my wife works for a small design/build firm (she made me swear i would not divulge any identifiable info here) and she came home a couple days ago laughing about something that happened to one of their subs.
seems that the wife- we’ll call her “Betty”- (of the husband/wife owned drywall contractor) came in to be paid for a big (about 3500 sq ft) house job they just finished. the office mgr- we’ll call her “Susie”- told her she couldn’t pay her because the job hadn’t even been started yet. Betty said her crew called and told her they had finished it the previous evening. Betty calls up her crew foreman from Susie’s desk and tells him “Don’t lie to me or I will fire you and the whole crew right now!” He swears the job is finished and agrees to meet her at the site.
wellllll….. Betty pulls up to the site and the foreman is right out on the street, proudly gesturing (drum roll please) TO THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR! that’s right sports fans, they rocked the wrong house. even though Betty had personally taken the foreman to the correct address a few days before they were supposed to start.
as it turns out, this story has a happy ending- the GC of the other house had been getting jerked around by his drywall sub, so he was glad to have his project rocked and happily paid in full for it- and will probably give them more work in the future! (though i suspect he’ll be extra careful about certain pertinent details like addresses)
i’ve heard of material being delivered to the wrong house (which probably happens all the time) but never of a major amount of work like this- anybody else?
m
Replies
Sorry it's not a construction story, but it's still funny. Last Christmas my neighbor gave his wife a new E class Mercedes, complete with the big red ribbon. The dealer was suppose to deliver it late Christmas eve and just leave it in the driveway. Well they got the wrong house and when we got up Christmas morning guess what was in my driveway? Sure deflates the ole Christmas spirit when the neighbor comes over and wants his car back. For some reason my gift to the wife of a robe and slippers suddenly seemed insignificant. Stupid Santa Clause, I'll never belive again!
Experienced, but still dangerous!
Edited 7/18/2003 10:12:55 AM ET by Dave
That's funny. Glad it turned out alright.
My old boss fixed a guys garage GFI by mistake once. The garage was open and he was in a hurry and just walked in and swapped the old for the new then the home owners wife came pulling up in her car. He told her that her problem was fixed. She looked kind of puzzled and started writing him a check. The husband came out of the house through the garage and looked at both of them kind of dumb founded. And asked "What's up?" It all clicked in my old bosses head. He said. "This isn't 316, Johnson circle is it?" The guy laughed and said. "Buddy this isn't even a circle." They all got a kick out of it. He left the new GFI in and left. Way too many things going on in that guys head and not enough note taking going on.
Who Dares Wins.
One of my first jobs was working in a variety store. They'd recently moved into a bigger building about a block from their old building. Boss takes me and another guy over to the old building. See these shelves, take everything off them and bring it over. OK.
So, we spend about 3 hours hauling toys off the shelves up the stairs and into the pickup truck. Truck is heaped with toys, and it's almost time to go home (no extra hours allowed). Should have just enough time to put them in the storeroom in the new building.
Get there ask the boss where he wants the toys.
TOYS, I WANTED YOU TO BRING THE SHELVES OVER HERE!!!!!!!!
Not sure how we were suppossed to do that without any tools, but drive back, put all the toys in the old building.
At least we knew what to do when we came back the next day.<G>
Had to track down some tools so we could tear the shelves apart so they'd fit up the curved stairway. Took all day just to get them apart and into the truck. Ever tear heavy duty, well built, 80 yr old shelving apart with dime store hammers and prybars??
similar thing happened to me years ago, kitchen supplier called me to install a countertop(just apostform top), sales guy says the house is open , lock up when you leave
well i spent allday installing the top, perfect scribe job, 3 miters, end caps, new sink and faucets etcetc, next day i get a call, its the wrong colour
OOPS
i did get paid for doing it twice though
caulking is not a piece of trim
Local legend here says it happened to a demolition company.
Only funny if you weren't there. <G>
DRC
Well, if we're gonna go on legends.
One military base I was on, it was reported that some privates had been instructed to drag an old jeep hulk out to the tank firing range.
Instead they dragged the general's jeep that was in for repairs out there, which of course wasn't discovered until after it'd been practiced on some.
Of course this had happened years ago....LOL
This ought to be a rich source of endless amusement. Young GIs never run out of this stuff. <G>
Did you guys also have a new lieutenant leave his briefcase at the command post at the end of the day and come in the next morning to find EOD had come to remove it and shoot it up?
DRC
I did it yep ......first house in new subdivision , foundation , sub-floor and the next delivery driver said "dis ain't da right lot says here................." I got a real break just cost a little money for the paper work and thak goodness it was a turnkey for a group of investors , every body laughed and I considered becomming a jet pilot.
True story...
When I was in the USAF, my first Squadron CC was a @@@ and his wife was even worse.
He bought her a new car.
We took said car and drove it to the weapons range and parked it on the high-angle strafe target.
Guess who we had scheduled for the weapons range first thing Monday morning?
Yup...
He shot his wife's car up.
Made quite the show. Usually cars/trucks that are used as targets have their engines/transmissions/axles are removed to minimize ricochets. This thing made quite the lightshow, even with training rounds. A-10s firing 30mm, btw.
I've heard the demo story, too. And another on better authority when an inspector stopped the rockers when he noticed that there was no electrical at all in the house.
-- J.S.
One was just in the news last week.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0709wronghouse-ON.html
Back when I was in college I worked as a security guard for a company that did a lot of construction jobs. I got called to work at a site out in the country that just received there load of lumber. I was not given a specific address just general directions as to what road and its across the street from a school. I find a school, construction site across the street, find the person I need to relieve. Its as foggy as you can get, barely see a thing driving there and look out over the site you can not see anything. I asked where the lumber was and the guy I replaced says "must be out there I have not been able to see a thing since I have been here". Wait for mourning and the fog finally lifts and there is not a stick of lumber to be seen anywhere. The areas for the slabs are staked out and thats about it. Since this was before cell phones and we had no radios I had to wait for the model homes to open up so one I could use a phone and two find out if they where expecting any lumber or had some one gotten it in the fog. Comes to pass that it was the wrong site there was another school a few miles down the road with a home site across from it also and there was our lumber safe and sound.
My 72yr old mom had her knee replaced a coupla yrs back, and while she is waiting in her room before surgery, no less than 8 people confirmed which knee was going. The surgeon himself even used a magic marker to identify the correct knee.
Oddly enough, there was another O'Reilly in another room getting the OTHER knee done the same day.
Mike
Along the same lines as Mike's mom: I went to the doctor for a checkup and they started trying to prep me for surgery. They had it written down wrong in their paperwork and it was pretty hard to convince them that I didn't need whatever it is they wanted to do!
My wife had emergency c-section 9 weeks ago. I was a paramedic in the service and watched with a little knowledge of what the surgeons were doing. At the end of the operation they double counted all of the bandages and instruments, and compared them verbally with the OR nurse's pre-surgery counts. I was impressed - hard to make a mistake that way. They had to dig in the laundry bin to find a bandage that went in with the sheets.
remodeler
Aimless
" They had it written down wrong in their paperwork and it was pretty hard to convince them that I didn't need whatever it is they wanted to do!"
I dont think I would have had any difficulty in convinceing them that they had the wrong guy! :)
Doug
This is all because they various medical practioners have operated on the wrong limb,patient etc etc. and when that happens it is instant medical malpractice and the patient will win big. It may sound like over kill but it keeps everything straight.
No kidding, y'think?
Mike
when that happens it is instant medical malpractice and the patient will win big.
Wow, it's good to know that it's become so easy and automatic now. The hospitals and insurance companies can save a lot of money by not hiring lawyers to defend them and the plaintiffs don't have to convince a jury of folks like you and me of the amount of damage done to them.
It used to be such a messy system: someone thinks they have been injured; they have to find a lawyer willing to risk the huge amounts of time and expense involved in bringing an action; the plaintiff tries to make his or her case; the defendant gets to use it's own lawyers to try to tear apart the plaintiff's case and to convince the jury that it is in the right, and the jury of 12 folks (your state's mileage may vary) decide who was right and who was wrong after hearing both sides (where one side has a lot more money and resources to make its case.)
By the way, what is your concept of a "big win." What do you think the average malpractice suit reward is?_______________________
10 .... I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.
11 For no one can lay any other foundation than the one we already have--Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:10-11
They are never going to make it easy for you. There have been cases where the wrong limb has been amputated, or a complete surgery has been done on the wrong limb or the wrong person. These I believe fall into the catagory of negligent surgery and the median awards for this the last I saw where in the 335-668 thousand dollar range. Remember if a case makes it to court the attourney usually gets 40%.
i've known of a couple of roofs to get "delivered" to the wrong adress.
One was thru positings here and the other happened when I worked fopr Lydick roofing in Lubbock.
Another crew, of course.
Excellence is its own reward!
about 25 yrs ago that happened to another crew with the company my brother and i were roofing for- the shingle supplier had to send the conveyor truck back to move it all onto the house next door. as i remember, roofing supply companies did not exactly require advanced degrees on the resumes of their applicants. ;-)
m
The surveyors found the four rods around my property when my neighbors bought their house a couple of years ago. I was grateful, when I bought my place the neighborhood kids pulled the flags before I ever saw them.
I took a cold chisel and chipped a "V" in the sidewalk and alley marking the points the minute I realized what happened this time as the sidewalk joints don't tell the real story.
The surveyors came out a couple of days later and found the west side of the right lot.
Years ago ,working for the roofing co. we were to tear off a brick chimeny on a two story and sheet over and shingle it . It was a cool morning , the job ticket said the south chimeny. We set up and started to chip away and Jack said there's heat coming outa there. Yep the boss didn't know north from south .