posted 9 years ago
On Monday and Tuesday, I led a crew of young, and inexperienced guys, at removing stucco from a bank.
I gave several demonstrations to unwilling learners. They were using the wrong tools , in the wrong way and they did not appreciate the input. This led to a situation where I was able to remove material faster than the other five combined. They produced a broken up gravely material , while I produced slabs weighing up to 200 pounds.
One of them decided that he wanted to learn. Those who were unwilling to follow my lead, where put at cleaning up the heavy slabs and putting them in the bin. The guy who became quite useful after half an hour , didn't have to do any cleanup during the two-day period. The others thought that this was unfair and that I was a jerk.
I have been called a jerk in many situations, but most commonly when I'm demonstrating a technique at work and contrasting it with the feeble efforts of others.
These weren't my employees, but I was in charge of production. Had they been mine, I would have fired all but one. This would have made me an even bigger jerk.
On several occasions, I have been hired to weed out a crew of lackluster employees. Some people shy away from this sort of task, but I enjoy nothing more than cutting out the dead wood and hiring replacements, until a useful crew is built. In the end, the useful people who remain end up earning more money. One thing that I really like about construction and demolition work, is that it's all merit-based. It doesn't matter if you've been working for a company for 20 years or 20 minutes. If someone is better at their job, they can expect to be put in charge and receive more money.
This is another thing that makes me a jerk. The highest paid employee in the crew I was running, makes about $150 a day. I showed up at $350 a day and five minutes later, I'm his boss. This seems perfectly natural to me, but highly unfair to the poor slob who has failed to develop useful skills.