because of that I believe. He liked the challenge of the repair. The others were just there for the summer for cheap help. Most repairs were simple. Toasters and irons and small transistor radios, but the record players and console radios took time to repair. I left shortly after that to go back to school, but it left me with a bad attitude toward GE stuff.
The US demonizes "noble professions" like police, doctors, librarians, mailmen, teachers. Always trying to find someone to do it cheaper or shame those who want to make a career out of the "entry level" spot without pursuing promotions.
Here's your result.
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Yes indeed.
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I honestly think it feels good to put in a hard day's work.
I don't think a day goes by that I don't deal with a totally incompetent person at least once. Call centers seem to be my biggest issue lately - bread and butter questions that anyone with a clue should know the answers to and after being placed on hold several times I'm either transferred to department (and often the wrong department) or I'm told the wrong information.
My most recent was with USAA. I wanted to close a savings account and had turned on an "auto-savings" feature years ago that transferred a small amount of money every day from checking to savings. I initiated this via text sometime around 2016. You can't close the savings account unless there is 24-hours of inactivity and no one knew how to turn this off unless I had the original text message from 2016. I was told by 4 people including 2 managers that I could turn it off on the website but I was missing the entire section they wanted me to go to. No one knew why. No one knew who to talk to. I was left asking so like 1000 years from now it will still be trying to transfer $8.42 from my checking to savings because THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TURN IT OFF? I asked if there was a behind-the-scenes website/IT department - after all SOMONE programmed this feature? No one had any clue.
I ended up accepting defeat and called back the next day for another issue and I mentioned it to the rep and she immediately said, "Sure, I can help you with that. They wanted to go into where on the webpage? Doesn't anyone read memos? I'm sorry sir, we are revamping the webpage and we were informed two weeks ago that that section was being removed from the webpage. It doesn't matter because this needs to be given to a second line chair to complete."
She put me on hold and 2 mins later it was done. I spent a total of 4.5 hours on this issue and she solved it in 2 mins simply because she read the memos and had a clue.
My most recent was with USAA. I wanted to close a savings account and had turned on an "auto-savings" feature years ago that transferred a small amount of money every day from checking to savings. I initiated this via text sometime around 2016. You can't close the savings account unless there is 24-hours of inactivity and no one knew how to turn this off unless I had the original text message from 2016. I was told by 4 people including 2 managers that I could turn it off on the website but I was missing the entire section they wanted me to go to. No one knew why. No one knew who to talk to. I was left asking so like 1000 years from now it will still be trying to transfer $8.42 from my checking to savings because THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TURN IT OFF? I asked if there was a behind-the-scenes website/IT department - after all SOMONE programmed this feature? No one had any clue.
I ended up accepting defeat and called back the next day for another issue and I mentioned it to the rep and she immediately said, "Sure, I can help you with that. They wanted to go into where on the webpage? Doesn't anyone read memos? I'm sorry sir, we are revamping the webpage and we were informed two weeks ago that that section was being removed from the webpage. It doesn't matter because this needs to be given to a second line chair to complete."
She put me on hold and 2 mins later it was done. I spent a total of 4.5 hours on this issue and she solved it in 2 mins simply because she read the memos and had a clue.
Yo, your friendly incompetent "people" here. If you don't like my service you can talk to my boss and pay him more so he can hire the more competent people, they quitted because of customers like you and found better jobs recently.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
You (LMAO) did this.Now I got to tell you a funny one. Well, it really wasn't funny at the time. I had a job as a Plant Maintenance Shutdown Manager for years in an office building. The company had a contract (like most places) with a local Janitorial Service. I worked 2-3 hours overtime every afternoon. So, I was in the office most evenings and saw the workers. It was usually the same really elderly man and 2-3 young women and guys who looked about 19 - 24 years old. Well maybe just out of school.? They would come in and empty trash, replace the trash bags, paper towels, clean bathrooms, dust and wipe desks and office furniture and mop and wax. Well over time, people all started to complain to the Personel Manager about the quality was way down and it was as if these workers just stopped doing 50% or more or their jobs. They were still coming in every evening but missing a lot of cleaning duties.
Plant Personel Manager was under pressure from everyone - even the Plant Manager to do something. He fired that company / broke the contract and announces that "we have a new custodial contract with new company so be patient and things will get better next Monday." Well,
the following Monday as I was about to leave, I see the van pulling up to the office buildings for the new company. The doors popped open and lo and behold! Those same workers who caused the ex-company to lose its contract apparently were hired to the same exact positions! LOL. I shortly went back to work outside in the Maintenance crew, so I never did find out what the solution was. Just an amusing (to me) true story. Sorry but I am certain someone will be offended, and others laugh, and some don't give a ____ and a can delete.
Seems like they are paying the same and the same people applied.
Now I got to tell you a funny one. Well, it really wasn't funny at the time. I had a job as a Plant Maintenance Shutdown Manager for years in an office building. The company had a contract (like most places) with a local Janitorial Service. I worked 2-3 hours overtime every afternoon. So, I was in the office most evenings and saw the workers. It was usually the same really elderly man and 2-3 young women and guys who looked about 19 - 24 years old. Well maybe just out of school.? They would come in and empty trash, replace the trash bags, paper towels, clean bathrooms, dust and wipe desks and office furniture and mop and wax. Well over time, people all started to complain to the Personel Manager about the quality was way down and it was as if these workers just stopped doing 50% or more or their jobs. They were still coming in every evening but missing a lot of cleaning duties.
Plant Personel Manager was under pressure from everyone - even the Plant Manager to do something. He fired that company / broke the contract and announces that "we have a new custodial contract with new company so be patient and things will get better next Monday." Well,
However, the management do have to hold the employees responsible otherwise the good people would slack off and be just as lazy over time. The only way to hold people responsible is with carrots and sticks If you have no carrots and want people to stay, you cannot have a stick either.
I bet you the new company got paid the same and pay the same to the "same" people as well.
If you want something done right you do it yourself.
Even if it means working on the telco side of the demarc.
So back in November Verizon's contractor, which appears to be some low-budget fly-by-night outfit, hit a 200 pair phone cable in my yard while installing conduit for FIOS. This was on a Friday. The same outfit also hit Comcast cables twice, causing a 10-hour outage each time.
Verizon didn't show up till the following Tuesday to fix it(so all the landline customers on that cable had no service for 4 days). And then they dug right along the ditch line and fixed the cable.
When they filled the hole back in, they completely destroyed the ditch. The outlet of my driveway culvert is blocked with almost 4 inches of mud, which it wasn't before. I guess I should be glad that they didn't tear the culvert out from under my driveway with the backhoe...
Verizon claimed that it was like that before (that was leaves, not mud). I called the Virginia Department of Transportation (ditches are supposed to be VDOT's responsibility), they said they'd send someone to look at it and call me back.
Never heard anything from VDOT, and the ditch now has standing water in it. (It flowed just fine before Verizon jacked it up).
I've been advised to call VDOT every few days to get someone to deal with the issue.
This is the sort of stuff I've come to expect, living in Virginia. There isn't much of a work ethic here that I can see.
Verizon didn't show up till the following Tuesday to fix it(so all the landline customers on that cable had no service for 4 days). And then they dug right along the ditch line and fixed the cable.
When they filled the hole back in, they completely destroyed the ditch. The outlet of my driveway culvert is blocked with almost 4 inches of mud, which it wasn't before. I guess I should be glad that they didn't tear the culvert out from under my driveway with the backhoe...
Verizon claimed that it was like that before (that was leaves, not mud). I called the Virginia Department of Transportation (ditches are supposed to be VDOT's responsibility), they said they'd send someone to look at it and call me back.
Never heard anything from VDOT, and the ditch now has standing water in it. (It flowed just fine before Verizon jacked it up).
I've been advised to call VDOT every few days to get someone to deal with the issue.
This is the sort of stuff I've come to expect, living in Virginia. There isn't much of a work ethic here that I can see.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Sympathy to you. Our Power companies here do all sorts of similar damage in yards if they need to do any heavy work. Even running into folks houses and damaging structures and it near takes a lawsuit for them to return and repair.
I have two cable companies who decided (different times) to use the 10' servitude they call it at the fence line in my back yard.
In each corner they have installed their above ground plastic 30" tall terminal boxes.
I have a wood fence all around and installed some special easy turn screws in the boards against these boxes for them to unscrew by hand and move board or two if they need room when working. As time goes by, they got sloppier (lazy? DGAD?) leave their plastic cover half open and do not put screws back in or some just leave the boards on the ground where they tossed them. If someone is home, they act like they care and put back.
I have a giant white oak tree in the middle of back yard against this fence. Now I can look out and see their long black coaxial cable they are too lazy to bury run across the whole length of the yard and past the base of the tree. As a working man I would have had to sneak away I would be so ashamed to leave a job like that.
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