Wednesday, December 10

Long Work Rant

I have been completely slammed at work for about a month now and it is starting to wear on me. I like to be busy but it gets very frustrating when it seems like half of my time is spent fixing other peoples mistakes and a smaller portion of my time is spent dealing with computers or scanners that dont want to work properly.

Yesterday I had a stack of submittals to get through which are all time sensitive and even though I send a fax at the beginning of the project telling the subs how many copies they need and it is in their spec book, they cant seem to get that I need 8 copies. So I either waste my time making copies or I have to set it aside to wait for them to bring in the neccesary copies.

The best moment of yesterday though came when I got to one of the submittals and it was a mess. There were (4) concrete mix designs that were all mixed up unorganized and naturally there were not enough copies. So I make all the copies, organize it so there are 8 copies of each mix design that are clearly labeled with a cover page on each submittal as well as a review sheet the Architect requests each submittal have. It took me about 45 minutes to get it together and when I go to enter it in the log I see that this particular sub has already submitted their concrete mix design 2 months ago and it was already approved. Yes I could have checked the log before putting it together but why would a sub re-submit the same previously approved submittal? They were completely done with the process and since I am doing submittals for 5 projects I cant remember what was submitted 2 months ago and what the status of that submittal was. There are 80 separate submittals for that project alone. To spend 45 minutes fixing something that didnt even need to be submitted in the first place is incredibly annoying.

And since I have already ranted this muh, lets talk about Close Out Documents and what idiots people are. When a project is done we have to collect warranty and maintenance information to give to the Owner. The spec book is a huge document about 3 inches thick that gives detailed information for what documents are required for each area. So I go through this damn book page by page and write down what each sub is responsible for. This takes a half a day at least but because the subs are too lazy to look themselves and if I dont tell them what they need to submit they will just throw a vague warranty at me. If all of the close out documents are not recieved by the Owner exactly as requested, they will not pay us and we cant pay pur subs so it is crucial this is acurate.

So I type a fax to each sub individually telling them exactly what I need from them per the spec book. Seems pretty easy for them to just read an effing fax and do what it says but it isnt. One sub sent in their close outs and completely neglected half of what was requested (this is very common). I faxed them back and told them thank you for the warranties but I also need and requested maintenance instructions and I spelled out (again) what exactly I needed and in what format. What do they send, the same damn warranties they already sent again. WTF!! I cannot be more clear just follow the effing instructions.

This is why I am so slammed because idiots cant follow directions. I am doing all the hard work for them and they still cant get it right. You can only put up with morons making things difficult for so long without it just getting to you.

3 comments:

Adam said...

Remind me to rant about the stain colors on my current project tonight. I'll regale you with stupidity so profound.

Kris10 said...

Sounds like the industry you are in...full of idiots, I wonder how long you will be able to take it?!?!?!

Lulu said...

I think every industry is full of idiots, in fact the whole world is. There is just no getting away from it.