It all makes work, for the working man.

[Harry Bloomfield]

This is the forth day, that some sort of national drainage company has been here, working on a local council owned semi. At the peak of the 'operation' they have had up to 9 guys, a big crew cab truck and three of the largest LWB high Transit vans. Most of the time here has been spent sat in their vehicles, playing on the phones and brewing up. Obviously more than just a simple blocked drain, because wheel barrows, shovels and cement mixer involved, however.....

This morning, just the crew cab truck and one van. They are mixing cement in a mixer, which they had to beat lumps out of, because the previous time it was used it had been left for the cement to set inside. The shape of the drum, suggests that is what they always do, rather than cleaning it out after use. Even the most involved drain repair job, I would expect two guys to manage.

It does seem a massive and expensive operation by any standards.

The main foul and rain water drains flow down towards and through the rear of my property - I will be lifting the covers when they have left, just to make sure they haven't blocked us up.

 

[sxturbo]

people who work for the big guns of construction always seem to give the least toss about the job,

i often think how much money these firms waste on incumbent workers.

it's often said once in with one of these big firms your in it for life.

we do a lot of work for EDF in their power stations, and my god it's sole destroying how slow they work, to exchange an engine we can normally do it with a couple of days, working with EDF its 3-4 weeks... it's ludicrous, we spend so much time waiting around for them, and their scaffolders, or electric departments (they only allow their own staff to touch these), even when we budget 4 weeks more often than not it over runs, and at the end they have the cheek to say they wont pay for the additional days, so then we have to do a tango with them, and prove (luckily we do daily reports) that any over runs is solely down to them, and then they pay.

the only way you can work for these companies is to be a family member or friend, they tend not to employ outside of their bubble, and this in turn keeps the slow and incumbent working practices.

for this reason i refuse to use EDF for my gas and electric, they arent cheap anyway and seeing first hand how much money they waste i refuse to aid them with my money.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

i often think how much money these firms waste on incumbent workers.

it's often said once in with one of these big firms your in it for life.

I worked for one of these companies in the 80's, it was unbearable. I'm a lets crack on and get the job done personality, it was torture, I just didn't fit in.

 

[Burnerman]

Try working for the CEGB in the 70’s.....nowt got done.
I think Covid has dictated that men shouldn’t share vans though.
John

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Try working for the CEGB in the 70’s.....nowt got done.
I think Covid has dictated that men shouldn’t share vans though.
John

I know, I contracted to them about then.

 

[Brigadier]

My dad was a self-employed spark.

Back in the day, he used to say that MEB stood for "Move easy, Boys" and, from what I saw, he was right

 

[Burnerman]

I know, I contracted to them about then.

I don't know if it was a national thing, but every Friday between 10 and 12 noon everything stopped.....
So the guys could fill in the football pools
That was Blyth B station.
John

 

[crystal ball]

Where I served my time pay day was Thursday, the afternoon was the time to carry out many transactions, selling raffle tickets, football cards, one guy ran a savings club and wandered through out the (huge) site collecting payments ( he reckoned the interest paid for his holidays), card games in washrooms where you could lose a weeks wage

 

[diy_fun_uk]

A time in motion study would be interesting ...

Plus, I note you said council owned property so, depending on the contractual agreement, they're probably quite happy to string it out.

An old couple that used to live opposite told me a story that sums things up. The wife was a retired council admin worker. One time when she had started in a new department, the manager approached her after a few days. 'Can I have a quiet word? You're currently processing 15 forms a day which is great. However, the department averages 7 forms a day per staff member. Can I ask that you slow down a bit to avoid creating tensions? Thanks.'

Of course, there are times when you want a group of workers to work at an agreed rate (JIT production etc) I get that, however my neighbours story sums up what was historically wrong in large usually public sector organisations and no doubt still is to an extent, although it is getting better albeit slowly!

 

[Dangee]

In my early 20’s I worked for a company that had maintenance contracts with local authorities, Met Police stations etc.....
The most soul destroying couple of weeks of my life was working in Holloway Women’s Prison.
You had to take breaks when the in house team did (1 hour in morning, 1 1/2 hours lunch & 1 hour in the afternoon!!) We we’re redoing some showers. We would be locked in the bathrooms, then if you needed to get anything you had to bang on the door until a guard came took you to the storage room. Then locked you in & buggered off again!!!!. You then wait 15 mins for another guard to let you out & take you back to the bathrooms.
It was a constant 24/25 degrees of stale air, like a care home. It was awful. You just couldn’t get on with anything.
The verbal sexually explicit abuse I got made me feel violated by the end of the day! The lifers were allowed a canary or budgie caged in there cells.
Walking through the dorms & communal areas (always with a guard) their were women so tough looking, I would just look at the floor as I passed them.

 

[crystal ball]

I used to work on active service submarines at times, you were free to roam just about anywhere apart from the store for beer & snacks when you had to have a sentry, one guy used to munch his way through the Crunchies while he was watching my every move

 

[johnny2007]

I was lured in by a massive company to do work for a london council.
Went in first day with my labourer, we fitted 3 fire doors.
Next day as soon as we arrived, the boss called us in and said that the other carpenters on other jobs were doing 1 door a day and factor in 1 day a week to remedy their mistakes.
I said: "If you pay me by day I can do 1 door a week and mess it up so badly it will take a month to repair"
We finished the 12 doors and all trimmings and got paid, but were never called again.
Good!

 

[diy_fun_uk]

I was lured in by a massive company to do work for a london council.
Went in first day with my labourer, we fitted 3 fire doors.
Next day as soon as we arrived, the boss called us in and said that the other carpenters on other jobs were doing 1 door a day and factor in 1 day a week to remedy their mistakes.
I said: "If you pay me by day I can do 1 door a week and mess it up so badly it will take a month to repair"
We finished the 12 doors and all trimmings and got paid, but were never called again.
Good!

It's not a popular thing to say, however it's this attitude (not yours, theirs) in decades gone by that contributed to the demise of our home grown industries. Whilst we were busy arguing about how long tea breaks should be, other countries took elements of what we did well, learned from the elements we didn't do well, and started producing very competitively priced products. Initially the western world laughed ... who's laughing now as the old saying goes.

 

[Diver Fred]

When I was employed in during the '80's the company changed to a 'new' way of working. Previously we had worked in groups of 2 or 3 following a period of fairly intensive training. Then some bright spark came to the conclusion we had follow 'Total Quality Management' and 'Just in Time' delivery ways of working. Theory being that TQM meant the guy's in the field needed less training and JIT less waste...
So we changed from 6&1/2 hours of productive work a day to around half that...
Most of us used to have quantities of commonly used bits and pieces and spare lengths of cable and wire in our tool chests. With JIT we couldn't use those squirreled away bits and pieces.
TQM meant the 'manager' (who knew sweet FA) had to inspect the paperwork 'Tick Sheets' and check the work we had done before we could move on to the next step.
That delay was often compounded by the JIT deliveries as the TQM rules meant the next delivery of 'stuff' couldn't be delivered until the manager had signed off his part of the paperwork. It was helped when the local company stores didn't have the stuff to send out 'cause JIT stopped at their part of the supply chain.

More times than enough one person would start a job, get sent off to another site 'cause we were waiting on the next delivery, someone else would do the next stage and someone else finish it off. I always seemed to be the person starting the jobs; mainly 'cause I'd have the equipment areas marked out accurately before the initial deliveries were dropped.
It also meant that none of us were particularly bothered how the job was progressed as any pride in doing and finishing a good job was killed by the M&FA associated with TQM/JIT.
Standards certainly went down.

 

[Nige F]

Even the most involved drain repair job, I would expect two guys to manage.
.

Well, in the early 80's I worked for a Housing Association , and me and the boss would have done exactly that on a drain job . Then Thatcher came along and shut down the DLO's ( direct labour organizations ) So what you saw is what we have now Still, I got a small pension from my few years there.