You didn't tell me that - Stories of starting out in the trades ...

[Sam Murdoch]

I don't know that my story was completely on-topic, but I thought it fit with the theme of the thread at least.

Great story and right on topic - "they didn't tell you that"!

[Wayne Lomman]

We had to blast and paint the deck of a river ferry - one of the cable ones used instead of a bridge. There was limited time to do the job. All went well. The weather was good and we got it painted with just enough time left for curing before it went back into service. We were packing up the airless and empty tins when my mate said to the new labourer who had mixed the paint "What's with the full tins of catalyst still here? The guys says," What's catalyst?" Max and I look at each other in horror. 240 square metres of deck painted with no catalyst in the paint and no time for rework. Bankruptcy looked certain. Max scratches his head and says,"This stuff is polyester. It's a catalyst not a hardener. What if we spray a light coat of catalyst over the whole lot and see what happens." We did, and it worked.

By contast, Another guy started with me years later when I was working for a large painting contractor. We wetedoing a penstocks internal. He was an excellent blaster but had never mixed paint to feed the airless. So we got him to do it this day using epoxy this time. At the end of painting, he was cleaning up and called out to meet, "what do I do with the left over little tins?" He had put through about 140 litres of epoxy within hardener. This company had the rule, you break it, you fix it. He spent the next 2 days on his knees with a bucket and scraper getting it all off. That was a mistake he never made again. Cheers

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I don't know that my story was completely on-topic, but I thought it fit with the theme of the thread at least.

On topic, but you left us hanging- what did the FBI have to say, and why were they on them?

[andrew whicker]

Before I became an engineer, I would work construction from 15 yrs old to 17 ish during summer and winter breaks in Indiana. I had no idea what I was doing and I was insecure. I was probably more hassle than I was worth:

- First day on the job: "lay down some cribbing so we can put a stack of 2x4's down." Try to ask questions, he hurries away. I just lay down 2x4's like you would a floor. Lol, that's not how you put down cribbing.

- Once backed the construction truck into a bollard right in front of the customer

- Once fixed a flat tire for them and stored the old tire hub up under the truck. The wheel wobbled out of it's latch and rolled down the highway on the way to work.

- Told to replace the cracked rear light on the truck. Am going about just fine, then the guy who always screwed with me told me I was putting it upside down. So... I put it on upside down for real (after following his advice).

I wasn't this bad after the first year. But the first year was painful.

This one was one of the older guys. He was a truck driver first:

- We are digging a trench for footers and we break a gas line with the backhoe. The guy clears the whole street in both directions, calls the police, etc. This is a small town we were working in and this guy just shut down like half the town. Boss shows up, takes some pliers and bends the tubing back to stop the leak. That one still makes me smile.

[Matt Meiser]

When I started my first job out of college for a major earthmoving equipment company my mentor took me out to the proving grounds to get familiar with the machine I was going to be working on. Since I was going to be working on the traction control system he gave me instructions to go play in the mud. First thing I did was bury the machine to the axles, and he head to go get a big tractor to pull me out. Later we proceeded to the yard and I parked the machine to be met by the supervisor yelling and waving his arm--seems they had just done spring cleaning and powerwashed the whole pad. I managed to track mud all the way across.