General Contractor Sees An Electrician Doing Something He Shouldn’t, But The Electrician Doesn’t Know Who He’s Talking To
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The saying goes to never judge a book by it’s cover, and that means much more than just picking a good story to read. It relates to people too.
Imagine working on a construction site, and you’re talking to another worker you don’t know. If you didn’t like what they had to say, would you be respectful or rude?
In this story, we hear from a general contractor who was at the job site, and an electrician didn’t know who he was. When the general contractor called out the electrician for doing something wrong, let’s just say he wasn’t at all respectful.
Keep reading to find out what happens when he realized who he was talking to.
Mouthy tradesman on my job
I owned a small construction company. We did interior improvements in buildings.
About 20 years ago we were doing a fairly large job and I had employed all of my usual subcontractors such as drywall, electric and HVAC.
One day I was on the job in shabby work clothes, I decided to do some clean up as the job was getting cluttered.
An electrician, an employee of my subcontractor was doing the same. He didn’t know me from Adam.
He caught the guy doing something he shouldn’t be doing.
At some point, I was standing out back near a dumpster that belonged to another tenant. We were not to use that one for obvious reasons.
The electrician walked up and dumped some of his trash in that bin.
I politely informed him that this was not ours to use.
His response was “Ain’t life awful?” and then he walked away.
It happened again.
A minute or two later he returned, dumping more trash in the bin.
At that point I told him “This isn’t ours to use, take it out.”
He looked at me with a moronic stare and said “Who the heck are YOU?”
I smiled and politely informed him that “I’m the freaking general contractor, that’s who I am”
That realization had the desired effect.
He quickly retreated and started to apologize as he cleaned the trash out of the bin.
For the rest of the job, it was like magnetic repulsion, he would be anywhere that I wasn’t.
A couple of weeks he sheepishly apologized to me, to which I replied that you never know who you are talking to, so don’t take a damn attitude.
The guy was a worthless jerk, sort of a social project by his boss. I changed electricians shortly after that.
It’s true that you never know who you’re talking to. It’s better to be nice and respectful than to burn a bridge with someone in a position of power.
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Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This is true.
Here’s another revenge story.
One person couldn’t resist some puns.
Another person shares a story about a carpenter.
Hopefully, that electrician learned his lesson. You really never know who you’re talking to, and in this case, he was actually breaking the rules. Blowing someone off for calling him out on breaking the rules was bold, especially considering he didn’t know the guy.
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