Back when I was in college in the early 2000’s, I remember one of the professors in one of his lectures, mentioning a story about Donald Trump, in which Trump spotted an imperfection that engineers and architects had missed in one of his properties that was under construction. Pretty sure it was a balcony or something that wasn’t level, and he spotted it with his naked eye, brought it to their attention, and even though they doubted him, sure enough after they measured it they found it was actually uneven. Sorry I don’t have the exact details, and I may be misremembering, but the story was definitely something along those lines.
Does this sound at all familiar, or has anyone heard something like this? It sounds urban legendish now that I think about it, but when it was brought up in class it was presented as real and although I don’t remember the topic of the lecture (or even what class this was), it was probably to illustrate something like successful people having attention to detail. I didn’t question it when I heard it, and it impressed me, I probably even repeated it once or twice in the past 15 years.
I’m guessing it may be in one of his books, probably Art of the Deal (which I have not read)? Maybe a news article or TV show otherwise? Mainly wondering what the source of this story would be, but definitely also interested if it can be proven true or false. I’ve Googled a bit and haven’t found anything.
It sounds like a Trump tale. It’s not an absurdity, stuff like that can happen, but Trump has a reputation for self aggrandizing with little regard for factual detail. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the kind of story a lot of people involved in construction tell either.
I am sure that the story is as true as trump recalls.
WAG, he pointed to a balcony, complained it wasn’t level. The engineers and foremen looked at it, measured it, found that it was level within tolerances. When they told him that, he argued further, until they finally gave in, and said, “You’re right, Mr. Trump, it is 1/4” higher on the right then the left, we’ll go ahead and fix that."
Then trump used this “imperfection” along with their admission, to not pay them for their work.
I’ve seen many variations of this story with many people and places mentioned therein. I can tell you of one because one of my teachers was involved. A new building was being built for the school, so at some modestly early stage my maths teacher took his then pupils to see the building works and learn about triangles, rectangles, and so on in the real world. And they found that the building was not true. They brought this to the attention of the person in charge who duly checked and duly found that they were correct.
As for Trump, he doesn’t need that sort of excuse to try to not pay; I don’t have permission to tell that story.
I’ve heard a similar-ish story about Henry Ford. He was inspecting a factory when be stopped to question why they needed 6 drops of oil at some point of production. Why not 4? This attention to detail saved his company millions.
I’ve also heard stories about some famous basketball player being able to tell that the hoop was off by a few inches just by looking at it.
Sounds like a former supervisor. He went over the prints for a building being constructed that we were managing. He added up all the exterior dimensions, added up all the interior dimensions: wall thicknesses, room widths, etc, and they did not add up to the same number.
He sent me out to find What The Hell was wrong. I forget what I came up with.
Normal people do things like that all the time. Nothing special. The builders are busy looking at other details, fresh eyes come on the site and can see something that the busy people working on site have overlooked. Nothing special at all and Trump is not a genius.
I’ve heard these sorts of stories and even had one for myself; on one of my first days on a temp assignment I found they’d been sending out legal documents for a couple of years using the wrong principal/principle. When I pointed it out my bosses were amused, a little embarrassed and asked me to fix it in templates used in future documents. This saved no money anywhere, and though they hired me the following week I don’t believe that had to do w/ finding the one error no one else had brought to their attention.
But I’m not an egomaniac either so it’s unlikely I’d make that mental connection.