Pit of Despair

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

*shudder* Extra Stuff in the walls. That reminds me of another register and lane install. The existing lanes and registers had been in the store since the early 80's and through quite a few upgrades, especially that of the phone, security, and network. All told, there were 72 phone extensions, 22 data cables, 3 coax cables, 3 120v lines, one compressed air line and two refrigerant lines that I had to deal with.

Thankfully I was able to minimize downtime by piecemeal dismantling the lanes we were replacing. I wound up using a keyhole saw and a sawzall and we split the lanes apart at the penetrations.

[Valentinian]

Ooooh, the dreaded Extra Stuff! Hopefully it's not too extensive.

The most impressive case of Extra Stuff In The Walls I've ever encountered involved the building I worked in, lo these many years ago now. There was a major 'demolish all but two of the buildings and build new ones' revamp taking place, and the oldest building in the compound didn't have complete plans - partly because of stuff being lost over time, partly because it was built as a secure government building and the powers that be didn't want documentation around of exactly how strong the walls were and so on. The company that won the bid to demolish things quoted based on what plans were available and what the building looked like, and then found out that it had some ridiculous level of reinforcing metal woven through the entire structure. Apparently the extra time it took to break the walls apart piece by hard-fought piece really messed up their planned schedule and ended up eating most of their profit margin.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

Val, that reminds me of another fun install I wound up involved in, back in the late 90's. Very large manufacturing facility, something like 20-30 acres and a couple dozen buildings. They had recently constructed a brand new company headquarters at the front of the property and we got subcontracted to help with installing and setting up the new hq's network as well as upgrading the rest of the facility from token bus/ring. The new building went swimmingly, no problems whatsoever.

When it came time to start on the old buildings, yikes, the problems started. Running the ethernet in the buildings wasn't a problem, just it's usual hassle. However, when it came time to run the fiber optics from each building back to the HQ was when we discovered they had previously contracted idiots and that my boss needed to verify details or just send me in the first place. He took them at their word that we'd be able to "just pull the lines through" the existing conduit. I like to think that I would have gone into the wiring closets and looked at things, taken the boot off the conduits we were going to be using.

They had run coaxial cable from building to building in oversize conduit( 6 inch diameter) so that they could put the powered extenders inside the conduit rather than having to put a junction box somewhere between the buildings. Then, because of the way oversize conduit, they had been having issues with airflow through the conduit. Instead of, y'know, making small plugs on each end, they FILLED a good 50 feet of the conduit on either end with expanding foam.

We had to call in a plumber and his drain auger vacuum and have him rod out each conduit. Instead of spending our budgeted 2-4 hours per connection, it was more along the lines of 8-16 hours per connection. Thankfully, we were able to charge them rather than having to eat the difference, unlike some of the other jobs my boss screwed up the quote on.

I'm reasonably certain that particular company would still be afloat if that boss were better at actually putting every expense in the quote and holding customers to their contracts. A little bit of variance is one thing, but promising a customer fully customized reports and worksheets and not actually charging them for the 30 hours it took me working in Crystal Reports and SQL is a whole new level of D'oh!

[wolfie]

The company that won the bid to demolish things quoted based on what plans were available and what the building looked like, and then found out that it had some ridiculous level of reinforcing metal woven through the entire structure. Apparently the extra time it took to break the walls apart piece by hard-fought piece really messed up their planned schedule and ended up eating most of their profit margin.

That's why the bid SHOULD have included a disclaimer that it was based on incomplete information provided by the customer, and that any surprises that turned up which affected the scope of work involved would need to be treated as an extra.

[Valentinian]

That's why the bid SHOULD have included a disclaimer that it was based on incomplete information provided by the customer, and that any surprises that turned up which affected the scope of work involved would need to be treated as an extra.

Ayup. Unfortunately for them (perhaps the bid was written by a spiritual relative of BearLeeBadenaugh's old boss?), they had no such clause. I don't know if they even tried to negotiate for extras, but if they did they weren't successful.

It's entirely possible that they didn't try, because it was still a government building, and bids/contracting came in for some fearsome levels of oversight - there were a bunch of regulations aimed at making it very difficult to award a contract and then let the contractor 'pad' the bills, to the point of making it near impossible to allow reasonable compensation for genuinely unforeseen circumstances. (Not entirely impossible, but facilities contracts seemed to be more strictly run... possibly because it's relatively easy to claim nebulous 'performance issues' with a weapons platform that will take lots of expensive testing to figure out, and hard to make similar claims about a large hunk of immobile concrete and steel. )

I still have a very vivid mental image of that building part way through the demolitions process, surrounded by earthmoving machines that were essentially 'pecking' it to pieces, including one digger that had been lifted up onto the flat roof with a crane and looked like it was trying to commit suicide by undercutting itself.

[notalwaysright]

Old break room still there... I heard that demolition had been pushed back, but I also heard that we're not getting a new one at all! Both people are supposedly "in the know" so I don't know who to believe. I will be so mad if we don't get a new one. While on break you have to hear customers in the bathroom. Yes, peeing, pooping, puking, making noises... While you eat. New break room was supposed to have doors which shut.

Big fabric move, there was a ton of people doing that, and only two people at the cutting counter. And everyone had lots of fabric to cut (think 20-30 items), and they were pissed. Well, I actually got the nice people that I recognize, but there was one lady who dragged a chair over from the pattern table who kept loudly saying "they need more cutters!" It took me a while to realize she was talking to the people moving fabric. I don't think those people realized she was talking to them, either, as they ignored her. And these people were very friendly, so I highly doubt they were purposefully ignoring her.

One of the contractors kept letting himself in and out of the store, while we were still closed. It's a VERY strict rule, anyone wanting out has to have someone come and lock the door after them. Thus, anyone wanting in has to knock, since the door must be locked if we are not open. Clear enough? So I see a guy just pry to the doors open and come in. I ask if someone let him out (since the door was unlocked) and he said yes. Liar. I guess this is an ongoing issue with the outside contractors. I'm sorry they think it's a waste of time, rules are rules which will get them fired.

[Jetfire]

I still have a very vivid mental image of that building part way through the demolitions process, surrounded by earthmoving machines that were essentially 'pecking' it to pieces, including one digger that had been lifted up onto the flat roof with a crane and looked like it was trying to commit suicide by undercutting itself.

Man, by that point, they might as well have called in Mr. TNT and his friends to bring it down. Would have killed the budget of course, but would have provided a bit of a show.

[XCashier]

Big fabric move, there was a ton of people doing that, and only two people at the cutting counter. And everyone had lots of fabric to cut (think 20-30 items), and they were pissed.

Oh, and wasn't it clever of them to start the remodel during the big President's Day Weekend sale?!

Though to be fair, there's a Big Humongous Sale practically every month, and it's not easy to predict which ones will pull in the biggest profits. (As long as they don't extend the remodel over Halloween and Christmas, you should be fine.)

[mhkohne]

Man, by that point, they might as well have called in Mr. TNT and his friends to bring it down. Would have killed the budget of course, but would have provided a bit of a show.

Won't work well - explosives are normally used to cut out the supporting structure and let gravity tear the thing apart. Structure like that is far more supportive than usual, so you'd need to use an insane amount of explosives to rip it apart.

[Geek King]

Won't work well - explosives are normally used to cut out the supporting structure and let gravity tear the thing apart. Structure like that is far more supportive than usual, so you'd need to use an insane amount of explosives to rip it apart.

Yeah, look up the old "G" style anti-aircraft towers the Nazis built around Berlin during WWII. They were so solid that when the American and British engineers tried to destroy them after the fall of Berlin, they failed. After a couple of different attempts, they just buried the towers under the rubble the cleanup crews were trucking out of the city. It was going to be too expensive to use enough TNT to take even one down. One estimate put the needed explosives at more than all the bombs dropped on Berlin.

[wolfie]

Yeah, look up the old "G" style anti-aircraft towers the Nazis built around Berlin during WWII. It was going to be too expensive to use enough TNT to take even one down. One estimate put the needed explosives at more than all the bombs dropped on Berlin.

Do you have a link to an article about the demolition attempt (or even to a description of the towers?) I'd say that estimate was high by a LARGE factor - a B17 could carry roughly a ton of bombs from Britain to Berlin, a B24 or Lancaster could carry even more (don't know if the Lanc could carry a Tallboy or a Grand Slam that far - and I DON'T mean a large beer can or a Denny's breakfast - but it could still carry several tons), and with the number of sorties flown against Berlin during the war the tonnage of bombs would have added up to more than the "blast power" of either of 2 specific missions flown against Japan. Hard to see a single tower withstanding thousands of tons of TNT - especially since demolition in peacetime, unlike bombing in wartime, has the ability to put the explosives where they'd do the most damage.

[notalwaysright]

Here's some despair, haha.

Well, it's almost comical. New Manager has been giving super awesome "pep talks" where she talks about how the store isn't making any profits, and how if we don't do x, y, and z, the remodel will be cancelled and the store shut down, and everyone will lose their jobs. Oh, the store is busy? Doesn't matter, because we're not doing *insert corporate jargon here.* The store is very expensive to run, wages are high, (our state does have a high minimum wage, but don't blame me for that...) and employees aren't doing certain things that corporate arbitrarily uses to gauge our productiveness!

But she's not the bad guy, she goes to bat for us! She's on our side! Please. I'm sorry, I know it sounds childish, but shove it. Old Manager ran this store for 20 years and never gave us this crap. She had her own issues, but at least she seemed like a human being. New Manager has been saying stuff like this since she got here, only now it's escalated. She talks trash about employees behind their backs, and is so "the sky is falling" that I don't take anything she says seriously. Maybe it's dead serious, and we're all in danger of being fired. I have no freaking idea what to believe, because it's been doom and gloom from day one.

Oh, break room started being demolished! Woo!

[XCashier]

Well, it's almost comical. New Manager has been giving super awesome "pep talks" where she talks about how the store isn't making any profits, and how if we don't do x, y, and z, the remodel will be cancelled and the store shut down, and everyone will lose their jobs. Oh, the store is busy? Doesn't matter, because we're not doing *insert corporate jargon here.*

It's chain-wide, not just your store. Our managers have been getting on us to push text coupons, mail coupon sign-ups, must-haves, etc. It's been incredibly stupid and aggravating. I am not by nature a salesperson (what the heck am I doing in retail, you ask? It's better than being unemployed and homeless, that's what I'm doing in retail!), and all this pushy nonsense is wearing me down. I know that when someone tries to hard-sell me on something or push more items on me, I beat feet out the door, yet we're supposed to do that to our customers because "it makes them want to buy more stuff".

[notalwaysright]

It's chain-wide, not just your store. Our managers have been getting on us to push text coupons, mail coupon sign-ups, must-haves, etc.

New Manager has been saying that we're the "worst in the company" at something other than what you listed, something I've never heard mentioned before. It's not related to selling, it's more a technical procedural thing. The store has been getting a lot of complaints, which are probably a result of the remodel. We're also in between uber-bosses (boss above New Manager) and the temp-boss is pressuring New Manager. Guess what? If New Manager got herself out of the office to help at all, EVER, at least some of these complaints could be cut down.

Morale is at an all time low. We have another manager telling people to do the exact opposite of what New Manager says. New Manager only ever gives these pep talks to the morning crew, since she never closes the store or works a mid-day shift. Basically, each morning it's just "well, we didn't make sales, we had less customers, we didn't make average ticket, and if this keeps up the store will be shut down." And the suggestions on how to fix it are... Not really there.

[Valentinian]

Man, by that point, they might as well have called in Mr. TNT and his friends to bring it down. Would have killed the budget of course, but would have provided a bit of a show.

The other buildings (still in use) were wayyyyyy too close for fun explosions, unfortunately. (Or possibly fortunately, given what happened when a different building in this city got demolished via explosives and it was presented as a fun thing to go watch with the family...)