Yeah, I do all my own work too and rarely pull any type of permit. Did I say that out loud? ;-D But I’m confident in my abilities to build/modify things safely and well exceed the code requirements for a given trade. About the only thing I won’t mess with is a gas line…
I really enjoy the Mike Holmes shows on TV. It is astounding what goes on in even new construction when they peel back the wall boards and reveal that they’ve violated even the minimum code requirements. To your point, you know those houses were supposed to be inspected at every stage of construction. How do they miss these things? They should be going back and revoking licenses.
Not to mention the astounding hack jobs they seem to find in every house they encounter where some fly by night home improvement company has raked the owners over the coals and created real safety hazards in their wake.
And don’t get me started on the home inspectors and what they miss. It’s borderline criminal and those guys should be barred from doing that kind of work ever again.
I too do all my own work to the extent that I’m physically able.
To my current house, I’ve torn out all the knob & tube wiring (it’s an old house) and rewired it with Romex following the codes to the letter and changing the wiring scheme while I was at it to include outside lighting, extensive basement lighting, and three-way switched outside all weather sockets, replumbed about 3/4 of the house, torn open walls and done studding and sheetrocking, framed and sheetrocked some ceilings (its’ a long story), replaced almost all the windows, reconfigured the ductwork to include registers in eth upstairs rooms (whoever dormered the upstairs neglected to put heat up there), had the furnace changed from oil to natural gas (I won’t mess with gas… too dangerous… that’s my “limit”), and last fall replaced the front entry door with an insulated fiberglass door. I’ve done other stuff, more minor, that escapes me.
Building inspector? Most of these jerks get politically appointed to their offices and don’t know half what they should anyway. A few do, but too many don’t. My evidence is all the pathetic building practices described in this thread. Many wouldn’t know a load path from a croissant.
"A bored assembly line worker must have put the can in there before the panel was welded up. My friend swore this really happened & I have no reason to doubt him, given the behavior of SOME auto workers back then! "
I absolutely believe it!
I can recall reading an article–back in the '70s–about the shenanigans going on at the Lordstown, Ohio GM factory. The magazine that published the article apparently interviewed some of the disgruntled employees from that plant, and one of them stated that he routinely put foreign objects inside fenders or other inaccessible areas of cars on the assembly line.
The classic quote from that GM worker was something along the lines of…that will really drive the owner crazy. Yup! So crazy that he will probably resolve to never again buy a GM product. Talk about sabotaging your own job!
Pitiful,the inconsideration some people have of others,if you make some little unintentional snafu or faux paus,they wont even let you apologize or make amends-if you never give your customers any slack or make allowances for common Human errors,you stand to lose a lot of business-Kevin
Yeah I heard those stories too and these were the topics of Sociology and Mangement classes back then. The sad part is that we are now dealing with the off-spring of these workers. Loose bolts in the panels was not all that was wrong with these folks and I refuse to accept that society made them that way. Ferrel adults yield ferrel kids.
Human error is understandable. And with proper design and controls much of it can be eliminated.
Intentionally introducing bolts in the door (and I too have seen the case studies) is absolutely unacceptable. As is just plain not caring enough to do a proper job. While poor management is generally the root cause (it’s been said that 80% of all problems are caused by management. I think they were being generous to management), that does not excuse an individual’s actions. I’ve seen things in manufacturing that gave me the “willys”. I’ve sat in meetings and listened to senior managers make a decision to ship hydrogen generators in order to be first in the marketplace with polyethylene tubes… which hydrogen eats away at… creating hydrogen leaks, rather than allow a redesign to incorporate PTFE tubing, and cover their esteemed a**** with a statement in a manual that says the unit must be returned to the manufacturer annually for replacement of the tubing. I’ve seen a corporate director’s son on graveyard shift (and on dope) “testing” aircraft instruments… disappear with his girlfriend, come back a few hours later, and “fudge” the test data. It gets worse, but I’ll save you the dissertation.
Fortunately, I think most manufacturing has improved dramatically in the past 40 years. Largely because companies cannot survive these things in today’s world, and largely because new jobs aren’t readily available anymore, so I think even frustrated workers aren’t as inclined to do anything stupid. But I’m sure there’s still some guy out there somewhere who’s taking his boredom out on his company.
@VDCDriver Assembly line screwups still happen, but not as frequently as in the past. A friend was a master mechanic at an AMC dealership. One client’s engine would not run smoothly, no matter what they tried. Finally, my friend concluded it must be the intake manifold, and sure enough one of the plant workers had accidentally on deliberately dropped the cork of his thermos bottle in the manifold. It bounced around, I guess and baffled everyone.
This is different from any deliberate sabotage, but my uncle once told me that you never wanted to buy a car that was assembled on a [hangover/cobwebs] Monday or on a [already mentally checked out] Friday.
Sorry but I just can’t shut up on this subject. The reason for the Friday/Monday deal was not hung over workers but because of high absenteeism on those days, they used fill-ins that were not familiar with the particular tasks.
Who among us has not worked at boring jobs or under bad management? That didn’t mean that we still didn’t try to do a good job. Just don’t think you can chalk it up to poor management-maybe a contributor. But a guy that will do a good job under a good manager will also do a good job under a bad manager.
I watched my dad work for 50 years and I don’t think he missed work more than two or three days in that time. Heat, rain, snow, ice, he still made it one way or another. Then I was amazed when I got into the work world of how many people would just be gone from time to time or chronically. Just never experienced that myself. At church tonight one guy was saying that he thought in the old days a lot of the kids learned the work ethic the hard way on the farm. And now there are fewer kids that have any opportunity to really know what it means to work hard, complete a task, and be proud of it. I really think he had a point.
One mechanic caused incident still ticks me to this day, although it’s by no means the only one.
I was the shop foreman at a multi-line dealer and while I did not hire and fire, I did do some job interviews of applicants. The service manager was a total fool so his SOP was to hire someone I gave thumbs down to …
This one older guy had worked there for several weeks seemingly industrious with no apparent problems and being extremely busy I had no time to babysit anyone. One day after an hour or so on a towed in VW he asked me about the fuel pump being inoperative and since the model was prone to fuse block problems I told him that was the likely cause and how to do the workaround on it; a process that takes about 5 minutes.
A little later the car was gone and I thought nothing of it.
A week later the SM tells me the lady owner of that VW was having it towed back from 50 miles out after hitting a railroad track and the car dying. I told the guy to holler at me when it came back in with the assumption it might not be related to what he did. I went to lunch with 3 of the mechanics in the shop and when we came back that guy was gone; toolbox and all. Not a word.
The car came in on the hook so we pushed it in, I dropped the knee panel, and instantly blew up.
This guy had taken a foot long piece of 20 Gauge speaker wire, bared about 4" on each end, and just shoved it into place;one end into the fuse box and the other into a harness connector. He didn’t even 2-wire twist it or throw tape on it. Just a jumbled up rat’s nest of loose wire; dislodged by a railroad track.
I did the workaround which fixed it permanently and then pulled the file. That guy had charged her 300 bucks for “fixing short in harness”. The SM asked for my recommendation and my response was pay for both tow bills, refund the entire 300 dollars, and offer sincerest apologies along with a few free oil changes. The SM agreed and was in deep thought when I suggested that it was very lucky that wiring did not fall out with a train coming…
That mechanic? Never heard a word from him again; not even for his last paycheck. His last check would have been backflagged so it’s probably best he never returned.
Part of my assignment at the university where I taught was that of a statistical and research design consultant. About 40 years ago, we hired a programmer to maintain our library of programs and do some work in reformatting data. At any rate, this programmer came to work and generated a big, thick printout. He went right to work. After a couple of weeks, he was still “analyzing” this printout. When we investigated further, he had obtained a core dump of zeros and ones. He was going through the printout page by page inking in the center of the zeros.
@thesamemountainbike, that kind of repair on something so easily resolved and to see such a hack job by a guy who has been turning wrenches for going on 30 years was disgusting. Two female spade connectors, 6" of 14 gauge wire, and five minutes of time; done deal and it will outlast the car.
There’s a couple of similar stories that I’ve related in the past and those kind of grate on me also.
It’s one thing to leave a bolt loose or make a guess at a repair (unfortunately, sometimes no other way), but to botch something in such an atrocious manner or to make outlandish guesses on something is an embarassment.
Triedaq, don’t underestimate the importance of spending the time to color in all of those zeros. It makes detecting the secret codes buried in the binary much easier. The colored in zeroes really highlight things for pattern recognition. (Yes, I got a tune up on my tin foil hat today).
I had a teacher in high school that wouldn’t ever consider an American car again. He had grown up with a few duds. One of his had a driver window that wouldn’t go down all the way. He was at the shop with his parents when they pulled the door panel and there was a glass coke bottle in the bottom of the door that had been blocking things.
This one is more of a reflection on British labor mentality. A friend was PR manager for a Sunbeam (part of the Rootes Group) dealership in a large city. He got a Sunbeam Tiger (an Alpine with a 289 Ford V8) as a company car.
The car was backed into and the front bumper had to be replaced. Since this car was only exported to North America, the following slogan was neatly stenciled on the inside of the bumper “F-ck you Yank!”
I guess a combination of jealousy and ignorance! The Roots Group no longer exists; it was killed off by poor mangement and union arrogance.
I purchased a 1939 vintage home last year. Plumbing and wiring with a 200 amp breaker box plus all new copper wire, 3 prong outlets, and GFICs in the kitchen and bathrooms which was recently updated. When it was inspected 4 outlets in the living room and 4 outlets in the basement were not grounded. There was also 2 wires into 1 breaker which the inspector insisted be corrected by the sellers. The electrician checked the outlets and all ground wires were properly installed. When the electrician got into the breaker box to install a 15 amp breaker he discovered 2 circuits with ground wires present but not connected! WTH! One year later with no electrical problems.
“I keep getting lost. I was looking for CarTalk and keep getting redirected to some home improvement (or home dishevelment) discussion board… ;-)”
The thread is “Your Biggest WTH!” Houses tend to be bigger than average vehicles. I get the feeling both of us have no serious problem with where this thread has gone.
