I weep for our future (not political)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, finally got a new bed delivered.

The 20 something guys from a well established company had no tools to put it together.

I don’t mind loaning tools at all. As long as I get them back, but if this company want’s me to review this I’m going to come down hard on them sending anyone out without basic tools is wrong.

“Need to borrow a drill? No problem”
“Need to borrow a wrench? Sure, why not choose a socket instead?”

Tools I got.

These rocket scientists where trying to loosen bolt on the side of a piece of square ‘tubular’ steel. Ok, that is just to sinch things up and then clamp it down. The bolt was run through a nut welded to the side of that tube steel. Makes sense.

They where grunting and straining to try to remove it. They couldn’t do it. I told them to use my vice on my work bench to hold the piece and gave them a breaker bar.

Well, they did not know how to operate a common work bench vice, or get a socket on/off a ratchet or breaker bar.

They where trying to remove the bolt and the welded on nut (one right over the other). The socket fit over both.

I asked to look at it and got it done in 10 seconds. No vice needed.

These where 20 somethings, how will they possibly survive?

Shit, how will we? These guys where driving a 30 foot box truck.

2

I get it.

But I’d sooner put the blame on the “well established company” that employs (or contracts with) them, but neither trained nor equipped them adequately to do the job.

You’re (more than) handy. You learned that somewhere along the way. These guys obviously didn’t. But that isn’t who you send to do installations or deliver furniture that requires anything more than the bare minimum of assembly.

3

I honestly can’t think of a time that’s happened to me. I did most repairs myself, but whenever a repairman or handyman showed up, he/she has always been prepared for the job.

4

Yeah, it’s not a generational issue, just an exposure/training thing.

When I was a senior in High School in the 1980’s, my regular honors English teacher was out one day and the guy who taught a section of remedial English filled in. Out of curiosity he held up an oil filter wrench he had with him that day to work on his car and asked by show of hands if we knew what it was. Nobody in my honors English class did. He then noted that everybody in his remedial English class had raised their hands. It was a nice little demonstration about class stratification and its relation to academic achievement and practical life-skills (by the way he thought it was sad that we didn’t know what it was).

I wasn’t naturally mechanical and my father’s primary teaching method of asking him to pass him tools I didn’t know without explanation, while he grunted and cursed out of sight under a car didn’t help much. I developed a mild degree of handiness the hard way, gradually over years at a job that required some modest mechanic skills. I could have figured that bed out when I was maybe 27-28. At 21-22 I would have been grunting cluelessly trying to force the wrong thing right along with them :smiley:.

5

100% . The company should equip them with the essentials. Oh, the bed did come with the bullshit stamped out ‘wrenches’ for assembly. They said they weren’t working. I showed them where the trash can was in my garage. And my tools of course.

Yes. It’s very sad. I’ve always been middle class, but always surround by tools and jobs to do. It took a long, long time before I would hire anyone for help. We do now. To a degree.

My Mom and Dad knew their shit. We always did it ourselves. Taught me a hellofalot.

They divorced when I was 15. I left with my mom, and one of the first thing we bought was - tools.

6

This would have been a disaster for me.
I have no tools except for a couple screwdrivers and a hammer.
My father had a huge assortment of tools and machinery but I never learned how to use any of it. Gave most of them to some cousins when he died.
I am just not mechanically inclined for even simple projects.
I am the one who always has to hire someone.

7

My middle school “Industrial Arts” class has proven to be the most valuable class I took in both middle and high school. We spent a semester woodworking (made a cutting board and pencil holder), metal shop (fabricated a couple of tool boxes), mechanical (disassembly/reassembly of a bicycle and a gas lawnmower engine), and electrical (no, we did not make an elephant lamp like those kids at Shermer High School). Even tho I did not go into the trades, I got a taste of working safely around power tools, hand tools, and thinking things thru before starting work on something - lifetime skills I have only built upon over the years. Not sure if that sort of course is offered much any more at any school level, but it should be a requirement as much as home-ec was.

8

Maybe it is a generational thing — for the “well established companies” who hire these folks and don’t even bother to train them.

It’s not the old days anymore, when businesses were still small enough to know many of their employees, costs of living were lower, manufactured goods were still repairable (and so a repair industry could be sustained), and customer service was more relational than metrics-driven.

Fast forward a few decades, and the big businesses are largely run by spreadsheets and automated reports, and “good enough” customer satisfaction is good enough… if 10% of customers are unsatisfied with the new installer outsourcing program (which probably just outsources to a freelance gig company behind the scenes and saves 5x the money vs in-housing and training them)… they’re always going to choose the savings.

Combine that with the change in consumer preference from domestic quality manufacturing to cheap disposable goods, PLUS the insane costs of living that working-class wages haven’t been able to keep up with… “appliance repairman” isn’t really a viable career track for many people anymore.

So aside from the few stray local family businesses that are left over from yore, you end up with people who do that job only because they have no other choice…

My last major appliance purchase (a washer and dryer) was from Costco, generally known to be customer-friendly, right? Well, they sent out two guys who spoke no English at all, didn’t have any tools, and didn’t know how to drag a dryer tube from the machine to the wall. We had to have a long, tedious conversation through Google Translate, they ended up having to run to a hardware store for parts, and after all that, they still installed the cold & hot water backwards. Costco sent a customer survey out after that, I expressed my discontent, and that was that… it probably just disappeared into the void, as part of that good-enough unhappy 10% (or whatever number their spreadsheet said is most profitable). I never heard back, and I very much doubt their installer program got any better.

I gave more shits about my work as a teenager earning pocket change… I don’t begrudge those two poor dudes who were doing the job (at least they tried, and stuck around until the job seemed “done”), but damn, Costco really should’ve trained them, given them tools, and provided at least one person per crew who could actually communicate with the customer. I don’t think that’s asking for too much…

9

I guess my wife is sort of that way. If it involves a tool, I’m on deck. In fairness, I’ve been doing this kinda stuff for over 50 years. One of my first jobs was maintaining a 100cc motorcycle when I was 11 years old. Oh and taking care of our lawn tractor that was a ~ 1950 Masse Ferguson.

My wife and I married 27 years know each others strengths and weaknesses. So we go with that. I would like her to prove that she likes to mow grass though. :wink:

A very good friend of mine bought a house. For her ‘Open House’ (160 year old house) I bought her a very basic tool kit (I picked them out) and a bottle of whiskey. “You didn’t buy a house. You bought a job.” Hands her the bottle “You’ll need this”.

10

Well, presumably, there is some super-handy person out there who has to hire you for some work they have no idea how to even begin to do?

Being handy around the house is a dying art form, especially when many people can’t even afford a house of their own anymore, and many things aren’t really repairable without an electronics background and soldering iron anyway.

Repairs have gotten more complex, and other jobs have gotten more complex… it’s harder and harder to be able to keep up with the nuances of even a single field anymore, much less several.

11

yes and no. I mean, some thing have inarguably gotten more complex. Depending on the job, working on cars for instance has become considerably more complicated than it was in the 70’s and 80’s due to the integration of computers and electronics in engines and control systems. Same thing with appliances such as washing machines. But putting a bed together with nuts and bolts is not any more difficult now than it was 40 years ago, and I think people are doing themselves a disservice if they have never bothered to learn even the most basic and fundamental use of tools.

12

Yeah, that’s a good point. If anything, many of today’s cheaper metal-frame mattress-beds don’t even require any tools, just a couple of thumb bolts…

13

^ Bolding mine. Certainly. Now I did work for a family business, but they finally decided to give me a dollar an hour. I was now rich. I remember that I saved, and saved to by a .22 rifle I wanted only to find that my father bought it for me. I could keep my savings.

I agree. The fellows did their best, but Costco needs to step up.

My wife and I lived way up in the Rocky Mountains. We had rocks and pine trees. We moved down to 5000’ and now have a yard with lots of trees. We are a bit clueless as they need attention. So we hired an arborist.

Asking him about trees and shrubs he said “I don’t really know about different species” Ummmm… THAT’S YOUR JOB!

Still blows me away that two ‘adults’ would not know how to operate a standard work bench vice.

14

Our 22 year old son and I work on our old cars on the weekends. We even have a car lift. He’s now very proficient in the use of all kinds of hand tools, including ratchets, sockets, breaker bars, impact wrenches, Torx bits, pullers & drivers, torque wrenches, grinders, etc. Just last Saturday we removed a driveshaft from a 2000 F-150 just last weekend, and new U-joints are on order. The weekend before we did a brake job on a neighbor’s truck. Really proud of him. He’s an electrical engineering major at school, and I’ve told him there’s no better education for learning & understanding engineering than working on cars. He said, “Are you sure that applies to me? Because I’m an EE major.” I explained that it doesn’t matter; the problem-solving things you learn while working on old cars will be valuable regardless of what you’re studying.

15

I have great plumbers, an electrician and a very talented handyman.

At this point I should probably have someone help me change a light bulb in a ceiling fixture to avoid the possibility of falling.

I used to write research papers for people for many years until everyone I know has been fully educated. So not much left for me to do these days.

16

About 3 months ago we purchased a refrigerator at a well-known store. Two guys delivered it and installed it. They couldn’t figure out how to instal the ice maker. They said the house was too old.

After it was installed it had several large dents on the front door. Either they didn’t notice it (very obvious), or they caused it.

We asked to replace the doors or replace the refrigerator. Three months later and after several calls, the dented doors are still there.

17

Yeah, those are called Hollywood frames. This was a little bit more complex with an attached headboard and stuff.

Oh, and while I used to do a lot of work on cars in the 70’s - 90’s, I’ve pretty much given that up. I do remember that the 76 Chevy pickup has 157 loose needle bearings in the transfer case. I picked them all up out of the grass on my Mom’s lawn. Oh, and don’t take the transfer case to your dorm room and crack it open. 90 weight oil smells pretty bad. It’s really bad if you have a fire alarm in the middle of it and come back to a couple of quarts of the stuff spread across the floor of your room.

I guess I’ve learned the hard way.

18

That sounds like an awful lot of guys to assemble a bed.

mmm

19

Ah, well, lucky you… on both the retirement and “know good tradespeople” fronts :slight_smile:

I’m a web developer, and there are many people who’ve asked me for help. Some were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for what literally would’ve been a one-minute job, because they had no idea where to even begin. It’s a modern retelling of that classic parable about electricians/plumbers/etc. “charging for the years of experience, not the 30 seconds it took to use it”.

And for the record, in those cases, I didn’t actually charge them.

And it’s nice when that happens to me at the mechanic, who tightens a loose bolt around some belt and magically fixes the car… and I didn’t even know belts could have bolts! To me, a car is just a magic black box, and if I hear a screech, I think to myself “oh, a mechanic probably needs to rebuild the engine now”…

Basically exactly this:

I wish I could’ve learned that! My dad was so not-handy he literally could not figure out how to change a florescent light — even though he was a nuclear engineer working at a power plant… go figure. (12 year old me then learned about ballasts and breakers and wiring and replaced it myself) It is indeed possible to be too specialized in a single field.

20

That is awesome! You’re a kind soul.