so, after 7 months of being off work, a friend of a friend phones me on wednesday about 2pm..
"XXXXXX say's your a sparky and after some work? how much do you want paying and when can you start..?"
I tell him ho much I want and he says ... " Ok, I'll talk it over with the other guys and get back to you"..
at 20:30 that night he calls and says ok, here's the address, see you at 08:30 tomorrow....
so I go out to the shed and load all the tools back into the van..
get on site next day, some guy meets me ( not the guy I'm working for.. one of his other guys.. ) and gives me the 12 minute grand tour of the pub and then he's off to another job.. leaving me with a "mate" who has no tools or anything..
I'm dropped in at the deep end and to make it worse I've grabbed the wrong toolbox in the dark and havent brought my bolster and lump hammer.
so I do what I can untill the owner comes in at 10:00 and takes me round again detailing what he wants where.. while the "mate" follows and translates from urdu or hindi or whatever it was that they were speaking..
no kit on site besides 1 roll of 1.5 T+E, 1 roll of 2.5 T+E, 10 x 25mm double backbox, 10 x single backbox, 8 lengths of capping and a bag of roofing nails..
no screws, rawlplugs, grommets, terminal blocks / JB's to cap off old wiring or anything..
we crack on pulling in feeds to lights and so on and at lunch I go out in "my own time" and BUY a new bolster and lump hammer so we can chase the walls out..
all in all we pulled in 3 lighting circuits and a socket circuit over a very hard to fish ceiling, chased in 12 lighting drops, 3 socket drops and pulled in the radial for the sockets ( no boxes sunk, left the box sinker in the other toolbox.. )
amongst all this I was also grabbed for 1/2 hour by the brewery guys to be given details of what feeds they want for the glass washer, the bottle fridges and other bits..
spent half and hour tracing and removing the feeds and controlls to 2 wall fans that were coming out..
got a text at 22:40 that night saying "pls note, work off for tomorrow. will call in the morning".
so by 14:30 on friday I still hadn't had the call so I called him..
when I finally got through to him he said...
"They weren't impressed by what you did yesterday.. I was round there at 9 last night and I can't see you got much done.. you only pulled 3 cables in.. . so I'll have to get someone else in to do it.. sorry."
I don't think that's very fair.. dropped into the deep end with no kit, a pretty much useless "mate" , not written spec or instructions and a language barrier between me and the customer.. ( and the "mate" wasn't that good at english either.. ).
he didn't offer to pay me for the day and now won't answer his phone to me..
I'm glad that I'm out really.. seems like a bit of a bad bloke to work for.. didn't even meet him..
"XXXXXX say's your a sparky and after some work? how much do you want paying and when can you start..?"
I tell him ho much I want and he says ... " Ok, I'll talk it over with the other guys and get back to you"..
at 20:30 that night he calls and says ok, here's the address, see you at 08:30 tomorrow....
so I go out to the shed and load all the tools back into the van..
get on site next day, some guy meets me ( not the guy I'm working for.. one of his other guys.. ) and gives me the 12 minute grand tour of the pub and then he's off to another job.. leaving me with a "mate" who has no tools or anything..
I'm dropped in at the deep end and to make it worse I've grabbed the wrong toolbox in the dark and havent brought my bolster and lump hammer.
so I do what I can untill the owner comes in at 10:00 and takes me round again detailing what he wants where.. while the "mate" follows and translates from urdu or hindi or whatever it was that they were speaking..
no kit on site besides 1 roll of 1.5 T+E, 1 roll of 2.5 T+E, 10 x 25mm double backbox, 10 x single backbox, 8 lengths of capping and a bag of roofing nails..
no screws, rawlplugs, grommets, terminal blocks / JB's to cap off old wiring or anything..
we crack on pulling in feeds to lights and so on and at lunch I go out in "my own time" and BUY a new bolster and lump hammer so we can chase the walls out..
all in all we pulled in 3 lighting circuits and a socket circuit over a very hard to fish ceiling, chased in 12 lighting drops, 3 socket drops and pulled in the radial for the sockets ( no boxes sunk, left the box sinker in the other toolbox.. )
amongst all this I was also grabbed for 1/2 hour by the brewery guys to be given details of what feeds they want for the glass washer, the bottle fridges and other bits..
spent half and hour tracing and removing the feeds and controlls to 2 wall fans that were coming out..
got a text at 22:40 that night saying "pls note, work off for tomorrow. will call in the morning".
so by 14:30 on friday I still hadn't had the call so I called him..
when I finally got through to him he said...
"They weren't impressed by what you did yesterday.. I was round there at 9 last night and I can't see you got much done.. you only pulled 3 cables in.. . so I'll have to get someone else in to do it.. sorry."
I don't think that's very fair.. dropped into the deep end with no kit, a pretty much useless "mate" , not written spec or instructions and a language barrier between me and the customer.. ( and the "mate" wasn't that good at english either.. ).
he didn't offer to pay me for the day and now won't answer his phone to me..
I'm glad that I'm out really.. seems like a bit of a bad bloke to work for.. didn't even meet him..