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Post by steev on May 1, 2016 23:04:27 GMT -5
So I went Friday to clear the last circuit, managed to clean 3 of 4 lines; unfortunately, whoever installed that irrigation had glued things that ought not to have been glued, so I couldn't get a tube off without breaking the connector-manifold; not a big deal, just not a part I had.
On a more ominous note, (dum, dum, dum, DUM!) there was a puddle in the valve-manifold box, for no "good" reason.
Stopped back today, to deal with common "start-up" issues; clogged heads and critter-chewed tubing in circuits they hadn't affected; that puddle was still there. So, the re-connection of the valve-manifold to the water supply was defective; there is a leak; I shut off the water to the riega, hoping that the puddle will drain and I won't have too muddy a job when I return Tuesday to excavate that connection, so I can re-repair it.
The company sent a second e-mail demand for payment of the withheld 10%! These people not only don't know what they're doing, neither of their hands knows what the other is doing (badly).
Am I a bad person because I am becoming eager to meet these clowns in court? Just asking. I don't think I am, but that's just my opinion. These payasos got $4K (less 10%) for two days' work; screwing things up that they clearly couldn't fix and they think they can put a cap on the cost of remediation of their incompetence and then deny that any debt exists, so they get paid the whole amount?
Wow! For various reasons (none, I think, entirely my fault), I've had considerable experience of courtrooms; there've been learning experiences. These pendejos are playing checkers; I'm not playing chess; I'm playing GO! I will pin them like a moth in a camphor-reeking drawer ( see?: I wasn't a zoology major for nothing; I got some colorful imagery).
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Post by steev on May 5, 2016 21:15:02 GMT -5
Tuesday, I returned to the scene of the crime(s); replaced the connector-manifold; put on the tubes to those mini-sprays; dug out the valve-box and bared the manifold-connection; located the leak; it was getting dark and mosquitoes were getting too bloody familiar, so I went home.
Today, I got the stuff needed to put the cherry on that sorry sundae; fixed the leak; blew any remaining crap out of the tubes; put on the mini-sprinks and oriented them; replaced the valve-box and bade a "fond" farewell to that prolonged learning experience.
It's all over but the shouting, as they say; actually, I find that dealing with this sort of thing calmly and quietly conveys a greater sense of authority and resolve than jumping around while yelling "Ook!
Ook! Eeee!", or words to that effect; learned that from my Dad, once a master-sergeant of Marines.
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Post by templeton on May 6, 2016 2:04:51 GMT -5
I admire your persistence - I would have retired with a beer, and made plans for a drought garden...
T
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Post by steev on May 6, 2016 10:42:54 GMT -5
My persistence pales beside that of my sweetheart, hence my persevering; besides which, I just have very little tolerance for incompetence.
"If you can't do it right, don't hire out to fuck it up!"
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Post by steev on May 12, 2016 23:48:51 GMT -5
Well, of course, it wasn't over, because when crap goes downstream to clog something up, crap stops flowing downstream; so when the obstruction is cleared, crap starts moving again, clogging further downstream.
So I went out to deal with the next, downstream, level of crapitude; replaced this and that, due to irremediable crap-up-it-tude.
I'm actually confident that the whole shitteree has been fixed. I could be wrong; wouldn't be the first time that's happened, though I may have been misinformed the other time.
Like my dentist, I've reached the age of recognizing that one's skills/competence may be/are declining, so it is counterproductive to overreach; could cause too much back-splash.
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Post by prairiegarden on May 16, 2016 18:13:36 GMT -5
Hope springs eternal.. tomorrow some young man is coming out to help till the garden, cut the grass, help me put up a grape trellis and MAYBE even plant some shrubs. We shall see. So far, via phone etc. he has a good attitude...
The kid who mowed down my tree seedlings last year TWICE to make sure he killed them arrived on my doorstep looking to arrange the cutting of ( some of) the grass again this year. He told me that although he would come cut the grass and wouldn't try to cheat me again ( with a cheerful sorry about that!) he wouldn't do any of the difficult bits. I'll spend 20 minutes a day with a pair of kitchen scissors before I hire him again. ( though.. got a rabbit cage so..rabbits ... I wanted a sheep but so far none have come available. Eat your lawnmower come September..)
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Post by steev on May 16, 2016 19:50:06 GMT -5
Edible lawnmower: good idea. European nobility figured that out centuries ago, when they realized it was a good idea to have good visibility of whoever might be sneaking up, as well as having your meat-critters close in case you needed to get them inside the walls quickly.
Wait; were you referring to the inept kid for September?
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Post by reed on May 18, 2016 6:21:49 GMT -5
I think I got lucky. We were dreading it when some kid bought the hunting ground next door as absentee hunters are often not the best neighbors, except for the absentee part but one day I saw him unloading some trees to plant so I went over and introduced myself and gave him some seed started fruit trees and some grape vines, he was very appreciative. I checked after he left and he did plant them!
When he was putting up a gate and his obligatory no-trespassing signs I had to go rescue him. He had a cheap post hole digger and was trying to use muscle power to push it in the ground, after about 1/2 an hour or so I couldn't stand it anymore and took my grand-dads post hole digger and showed him how to throw it at the ground instead of forcing it, in a couple minutes he had two 3' foot holes in heavy clay.
One day he heard me trying to get my chain saw started and just happened to have one in his truck, an hour later the job that would have taken me all day was done. All cut, stacked and the brush cleaned up. He has beagles to terrorize rabbits and promises to shoot coons on sight. When he brings his crew to hunt and camp I'v never heard a single peep except for occasional gun fire and that fits right in here. Yep, we could have done a lot worse for a neighbor.
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Post by steev on Jun 26, 2016 23:43:05 GMT -5
There's so much to say for good neighbors; with the glaring exception of one, all my neighbors on the farm are good; the old ones are solid and interesting; the young ones are courteous and interested. Best move I ever made, buying land in the middle of nowhere, in a close-knit community, where my skills are non-competitive, but useful; it's a challenge, being a "farmer" in a ranching community, but ya gotta stretch to reach the next branch, or you won't climb high enough to see the forest, for the trees.
I'm sure I'm being integrated into the community, despite my failure to approach the local religious groups (clearly where one goes to "meet and greet"), but that's just SO not my thing; the local dope-grower has come by a few times, to introduce me to his available wares (quite good!), but I've not grown for ~35 years, nor bought for ~40 years; there's been a lot of progress in those years; oh, yeah!
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Post by steev on Jul 5, 2016 22:09:48 GMT -5
Back to the plumbing debacle: I'm gonna get a novel outta this. My sweetheart sent a very short negative report to the BBB, to which the contractor responded with a long, mendacious, duplicitous response (in defense of their {undeserved} A+ rating), implying that she is ignorant of the work and frustrated (being a woman).
I sent a rebuttal, highly detailed, describing the incompetence, ignorance, and laziness of the boss to the BBB;
I assure you, I was measured, reasonable, and willing to respond to any contradiction, in detail. Firm, not shrill; I am solidly grounded, as Pop taught me; ready to respond to attack with devastation, calmly and effectively. Hoo-ah!
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Post by steev on Jul 14, 2016 23:16:14 GMT -5
The BBB responded that they can't take my input lacking accepting input from my sweetheart, which she has now given. Yee-hah!
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Post by steev on Dec 1, 2016 23:56:50 GMT -5
Recently, I got a call from a dentist whose office complex (his, another dentist's, and an acupuncturist's) I've maintained for decades; he was out of town, but had gotten a call that the landscaping irrigation was flooding everything and couldn't be shut off from the controller; he'd previously been told there was water leaking from a valve at the roof of the parking garage, so he'd called a company which shall be nameless; they sent out a plumber who was mystified by the apparatus that had wires connected to it, so he just took it out and soldered in another pressure limiter, going away leaving a bill for $800. What he'd done was to remove the controller-connected actuation valve and pressure-regulator, so the irrigation was just ON; he had no idea where those pipes went, nor did he look around after "his work was done".
The dentist called me to check it out (which he should have done before) and I went over to close the check-valve, stopping the irrigation; the plumber came back to confer; well, not really; the dentist had bitched at his boss, so he was really there to cover his ass, telling me why that apparatus shouldn't have been up there (where it would only impact the irrigation, not the dental/acupuncturist offices, but I'd also put it there so as not to turn a two-hour job into an eight-hour job of re-piping; it only lasted ~20 years without a problem, not bad for a plastic control valve assembly, IMHO). I saw no profit in arguing with a man who was clearly ignorant and threatened. He went away, which was really what I wanted him to do, so I could fix the mess.
Not only had he totally removed the controller-valve assembly, but soldered copper tubing into the threads of the check-valve, instead of using a thread/pipe adapter.
Is there a pattern, here? Are my "Golden Years" to be roiled by other (over-paid) people's ignorance/incompetence? Aren't diminished physical vigor and "senior moments" enough to transmute them to pyrite?
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Post by steev on Dec 2, 2016 1:58:04 GMT -5
In other news; a week ago my helper of the past 14 months, who was getting pretty good at knowing my practices/expectations/clients tells me that he can get longer hours at a restaurant where he's been working after our shift (trying to amass the funds to bring his brother over the border), so he'd like to have his younger brother take his place. Do I want to start from scratch with an even greener kid, the sibling of this one that's bailing, just because it would work for them? I think not. I sympathize with his families' plight, but I don't want to be back on supervisor-mode, unable to do my own work. So today, 4:30PM, he tells me he won't be working after tomorrow. I had to say "You didn't have the balls to tell me you're quitting in less than 17 hours?". This is less than three weeks before the end of the work-year, during the holidays, when people want things cleaned up and it's "tip-season". He said "I can work tomorrow!", not knowing that it's actually a potentially light day (there is work that could be done, but which doesn't need to be done), so I paid him off; adios. He left a month before he'd have gotten a raise.
I'll get through the end of the year alone, covering the regular maintenance, but pending profitable projects won't be done until I get another helper. Can't really take on a new helper, at the moment, given that I'll not work the last two weeks of December; did for many years, but it got me neither ahead nor much appreciation.
See? Brought it back to "incompetent help".
I often orbit in deep space, but I always know from whence I lifted off.
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Post by steev on Jan 17, 2017 0:52:41 GMT -5
Between lack of help and weather, I worked vacation-less for the first time in a decade; not entirely bad: the longer I go without working, the harder it is to get back in shape.
So a good, reliable past employee brought me a potential helper, who didn't show on the next Monday; couple weeks later, we spoke and I told him the new guy had flaked; last week, he had another candidate; fine; another no-show.
The good guy called today to see what happened; said the first had thought I'd said we could only work Monday; I'd only said it might rain; if I could control the weather I'd not be a gardener; I'd be in charge and things would be different! So the first prospect is supposed to show up tomorrow (I figure he's tried to find other work, but it's not gone well), we shall see what happens; supposed to rain Wednesday, if not Thurs thru the weekend. If this guy figures out where his interests lie, he'll have a regular job and learn a trade.
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Post by prairiegardens on Jan 17, 2017 13:29:45 GMT -5
I've figured out I'm a lousy employer as the last guy was super nice but lazy, had a tendency to stop doing things unless more or less constantly supervised, when I did a review of what I'd actually got done last summer the total fairly pathetic. But he was so much nicer than any of the others that I kept him on. If I did keep him on the go he was always very cheerful about it all, but even though I was paying him and all I loathe nagging people. He ended up getting another job in the fall 6 days a week so that'll be that anyway for this summer.
Thinking about seeing if the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides or a softball team or some such group might be interested in a doing sort of gardening blitz for me once a month to raise some money for whatever they raise money for. My gardening ambitions are exceeding my grasp, so to speak.
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