No Respect For The Working Man

Today is Labor Day and I was thinking of a little anecdote this morning while I was pouring my first cup of coffee for the day. Anecdotes, I believe, are highly suspect if you live by Technical Analysis (statistically based and abstract - like most liberals), but are very illustrative if you live instead by Fundamental Analysis (complete analysis of realistic facts and figures with an eye for numbers that don't add up - kind of like me and most conservatives). Anecdotes are only good to liberals when they can be used to sway the great unwashed when the numbers don't make sense. But the one that I intend to bring up fits the occasion.

Now, most of you know me know that I have progressively advanced in my career in residential construction, but one of the most enjoyable periods of my life occurred during a downturn in the Texas market due to the Savings And Loan Crisis of the late 80's. The downturn we see today is not my first rodeo and like this, I had to go off on a different than expected tangent that took me away from production homebuilding. I was lucky enough to accept a job with a custom home builder in the Lake Arlington area after being recommended by a former boss.

Now, just as there is big difference between commercial and residential construction, the difference between custom homebuilding and production homebuilding is almost as vast. Instead of parking my truck at a row of cookie-cutter houses placed on one street, I went every day to a jobsite with one house that was built on an individual and large lot. If Harvard ever wants to create an MBA program that realistically represents a working business model, then let their candidates build a custom home. After unlocking the house in the morning, I would often have two to three meetings during the day with designers, vendors and salespeople at their place of business (showroom or office) both with and absent the customer.

Like a commercial jobsite, parking on a residential lot is often difficult with a custom home because the project is large enough to have multiple tradesmen with large vehicles pulling trailers laden with equipment, each of which is vying for the closest spot. And if you are at the end of a project, the trades are finishing the interior as well as working on the exterior. Combine that with an established street with no curbs dead-ending in a Cul-de-sac and there is no place within several hundred feet to park.

After picking out retaining wall stone with the customer at a stone lot, I pulled up to my now-onstreet-parking lot and was facing a delivery truck from my lighting fixture company. Residential construction is a small world and the delivery person was an older man named Pete. Pete, was well known around town and had worked delivering light fixtures for years. He had a limp, had been a marine and was Hispanic, but did not speak Spanish. He was one of those guys who could remember where he left something six months later. And he was double parked and struggling to take the several large boxes of light fixtures up the lakeside hill to the entry of the house I was building.

Now, another problem with custom building in established neighborhoods, is that all the existing homeowners do not think that any tradespeople were required to build their houses. Many of the existing homeowners complain from the first dirt clod turned over on a lot to the last delivery truck that delivers a customer's furniture to their new house. A silver-grey Mercedes diesel sedan pulled up behind Pete's delivery truck and the well-made-up lady behind the wheel laid on the horn. Not a beep, but I mean laid on it. Pete started hustling as fast as he could, but the horn just kept on. Now, I can understand the inconvenience, but all the lady had to do was drive over into the free lane and continue on her way. Nope, this little person was blocking her way.

So, I jumped out of my truck and helped Pete to deliver the boxes to our new makeshift staging area on the curb. In quick order, my boxes were off the truck and Pete pulled his truck down the street and parked. The lady raced her motor and squealed her tires without even looking our way as she sped down the street.

I helped Pete get the boxes from the curb to the entry and tried apologizing while signing the delivery ticket. Pete just grinned, shook his head, and said, "No respect for the working man."

I have never forgotten that. And I don't want you to forget that either. I have told this story many times because as a builder (and later as trainer for Builder Boot Camp), I know something you don't know: Every tradesman or tradeswoman has learned the "knack" to performing their job for whatever they do. Long hours working on numerous projects have taught them the the tricks that we don't get by watching home improvement shows. Want an example. Buy an appliance and save the fifty bucks on delivery and installation. The guy you would have paid will have it installed and looking for a signature on the delivery ticket while you are trying to figure who to call to help you get the box out of your truck. In fact, if you want a laugh, watch people build a habitat house. You can tell the folks who have the knack and those, like me, who have watched it a hundreds of time, but still don't know the secrets.

To finish, I just want you to think of all the unheralded people that work every day doing the jobs that don't require special access. Just hard work. Appreciate them, don't deride them. I remember back to the last election and the derision of Joe the Plumber. I hope all the people who talked down to that guy have a leaky plumbing joint. I got a feeling they won't call the current administration to sweat solder on their copper pipes.