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A guy called yesterday. he was on the speakerphone and I could tell he was gearing up for some azz chewing. He asked me if I'd gotten the underground portion of a project. I checked my records and told him I hadn't. He went off on how someone had screwed up and how I should have had the project materials already.

He asked if I could get them done by tomorrow, and I said, probably not with the workload. He exploded saying he was trying to get his CO Friday and needed this done. He asked who I sent the letter asking for the underground portion of the project to. I looked at the letter and said, "Looks like I sent it to you."

Silence.

 
At a bidders meeting yesterday for the Longterm monitoring of the site groundwater, someone asked if the groundwater was below action levels... :blink:

 
One of my favorite Tarantino quotes (following the bitch theme) ... "If you keep talking like a bitch, I am going to slap you like a bitch." (Resevoir Dogs)
JR
I just used this quote on one of my co-workers... he is non-responsive to subcontractor questions and whines that I find out the answers for them on jobs he is working on and then give them what they need.

 
We were working on a commercial site plan one time. We were doing all the site work and handling submittal and hearings. The architect was this really flaky, really sedated guy. He was a one man show and to cut costs instead of using established design software he used the electronic equivalent of an etch-a-sketch.

The building footprint changed a few times so he was always emailing us revisions to paste into our drawings. We always had major problems with his attachments. You'd paste them into AutoCad and it would come out all skewed and out of scale.

We had a submittal deadline to meet. His file was so screwed up I could not get it to work. Somehow one side of the building scaled up while the other scaled down. We missed the deadline.

He came to the office the next day to sort it out. The client called while he was there, pissed. My boss put it on speaker so we could all interact. I don't think the client realized the architect was there. My boss asked what he could do to fix this for him. The client said, "Fire that ******* architect."

My boss tried to interject to let him know he was there, but the client went on for 5 minutes about him. Eventaully, when that's all done, the architect, who's shrunken to about 3" tall by this point, says, "Hi [client]."

 
I did a prelimanry structural evaluation of an old church. Our price was $2500 which was rounded down over $500 or so. I knew I was in trouble when I was interrogated by the 80+ yo priest. It was obviousl that he expected a LOT more for his money.

He sent a letter along with the invoice - so far he is refusing to pay. The letter starts "... we thought you would send several experts, who would spend adequate time on this project. You failed!"

ODB just got a few more years in purgatory tacked on...

 
Churches are generally not a lot of fun to deal with. One pastor told me in a rather snotty voice, "Well, I'll pray for you."

 
Churches are generally not a lot of fun to deal with. One pastor told me in a rather snotty voice, "Well, I'll pray for you."
A holy roller engineer at a wastewater plant i worked at once gave me a courteous "bless you" when i sneezed in his proximity. . . .and he followed that up w/ a not so courteous "for what its worth. . . "

 
I used to be a field superintendant for a very large contracor on a high profile, multi-modal project in the Denver area. One of my primary duties was working for traffic control (permitting, traffic control plans, scheduling, etc), but on this particular day I was helping out in the field during a particularly large weekend closure. We had to close University Blvd (guess what's nearby?) under the freeway to allow for a box-culvert to be installed. Well this nearby university is a higher profile type where most of the students come from fairly well-off families and most of these kids have an "I'm rich" entitlement kind of mentality so any hinderance to them is always met with some form of attitude.

One particular girl (had to be a freshman from how young she looked and the fact that the older students had become used to the construction), was extremely upset that she had to take a detour to get onto the freeway despite no construction between the closure and the ramp she wanted to take.

She actually stopped in the middle of the only lane open and started off with the cute little daddy's girl, "please could you let me through, it will only be this one time..." Unfortunately I had rules that said the road was closed and because we had been running front end loaders through this area, I couldn't let her through. This just pissed her off. After what seemed like a 5 minute pissy fit (still while stopped in the only open lane), she finally said, "What company do you work for? I will have my Daddy buy it tomorrow and make sure he fires you!"

I just smiled, pointed to my hard hat (company logo and my name was on it), and replied, "Try it. We're only one of the top 5 construction companies in the country." She just did a snotty rich girl grunt as she turned up her nose and drove off.

I might have actually let her though if I could (she was HOT!! :signs051: ) and if she hadn't thrown the fit.

 
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Me: "I can't approve that."

Him: "Well, I guess we'll have to eat that pole."

 
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