/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.473070]

How much do public utilities' construction workers actually work? They seem to get shit done at a snail's pace or worse. Whenever I see them they're usually just standing around doing nothing.

They're "working" on the water line by my place. No fucking water for hours on end.

[Anonymous No.473098]

1- it's a lot rougher work than you may think.
2- get paid shit and then see how motivated you are do something difficult in a timely manner.

[Anonymous No.473105]

>>473098
>get paid shit

Oh. I thought since they work for the city they make more. Guess you're right.

[Anonymous No.473114]

Think of it like this. They can either break their backs and get it done in a day or slack off, socialize while having a good time while being paid the same.

[Anonymous No.473121]

There's a decent percentage of the time that when they're all standing around, they're doing it because they're having to wait on someone else to do the job that person is supposed to do before they can do anything.

[Anonymous No.473126]

>>473114
man they've been here like 3-6 months with no end in sight. Fucking sucks. Just wish they would buckle down and get it done fast.

Construction workers that build houses or other private construction don't stand around like this, do they? The people I remember doing that work seem to work nonstop.

[Anonymous No.473132]

There's a lot of factors. How big is the crew size? How much discrepancy there is with the Plot, and what's actually in the ground. Construction is actually easier than repairs. Because when you don't have to worry about breaking anything around you, things move faster.

[Anonymous No.473133]

>>473126
a lot of it is just waiting for people to do stuff that you can't rush before you lift more dirt.

>Wait for water to go off
>wait for it to be checked
>wait for old pipe to go away
>wait for new pipe
>wait for dry ground to dig
>wait
>wait

etc

[Anonymous No.473135]

>>473126
Those people are paid on contract. You get paid when you get the work done. City workers are paid monthly regardless of how much work they perform.

Imagine I tell you that I will pay you $100 after you move 1000 bricks from point A to B. You will get it done in a day.

Now imagine I tell you that I will pay you $100 everyday until you move 1000 bricks from point A to B.

[Anonymous No.473137]

Ya ever work on an old house? Ya know how when you get into one project, you instantly get yourself into like 10 other seemingly related other projects, all with their own unexpected steps, and you have to do all of those projects first before you can actually work on the project you initially started out to do? All while running to and from the hardware store like 20 times?

Yeah, working on 100+ year old water sewer and lighting systems is kinda like that.

[Anonymous No.473142]

>>473135
Makes perfect sense. Thanks. No wonder they do this >>473133.

[Anonymous No.473145]

Wheres that picture from? Pittsburgh? It looks pretty nice.

[Anonymous No.473151]

>>473145
no clue, just random from search.

[Anonymous No.473152]

>>473145
also,

>shitsburg
>nice

[Anonymous No.473167]

osha regs, its always some gay ass wait for the city code guy or wait for the supervisor or wait here for 10 mins on a state mandated hot weather rest break. on and also being lazy and hung over

[Anonymous No.473176]

>>473133
>wait for dry ground to dig

We stopped waiting for that when heavy machinery and gravel were invented. Standing in the rain directing traffic while some guy in a heated cab, who is eating donuts, drinking hot coffee, and running the backhoe sucks.

[Anonymous No.473179]

>>473121
this. this so much.

[Anonymous No.473183]

>>473126

Construction is very start-stop, in a way that public utility work can't be. Concrete guys come in and bust their ass pouring the foundations so they can go to the next paid job. Then the foundation sits there until the lumber is paid for and the framers show up. Maybe that's right away, or maybe the bare foundation just sits out in the rain for a week. Or a month. Or a year. If you have to wait for a permit, or a loan, or for a contractor's schedule to clear, it's not such a big deal as long as you aren't actually paying someone to do nothing.

Not only does public-utility work have to basically "go until its done," but it also has to be done in an excruciatingly piecemeal way. If your street were being re-paved the way a construction company likes to do it, they'd just shut down the entire street for a week while they did all the work, then they'd let you drive on it again. Actual utility workers can't do that. They have to pave the street a little bit at a time so traffic can drive around them. They have to constantly turn the power and the water back on for all the people who expect it to be working when they get home. That causes lots and lots of little stoppages that a construction company doesn't have to tolerate.

[Anonymous No.473190]

>>473135
>Imagine I tell you that I will pay you $100 after you move 1000 bricks from point A to B. You will get it done in a day.

Now here's a guy who's never worked with contractors!

What I'm actually going to do, is move 250 of your bricks from A to B. Then I'm going to go move bricks for the guy who's paying me $500 to move bricks from A to B. If you call me to complain, I'll tell you there's nothing to be done about it. And if you don't like it you can move your own goddamn bricks.

[Anonymous No.473219]

>>473098
>1- it's a lot rougher work than you may think.

Nope. They let the machines do all the work for them, and they have access to the best equipment with all the time in the world. It's not hard at all.

Here are some examples:

I passed by a brick layer one time. He was talking his ass off with a coworker while hardly moving his hands. Next day it was the same deal.

A pair of workers were replacing a lamp post on the corner of the street where I live. They were literally talking the whole day and hardly doing anything.

A backhoe operator kept digging repeatedly into thin air. I mean, couldn't he be more obvious?

Observed a group of workers repairing a sections of the road for a whole afternoon. 4 out 5 of the total workers were just walking around casually or standing around while one guy operated the machine. When it came time for the idling workers to do something, it was a simple job: measuring and drawing cut marks on the asphalt. They did it very slowly too.

The term "welfare queens" could definitely be applied to these people. I can't believe tax payer money is being wasted like this.

[Anonymous No.473236]

>>473219
oh wow you are right, I never thought about it but yeah...brick masons, electricians, heavy equipment operators and road pavers don't do rough work. Stuff is easy, cause they slack.

[Anonymous No.473239]

What bothers most is that they re-do half their work due to poor planning. This road near my house...
- Week 1: they made a temporary asphalt sidewalk and poured footings for the bus shelter.
- Week 3: they dug up the asphalt and poured concrete curbs and side-walks, skipping 4-foot sections around the storm drains. They filled the skipped sections of sidewalk with asphalt.
- Week 5: they dug up the asphalt sections, hand-poured concrete curbs and sidewalks around the storm drains.
- Week 6: they broke up a stretch of sidewalk to access the pipes underneath.
- Week 7: they jackhammered the bus shelter footings and re-made them.
- Week 8 (now): they erected the bus shelter's frame, but no glass.
- Sections of the new sidewalk are already cracking and will need to be repaired.
This is all in half mile stretch of sidewalk!

[Anonymous No.473245]

I've done hard work in the heat busting concrete and digging ditches right out of high school. If you're not acclimated to the conditions not matter how much water you try to drink if you keep working hard you will get dehydration. You'll sweat it out, piss it out and get diarrhea.

By the books typical outdoor hard labor in the heat required 15 minute breaks after every hour of work. When the temperature and humidity gets too bad it will require 45 minute breaks for every hour of work. During extreme conditions people will work for only short periods of time with long breaks in between.

Even when you have an excavator you still get locators to hand dig every line you cross power gas sewer water telephone anything you have a guy down there dig it out and have eyes on while the excavator is in the area. He may look like he is just standing there with a shovel but his ass is on the line if that backhoe nicks anything.

All you lazy ass desk workers think its so easy then go and do it. Stand out there in the rain and muck trying to pry a chunk of sidewalk out that has a water line going through it. I know a public utility in Utah right now that's hiring folks to plow in fiber optic lines no experience necessary.

[Anonymous No.473246]

I'll admit some councils (ausfag here) are slack as fuck, but a lot of the time it's not their fault. Having to wait for permits, clearances, contractors, rain to dry up etc. can take a lot of time.

Also, a lot of the time when things have to be re-done it's because of some colossal fuck up by the engineers because they were too lazy to leave the comfort of their office and actually visit the site.

>>473219
>A backhoe operator kept digging repeatedly into thin air. I mean, couldn't he be more obvious?

I wouldn't make assumptions too quickly. Maybe there wasn't any work for the backhoe at the time and they had a newbie on it learning the ropes. That's how I learned to operate one anyway.

[Anonymous No.473254]

A lot of haters in this thread and very few people who have actually done the work. I've heard plenty people brag about their cushy jobs but I don't hear people with these jobs bragging about it.

I wish you haters had jobs without any privacy and had everyone staring at you all day questioning why you were not more productive.

[Anonymous No.473257]

>>473245
I know exactly what you mean.

In summer where I work the temperatures can get to EXTREME levels. The thermometer in our shed got to 55C (that's 130F) I don't even want to know how hot it got outside. We were excavating a hole with a vacuum unit and I drank an average of 15L of water every day.

On the upside we get paid 40 dollars an hour year round. Kind of makes up for it.

[Anonymous No.473538]

>>473254
They can just get a different job. Nobody forces them to work in construction.

[Anonymous No.473568]

>>473105
They might "work for the city" but im pretty sure most of the time its the city contracting workers through a third party and low bid on the job almost always wins. The contractor gets paid more for getting the job dont fast but the workers themselves dont get paid enough for that shit so they tend to work slower to gaurentee themselves hours

[Anonymous No.473570]

>>473538
Nice try at trolling. Im certified as an electromechanical technician and cant get a job anywhere other than construction right now. Im even on my way to getting an AA in electromechanical engineering but that wont do anything for me if i get stuck with only construction experience. Its all whats on your resume and who you know.

[Anonymous No.473580]

>videotape them "working"
>submit to local news
>???
>profit

[Anonymous No.473587]

I worked residential construction for a long while and knew a few people doing commercial.

From my experience, they both function about the same:

-start the day off slow, wake up, get dressed, go off to works business location to meet with boss
-get jobs for the day, go meet friends for breakfast etc. sit and bs for 1-2 hours
-go to job site, take your time unloading truck/equipment etc
-bust ass for 2-4 hours
-take 1-2 hour lunch break, meet up with friends again etc
-go back to job site, bust ass for another 2-4 hours
-go home at 6-8pm

it was honestly probably the best job i had pay vs work wise

[Anonymous No.473675]

>>473570
Nobody forced you to choose that career path though. Lots of other fields are hiring that are unrelated to the field you've voluntarily chosen.

[GreenGC No.473681]

It's not that it's any harder or more difficult than any other construction its just they know they are gonna get paid and have no incentive to actually work harder or faster than normal.

I get more out of them my offering piece work which allows them to make much more money than if being paid hourly. Many city workers don't have any options. No point in busting ass for no better pay.