[MD] New work, old work

[gav]

here's wishing you many many happy days in your new old workplace john
all the best 
gav

--- On Thu, 4/3/10, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com>
> Subject: [MD] New work, old work
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Received: Thursday, 4 March, 2010, 4:48 PM
> I went and applied for a job last
> month, working on a new
> permaculture-oriented farm, real close to where I
> live.  The interview took
> place in a house that the owners were converting into a
> business.  I got the
> job, partially based upon the fact that I built the house
> and shop some 20
> years ago, when I was just starting out as a contractor.
> 
> 
> This shop was my first contract, and one reason I got that
> job  way back
> then, was I figured out an economic way to build a shop
> with 18 foot
> ceilings which nobody else wanted to take on.  I made
> this big scaffold
> shaped like a sawhorse only 14 feet tall and then tacked
> the 18 foot studs
> to the scaffold plank temporarily and then after the top
> plate was nailed
> and the new wall braced, moved the ensemble on down the
> line.  It worked out
> good and I got the big job of building the house a 
> year or so later and
> then this job, like I mentioned, 20 years down the line.
> 
> 
> You never know when good work is going to come back and
> reward you.   Part
> of the remodeling into office space entails installing new
> flooring, and
> shelves in the closets, and everything is square and the
> studs correctly
> spaced.
> 
> Yay me.
> 
> Many times I used to debate quality issues with my old
> partner.  He read
> ZAMM, most of the way through, and we'd talk about the
> significance of
> installing quality patterns into what you do.  At the
> time, the idea was to
> be successful as a business.  But as it turned out,
> caring about the quality
> of your work isn't that conducive to building up a good
> construction
> business.   Business runs on profit and
> profit comes from skimping, hiring
> illegal aliens to work cheap while buying flashy-looking
> equipment that
> looks impressive to intimidate your clients into signing;
> taking shortcuts
> and cheating.
> 
> I have a lot of contempt for the majority of practitioners
> of my chosen
> profession.
> 
> My partner and I split up in '94.  I broke my ankle
> and took a web-design
> class and tried a different career path for a while, just
> to see.  When I
> went back into it, tired of sitting on my butt in front of
> a computer
> screen, I worked for other contractors mostly.
> 
> My dream was to one day have a shop like that first one I
> built.  Something
> big enough to swing logs around in, and work on just about
> anything.  The
> shop also had an apartment adjoining and I always thought
> that'd be the
> perfect home - about 1200 square feet of living space
> adjoined to 2400
> square feet of shopspace.  Man heaven.
> 
> And here I am, working in it now, I've got it mostly to
> myself.  The bread
> cast on the waters has come back to me after many days.
> 
> Quality doesn't guarantee success in business, but in
> life.
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