There were many commercial jobs in high class buildings in the late 90's we would work on. Outside of Minneapolis, Edina was an older part of town, lots of money in the area.
We were working on the top floor in a premier building, no expense was spared on the buildout. The wood floor alone cost more than most tradesmen would make in 2 years wages. To add to the problems, it was an occupied building, with a tenant a floor below with only 18" of concrete separating the floors.
Construction wasn't the quietest of jobs, hammers would pound away, a chorus of screw guns in the background would be heard from 6-2. Wall framing included hammer drilling and firing pins into concrete, which was disturbing to the occupied space below. To keep progress going, all of the really noisy work was to be done before 8am, at times we would try to sneak a single pin or a hammer drilled hole in before the supervisor would catch us. After a while it was happening all the time, it turned into an odd cat and mouse game. One carpenter drilled a hole, heard the supervisor was around the corner, quickly handed the hammer drill off to the electrician and laughed as the supervisor chewed out the electrician, just because he was caught holding the hammer drill.
As the job wore on progress was slowed to a crawl, changes were made almost daily, one day we would build a wall, the next we tore it down, moved it 6" and rebuilt it. Tradesmen were tired of it, nothing is worse than redoing something, multiple times. Moving outlets 2" or light switches from one side of the room to the other, paint colors changed from white to off white to eggshell to flat then back to white. On top of it the supervisor was unbearable, demanding extra work be covered under the original bid price. All profit was eaten up, we were working just to break even. A day before the project was complete the supervisor laid into a carpenter for leaving a few wood shavings in the corner office after the final clean. The carpenter was already going to clean it up, and he did after he fitted the door, but he hatched a plan. Months of dealing with this supervisor had soured him to the point where he needed to get something out of the job, he was breaking even at this point, but he knew he couldn't leave without doing something.
Move in was the next day, the space was clean, the CEO was touring the space, proud of the empire he built. The job supervisor followed him as they walked the hallways, looking at the workmanship, feeling very satisfied with the project he completed. They came to the head office, where the CEO would spend the rest of his career overlooking the city of Edina, his camelot.
He slowly opened the door, and as it swung open it didn't seem ... Right. A horrible smell wafted in as the door swung open, followed by a trail of paper towels strewn from one side of the office to a corner, where the smell originated from. In the corner was a pile of shit, a sloppy streak smeared down the wall, and laid perfectly out like a coiled snake. If that wasn't enough it seemed like the person that made the mess used every last square of paper towels, and he could've used a few more.
That was the last project we saw that supervisor.
No comments:
Post a Comment