Just bought a new house in a nice little subdivision outside of Dallas (Allen, Texas, specifically). The subdivision is about 3/4ths built out already, with maybe 15 houses remaining to be built. That’s the background. Now the rant:
Construction workers, you stupid fucks, keep you damn nails, screws, etc out of the F’ing road. For Crissakes, it’s not that difficult!!! You pull out a nail, put it in the big trash bin. Or at the least leave it on your job site!!! I’ve pulled 2 nails out of my car tires in the last two weeks, you stupid shits. The tires on my car costs $200 a piece. I patch 'em (if the hole is patchable) but even that’s ten bucks and takes a 1-2 hours of my time at the gas station. And while I’m at it, don’t leave rebar (reinforcing bars for concrete) in the middle of the road. Pick it up!!! FUCK!!!
I don’t wanna hear any excuses for these bastards, either. I know accidents happen, but at this rate, I’ll be riding around of four big patches by the time my neighborhood is complete!!!
Maybe you could write up a bill for your repairs and time lost and give it to the main construction site guy. At a minimum it may upset them or maybe they’ll pick up the nails that may end up in my tires, too. (I think nails can get pushed across the country. Or the wind picks them up.)
Macro, try working as an IT Manager for a construction company. I was ONLY at the main offices but somehow, someway, those nails and the occasional drywall screw would fall out of employee and subcontractor vehicles.
Keep in mind, this is MILES from the nearest job site.
Oh and I used to work in construction previous to this. You get used to it. Some nails and screws you don’t even know are in your tires, they somehow reseal themselves and don’t show up until one or two other nails are causing a flat.
There’s nothing you can do. I have learned that from 17 years in the construction industry. They wont do squat if you give them a bill, they will look at you and laugh.
Just be as patient as you can until the construction ends.
Okay I have to nit-pick here…Why in the world would you spend $200 per tire, shit when I had truck tire, some of the best on the market, they didn’t cost anywhere near that! Got gold valve stems?
Okay then, you say it costs you ten bucks for a patch…why the hell doesn’t your $200 per each tire come with free flat repairs? My $63 tires, M+S rated, all season tires come with free flat repairs.
For $200 a tire I would expect a brand new tire with each flat. Either you are going overboard with the pricing and that you really bought used tires or you are just looney.
Hope your chest is lighter after that last post, but…
I have an Infinit I30T with speed-rated 17" tires on it. You price 'em, come back to me, and tell me I’m exaggerating. Add in tax, disposal fees, etc, and it’s over $200. Get your shit straight before you start picking nits (hey, this is the Pit).
You’re right, though, I probably do have free flat repairs, but then I’d have to take it into the dealer, wait, etc. Fuck that. It’s easier to spend the $10 at Pep Boys and have them patch it.
BTW, I have been accused of being looney, but that has no bearing on the current discussion.
You have my sympathies. While they were finishing our condo community, we had four flats. That crap adds up, even when you just have regular tires. Plus it’s such a PAIN IN THE ASS!!!
You might ask if the construction company can clean the streets more often. We periodically had some guy come through with a sweeper thing. It generated enough dust to take 10 years off my life, but if it prevented more flat tire episodes, I think I’d call it a fair trade.
BTW, I have devised a system to fully reimburse my tire patch expenses…
Make up some inane bullshit question, go into the model home, and eat about 10 freshbaked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies in one sitting. That’s worth at least ten bucks.
And to cut off TechChick’s next post, I may indeed be “going overboard” with my 10 cookie estimation. Maybe I’m loonie from the sugar rush.
Local police departments think traffic safety begins and ends with speeding tickets. Open trucks too old to make it up to the speed limit, filled with precariously-balanced demolition debris and/or other tire-destroying junk don’t rate a second look from most cops.
Also, local governments’ budget hearings are invariably packed with self-important twits from the “better parts of town” protesting an extra $75 a year property taxes on their Mc Mansions. One of the inevitable results of governing bodies’ cutting budgets to please these people is less-frequent street sweeping as politicians NEVER cut their League of Muncipalities winter conventions in Florida, Phoenix, or Vegas, or theirs and their top bureaucrats’ salaries to meet their “lean, mean” budgets.
im with zenith. ain’t nothing you can do about it. i like the cookie idea for payback. or you can steal building materials from the jobsite at night, but that would be wrong! lord knows i would never do something like that!
watch your step around that puddle of oozing sarcasm.
I’m with you about the “reappropriating building supplies”. I mean, if a 2x4 happens to be a couple inches over the property line, there is a possibility it may wind up in my garage. I consider it janitorial fees, for picking up the beer cans/taco wrappers/cardboard boxes that find their way onto my front lawn. And don’t get me started on all the mud that’s all over the place (not too much they can do about that, however).
Thanks for the nice car comment. Macro Ma’am is a Realtor, and needed a vehicle that makes her look “successful”. Or at least that’s what she told me when I signed my life away on the car note. I’m such a sucker.
I was going to start my own rant, but now I guess I’ll piggy-back onto this one.
Today, I finally got around to rotating the tires on my wife’s Pathfinder. In doing so, I found not one, not two, but three fucking nails stuck in one of the tires!!
Two had penetrated through and needed to be repaired. BTW, check out a safety question of mine about the repair in this thread.
There is a lot of construction going on around us as well. I could stock a hardware store with all the crap we pick up on a daily basis. (So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised today.)
I’m so pissed! A 1-hour job sucked up my whole day, riding around, trying to get the damn thing repaired (or replaced, if necessary).
I like the way you think. You are my kinda problem-solver!
Problem is, we hated our rathumping lying cunt of a model saleswoman so much, I couldn’t bear to go in and endure her company long enough to eat the cookies.
We did encourage our dog to tinkle on the grass in the front of the model, though. Just as passive-aggressive, but not as enjoyable for us as cookie-swiping woulda been.
