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Typically when a company does a reconfiguration of their office, they'll hire an architect to draw up the plans. This is a legal requirement if you're talking about knocking load bearing walls down, but if you're just dropping furniture in, you can get by without one. The drawing program is pretty easy to figure out, all you need is a little intelligence, knowledge of how the furniture stands, and the patience to put it together properly.
Which leads me to this job where the customer scored a zero on all three of those qualities. I knew I was in for trouble the moment I was handed the plans. Demonstrating no intelligence whatsoever, the roughly 1000 square foot area was shrunk onto one 8 x 11 sheet of paper, making the entire thing virtually impossible to read. Worse yet, the measurements, vital to know what goes where were reduced down to about a 0.5 font, even with a magnifying glass, they only looked like a tiny blob of ink.
That was the start. I got that worked out and got ready to start the build only to find another problem. The moron didn't do the drawing based on the actual layout of the building. There's walls existing that aren't on the plans, there's doorways where they aren't supposed to be, and of course the furniture is going right into them. It wasn't so bad on the one side, just a couple of shifts and reversals, but the other side was impossible. The walls around one pod of workstations would have left one of them with no entrance, and it's adjacent one needed to go through the wall. Problem two was the placement of the fire exit. It was supposed to go through the hallway, but instead that was changed to going through a private office. My knowledge of the fire code is limited, but I'm pretty sure that's a violation on it's own. They could probably get away with it, BUT, they also had the desk completely blocking the fire exit door. Clearly unacceptable.
I call the customer over to go through these problems. He's kind of apologetic, telling me that he just threw these plans together, he didn't really know what he was doing (uh yeah, never would have guessed that). I'm still in a relatively good mood, so I joke about setting up a pole vault mat for the one workstation and knocking a hole in the wall for the other. We chuckle about it and come up with a solution. This solution sucks because it leaves the openings to these stations facing the washrooms, but it's the best we can do. I do a quick drawing to show him what it'll be and give him a copy. On to problem number two. Unfortunatly by this point his brain has gone to mush, and his patience has reached zero, he doesn't want to discuss it at all. The conversation went like:
SC: Will the furniture fit in here?
Me: It will fit, but you're not allowed to block a fire exit like that.
SC: Why not?
Me:
It's an emergency exit, the fire code requires an unimpeded four foot walkway to it. A fire inspector can shut the office down if it's blocked.
SC: **huff puff** Can you just put it there?
Me: Buddy, I can hang it from the ceiling if you tell me to, but you'll have problems if we block that door.
SC: Fuck the fire code, just do it.
Me: ALLLLLLLLLLLrightythen.
We get the job done and my boss and I go in the next day for a walkthrough with the customer. I started out in the back organizing some leftover parts then made my way in to meet them, catching up in mid-converstation:
SC: Now this area is totally screwed up, I don't know what those idiots were thinking when they built this part.
I take a moment to compose myself, resisting the urge to wrap my pry-bar around his head and butt in with a response:
Me: Yeah, those plans were total crap. It must have been a complete idiot who drew them up; who was the idiot who did them anyways?
The customer craps his pants for a second, shocked that I was there and that I caught him in his lie. He snaps out of it though, realizing that he doesn't have to answer to me.
SC: Yeah, this is no good, the doorways are facing the washrooms.
Me: Yeah I know, it was the best solution we could come up with after those fifteen minutes - half an hour we spent going over it. Do you still have those revised plans I drew up for you?
SC: No, I don't think so. Is there anything we can do here?
Me: Well we wound up with some extra parts, I'll see if we can fix this.
Now you'd think that he'd learn his lesson, but no... we move on to the office with the blocked fire exit and he starts again:
SC: This one is no good, the desk is blocking the door, it's against the fire code.
Me: Yeah, I know. I was the one who explained the fire code to you, remember telling me to "fuck the fire code"?
SC: Ha ha, oh yeah. I was just so sick and tired I didn't care. But we have to fix this.
We ended up working things out. I had to exchange furniture in four offices to make it work, and completely rebuild the pod of workstations but we got it right. My boss was a little pissed at my attitude with the customer until I reminded him what happened. The customer was lying, trying to blame the mistakes on us so that we'd have to fix them for free. Instead, I got him to admit where the blame lies and letting us charge him for fixing everything.
Which leads me to this job where the customer scored a zero on all three of those qualities. I knew I was in for trouble the moment I was handed the plans. Demonstrating no intelligence whatsoever, the roughly 1000 square foot area was shrunk onto one 8 x 11 sheet of paper, making the entire thing virtually impossible to read. Worse yet, the measurements, vital to know what goes where were reduced down to about a 0.5 font, even with a magnifying glass, they only looked like a tiny blob of ink.
That was the start. I got that worked out and got ready to start the build only to find another problem. The moron didn't do the drawing based on the actual layout of the building. There's walls existing that aren't on the plans, there's doorways where they aren't supposed to be, and of course the furniture is going right into them. It wasn't so bad on the one side, just a couple of shifts and reversals, but the other side was impossible. The walls around one pod of workstations would have left one of them with no entrance, and it's adjacent one needed to go through the wall. Problem two was the placement of the fire exit. It was supposed to go through the hallway, but instead that was changed to going through a private office. My knowledge of the fire code is limited, but I'm pretty sure that's a violation on it's own. They could probably get away with it, BUT, they also had the desk completely blocking the fire exit door. Clearly unacceptable.
I call the customer over to go through these problems. He's kind of apologetic, telling me that he just threw these plans together, he didn't really know what he was doing (uh yeah, never would have guessed that). I'm still in a relatively good mood, so I joke about setting up a pole vault mat for the one workstation and knocking a hole in the wall for the other. We chuckle about it and come up with a solution. This solution sucks because it leaves the openings to these stations facing the washrooms, but it's the best we can do. I do a quick drawing to show him what it'll be and give him a copy. On to problem number two. Unfortunatly by this point his brain has gone to mush, and his patience has reached zero, he doesn't want to discuss it at all. The conversation went like:
SC: Will the furniture fit in here?
Me: It will fit, but you're not allowed to block a fire exit like that.
SC: Why not?
Me:
It's an emergency exit, the fire code requires an unimpeded four foot walkway to it. A fire inspector can shut the office down if it's blocked.SC: **huff puff** Can you just put it there?
Me: Buddy, I can hang it from the ceiling if you tell me to, but you'll have problems if we block that door.
SC: Fuck the fire code, just do it.
Me: ALLLLLLLLLLLrightythen.
We get the job done and my boss and I go in the next day for a walkthrough with the customer. I started out in the back organizing some leftover parts then made my way in to meet them, catching up in mid-converstation:
SC: Now this area is totally screwed up, I don't know what those idiots were thinking when they built this part.
I take a moment to compose myself, resisting the urge to wrap my pry-bar around his head and butt in with a response:
Me: Yeah, those plans were total crap. It must have been a complete idiot who drew them up; who was the idiot who did them anyways?
The customer craps his pants for a second, shocked that I was there and that I caught him in his lie. He snaps out of it though, realizing that he doesn't have to answer to me.
SC: Yeah, this is no good, the doorways are facing the washrooms.
Me: Yeah I know, it was the best solution we could come up with after those fifteen minutes - half an hour we spent going over it. Do you still have those revised plans I drew up for you?
SC: No, I don't think so. Is there anything we can do here?
Me: Well we wound up with some extra parts, I'll see if we can fix this.
Now you'd think that he'd learn his lesson, but no... we move on to the office with the blocked fire exit and he starts again:
SC: This one is no good, the desk is blocking the door, it's against the fire code.
Me: Yeah, I know. I was the one who explained the fire code to you, remember telling me to "fuck the fire code"?
SC: Ha ha, oh yeah. I was just so sick and tired I didn't care. But we have to fix this.
We ended up working things out. I had to exchange furniture in four offices to make it work, and completely rebuild the pod of workstations but we got it right. My boss was a little pissed at my attitude with the customer until I reminded him what happened. The customer was lying, trying to blame the mistakes on us so that we'd have to fix them for free. Instead, I got him to admit where the blame lies and letting us charge him for fixing everything.
Can I be that guy?
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