E is for... Electricians

The order of the day for Apprentice Electricians:

1. They swarm in, twenty strong, dressed like Zoolander with clothes they know still won't be dirty at the end of the day. 
2. They unplug your spider box from the transformer to make room for an indestructible Makita boombox with Point Blank / XFM / iPhone of club bangers pumping out,
3. They set up a walkie talkie system of similar complexity to the one used killing Bin Laden. They proceed to illustrate the effectiveness of said system in this one-bed flat you're all squeezed in, loudly barking "over and out - the lightbulb John, is it on?"
4. They plan the weekend. It's Monday, but they've got Cocos Saturday, and they've still got to save money before the big snowstorm in <insert Greek island here>.
5. Finally they duck down to work as the only qualified, desperately stressed electrician out of the whole battalion desperately races round, barking orders and wondering how it's possible to install a plug upside-down, a light inside-out, and an oven clock to Tahiti time all at once.

And then, do you think these apprentices ever wonder if life will still be such a joy when they turn 21, when their apprenticeships end and their perma-tanned gaffer has to choose between paying them a sparks rate or hiring another twenty teenagers and buying that Ferrari?

A bit sweeping perhaps. And electrics is a difficult, technical trade, surely the most continually evolving onsite. It's can only be getting more difficult too, as the specialisations become more specialised and the orgy of pointless tech becomes all the more depraved. We want wireless everything! That's so last year, now we want lightless lights!

And while I'm sure plenty of firms aren't this ruthless, and most apprentices know far more than I'm giving credit for, it's worth wondering where these 20 year old apprentices go when the government support stops. Any ideas?

E is for... Eastern Europeans

Right, bit of a sore subject with some, this. So lets get things clear. 

• They're all different...

• Eastern Europeans refers to people from at least 9 countries, and is often used mistakenly to refer to people from the several controls in Central Europe also. Those not from Poland are often described as 'Poles', and more recently (and usually but with the same haunted shudder) 'Romanians'. They do not all know each other.

• No, really, they're ALL different...

• Not only do the 'Poles' share a different national culture from the Bulgarian, Ukranians, and Romanians, but believe it or not, each and every Polish person is no less unique in thought, belief, looks, humour, and work ethic than each individual English trade. Some have just moved over and are learning English a hell of a lot quicker than I did, others have lived here ten years plus, and their children have lives they'd be loathe to leave when as some lesser-minded trades I know hope they'll 'go back'.

• They're not being presented fairly...

• If you're thinking this is all a bit obvious, just take a look at stories in the press about Eastern Europeans. Listen to the talk onsite about Polish firms. Polish trades. Polish chippies. Polish women. A visiting Martian might just think that 'Polish' was a family living up in Burnt Oak who charge low rates for carpentry, steal our jobs and miraculously claim our Jobseekers at the same time. It's racist, it's narrow minded, it's depressingly predictable (see treatment of Caribbean's in 1950s, Irish in 1960s, Indians in 1970s...ad nauseum...)

• They're not harder working...

• Or lazier. Or better trained, or more less trained. Some are the finest trades I've met, some are the worst, just like the English, Irish, Australian, Indian and every other demographic. Honestly, they really are all different!

• They're not here to 'do the jobs we don't want to do'...

• I've heard this refrain so many times it's boring frankly and it's bollocks. If you don't know any English people who are paying the bills through construction work, or shop work or pouring brews at Cafe Nero, then it's more likely that you're friendship circle is, shall we say, limited to more rarefied echelons. There are roughly fourteen million blue collar jobs in the UK and 1.3 million Eastern Europeans - even if they had every single one worked in construction and cafes (which they haven't), that still leaves millions of English people doing the jobs 'we don't want to do'.
• Furthermore (I'm going on about this because it's fucking infuriating!) with that perspective, what happens when Donna from Poland or Valerie from Ukraine decides that actually they'd rather not be a bricklayer, but would like to become a filmmaker, or an insurance broker? Does their right to move here then get nullified because they're doing a job you think English people do want to do?

• Their migration HAS led to a drop in wages for some...

• Let's be brutally honest. In the early 90s a trade was a guarantee of a good income. During the early 00s the average wage either dropped or remained stagnant until it wasn't that anymore. There's loads of reasons for that (maybe the fact that those rarefied echelons now take a bigger slice of the pie than they did in Edwardian times has something to do with but hey-ho). One of these cannot be disputed - because you formerly had fewer people vying for a job and you now have more, the price has gone down and so has the income of trades. 
• It's going to move up again, things are stirring already, but if we're going to argue with a 55 year-old plumber about the evils of immigrants, then please let's not try to pretend this immigration/wages connection doesn't exist because in construction it does. Percy Plumber gets paid less because Pavel Plumber is competing when before he didn't. Percy complains about this, is decried as a bigot for doing so. Doesn't particularly want to listen to the people who call him a bigot anymore.

• We need them in construction...

• That having been said, let's also be brutally honest about where we are now. On every job I work at the ratio of Eastern European Migrant to British By Birth is fifty fifty.  But if those from the continent were to move back tomorrow, the construction industry would collapse and I'd be skint. There are not enough young people in London who are willing to do what's been crudely defined and belittled as manual labour. Eastern Europeans, we need them.

So whatever your views on upcoming elections, the European Union, or anything else... 

• Can we please PLEASE just all get along?

M is for... Mistakes

“At some point on your road you have to turn and start walking back towards yourself. Or the past will pursue you, and bite the nape of your neck, leave you bleeding in the ditch. Better to turn and face it with such weapons as you possess.” 

― Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black

I fucked up today. One of those huge, cost-people-money mistakes, one of those you-couldn’t-have-fucked-up-in-a-worst-place mistakes. It hurts, I’ll admit.

Two things kill about making mistakes onsite. 

The first is that it’s your TRADE. Your craft. Your skill. The reason you’re paid more than some other halfwit. Mistakes are what the cowboys make, you my friend have been a cowboy for five minutes and look at the result.

The second is down to the definition of a mistake. Now I’ve made plenty of errors, I probably average about one every two months - you know, something like the "100-mil-trick", where I measure from the 100mm mark on the tape for extra accuracy but forget to subtract the extra hundred so I have to redraw the line when I double check.  I’d say I'd rate as pretty good at my trade, but even the very best trades, the people I’d take any advice from about the craft, even they must make an error like that every six months.

But a MISTAKE... well that's when you mark a line in the wrong place and THEN cut without checking. The mistake is when what you’ve cut is worth more than a weeks wage. The mistake is when you can’t do anything to rectify it, short of getting new materials. That, my friends, is a fuck up, a catastrophe, a disaster. A Mistake.

So what to do when you make a mistake? The first, the most crucial rule goes back to primary school: 

Always Own Up.

It's often said that people who don’t own up get caught out in the end, lose work in the end. That’s not necessarily true, I know trades who’ve been fucking up for years now who are expert at passing the buck, electricians who can convince you that the lights aren’t working because the plaster is skewed. Those people have negotiated more money than you, arrive later, leave earlier, and have three weeks in the Bahamas booked this year while you’ll be in Bognor Regis Butlins.

No, you must Always Own Up for no better reason than it is good for the soul. You’re not a cowboy, you’re not a worm. You are a TRADE, my friend, site managers sing when they know it's you fixing the tiles / connecting the boiler / cleaning the windows because they know it’ll be done well. They trust you so much, in fact, that were you to lie and get out of Owning Up, it’s very possible you’d get away with it. But you’d know. Your soul would be dimmer, you would march onto the next job with your step that little less sure because you’d know that you were a cowboy for five minutes and then a fraud ever since.

And that brings us to the second rule, tied right up with Always Owning Up, is that you Must Let it Get To You.

What’s that, you cry?! Everyone makes mistakes don’t they? Of course, you’re right, and I’m not advising you give up the day job because your work got ripped out. But this Millennium Dome-sized disaster you’ve perpetuated on the British public shouldn't be repeated, ever. Every time you measure from 100mm there must be a shadow cast across your mind, a Vietnam-style flashback, a Christ that won’t happen again. If it doesn’t get to you then you won’t have that, then there is a real chance it won’t happen again. 

Because of course everyone does make mistakes. Those best trades I mentioned previously, the ones whose advice I’d always listen to gladly? Their heads overflow with mistakes, with errors, with near-misses. They approach a job packed full of cautionary tales. One of the best carpenters I know is mad on screws, uses twice the number most other people do. This chippy is the bollocks, I’d always depend that his door frames are plum, his vanity unit made exactly square. So why does he use more screws than Holloway Prison, like some nervous apprentice? Because he lets his mistakes get to him. Here endeth the lesson. 

And pray for me please. After the mistake I made today I need it.

S is for... Site Managers

Site managers manage the site, obvs.

This means you organise materials that are probably late, alongside trades that probably reluctant to fix them when and how you'd like, in order to meet the probably impossible demands of an unholy trinity of Clients, Designers and Trades, all of whom probably disagree with each other. Thankless job, no?

Not without its benefits, mind. First and foremost is the salary – not megabucks but according to payscale.co.uk the average project manager can expect £40k plus a year.

On top of that is the power they have. The head honcho! The one to ask! Where's the gaffer? over here! – some people lap that stuff up. They have a certain degree of power to hire and fire, they'll often get to know the client and designer well enough to have small influence over design decisions, and most crucially, their's is the key to the schedule and the quality control.

So, good pay, suit and tie, Larry Labourer and Colin Chippy following your every whim. Sound like a megalomaniac's dream? Well let's look at Pavel.

Pavel is running a small job, a luxury refurbishment of a three-bedroom flat. He's got a clear schedule, and they're actually ahead for once! But.... oh no. The floor layers are in this week.

From what Pavel's seen of their work so far, it's a bit dodge – and he should know, he used to be a joiner. The floor joints look big, massive even. Even worse, these rubbish floor layers are taking ages – not starting till 9, two hour lunch breaks, then leaving at 3 every day.

Pavel doesn't muck about. The electricians are in to fit the lights next week, and if he gets rid of these mugs immediately he can find someone he trusts from years of experience, and get the job back on track. Swing the axe Pav, Tiny Tim can starve this Christmas!

Wait, shiiit. The floor layers are also providing the materials. These floorboards are made from Andalucian Mahogany, veneered by a blind soothsayer the designer met on a wine tour of Italy last year, and half the boards haven't been delivered yet. Nobody else could find this blind soothsayer at such short notice, and even if they could it'd cost weeks and and a fortune to get them. Do you really want to piss off your only supplier Pav? Think, man!

Okay, let's say Pavel happens to have the supply sorted. He rings Useless Flooring Ltd, tells their gaffer that he'd sooner the floors be laid in lino by Edward Scissorhands, admires his shiny shoes, his Half Windsor knot, and remembers how stiff his knees used to feel when he was on the tools. Then the phone rings.

It seems the MD of Useless Flooring Ltd is good friends with the designer. Better than friends in fact, the MD saved the designer from a runaway horse at Cartier Polo five years ago, they're more like family. But Pavel holds firm; there is no chance these cowboys can keep fixing their terrible floor.

Next day, the other firm get started. Lovely joints, excellent veneer. Things are back on track. Until the client and designer comes to visit. The client wanders around, admires the work, tries to avoid eye-contact with the trades. But something's caught the designer's eye. Isn't this newer floor a bit less.... wood-y than the original? Wood-y? Pavel replies, not quite sure he didn't just imagine that.

Now the designer mentions it, the client does notice. It's definitely less wood-y. Is that down to the veneer, they ask? To be honest it's more in the fixing, the designer regretfully replies. It's a pity the original firm aren't free-- Pavel interjects with a gasp "But the joints!..."

...And Pavel stops there. 

You see, the schedule is in danger of running behind as it is, and as much of a stickler for quality as Pavel is, they simply can't afford to rip up the work Useless Flooring did before they were sacked. This client cannot notice these cavernous floor joints until long after the job is paid for, and their small children are paying homeless people to leap across them for sport.

The designer won't drop the wood-y thing, and so in thrall is the client that neither will they. And this floor layer... well while she's always been good, that's undeniable, it's also true that she's a bit of a psychopath. So when the client asks whether she's using enough "wood-y wood", and she replies that she'll find the woody-est wood and smash it on their skulls, Pavel knows that he'll be begging Useless Flooring to return before the day is out.

And, just to twist the knife, just for something the MD and designer can chuckle about over a pyramid of Ferrero Roche at the clubhouse, Useless Flooring are now busy butchering somebody else's floors. They can't make it back till next week. And both the client and the designer would like to know why the job seems to be running behind schedule. Because that is your job, isn't it Pavel?

Site managers come in two categories - good and not. Good site managers amaze me, they handle five problems like Pavel's every day, and still the site runs smoothly.

Not so good managers... well they're uncannily like David Brent. Okay, I know that's now a cliched description, but just imagine David Brent in an industry where people still get away with being openly sexist and mildly racist, and just picture the damage.

The David Brent Site Manager (he's always a he) never worked the tools – or if he did, it was long ago enough away for nobody to know how crap he was at it. Having an office job on a building site consisting mainly of men doing mainly physical work subconsciously affects David Brent, so he carries more false machismo than the lairiest scaff around.

But he is at heart a weak weak man. A good way to spot David Brent is to see what he says if you complain about another trade. If he's straight out with "I'll sort 'em out or they can fuck off", then he's a David, and you'll likely overhear him making the same promise to the trade you were moaning about. Another way is the language; if your site manager seems crippled by Cockney, all "I says to her, look petal", he's quite possibly a David Brent, and as soon as the designer arrives onsite the toe-rag will turn into Uriah Heep:

"'When I was quite a young boy,' said Uriah, 'I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, "Hard hard!" When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. "People like to be above you," says father, "keep yourself down." I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a little power!'"