'Every time he called... the call was recorded': Contractor loses thousands of dollars to construction company, then takes a different job with them and plays the long game

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 17, 2023 5:00 PM EST

Taking a peek into the life of a contractor as he works to build a restaurant is so interesting. 

If you don't work as a contractor, you'd have no idea what goes on while people are building a restaurant. By reading this story, you get a good insight into the process: for example, it's not just one group of people who are in charge. Instead, there is a general contractor who is responsible for managing subcontractors who work under the GC's supervision. There might be one person who's in charge of just electrical wiring. Then someone else will take on the tasks of installing drywall and tiles. Another dude will follow that up with some paint, and then someone else needs to put in things like light switches and cabinets. There's clearly a lot that goes into one building's creation, and, as the OP notes, it's a fairly stressful job to manage all of these time-sensitive operations. 

This is one of those industries, however, where everybody knows everybody. You can't always burn bridges, you have to learn to work with your enemies. At least this scorned contractor learned his lesson about needing to get everything in writing before starting his next job with the same general contractor. 

Next up, these people had some silly holiday traditions, like one family that always calls each other by their middle names all day on Christmas Eve. 

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  • 01
    2 Malicious Compliances Equals One Pro Revenge This is being posted under my alt, as some of my people know my main reddit username. And I never was in it for the Karma. Several years ago, Barry, my boss, did a job for BigDaddy Construction, and got screwed. It wasn't a huge amount of money, a couple of thousand dollars, but screwed is screwed. Basically, he accepted BigDaddy's word on something that they denied later. Barry consulted his lawyer, and was told that since the issue was not in writ
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  • 02
    won, that the legal costs would exceed any settlement. And BigDaddy basically said, "My lawyer can beat up your lawyer." Barry then asked what every lawyer likes to hear, "What should I have done differently?" Fast forward to 2017. BigDaddy is soliciting bids for a new restaurant called FancyAss. Barry submits a bid for supplying and installing door hardware, things like doorknobs, emergency exit bars, door closers that pull the doors shut...and 3 Automatic Door Operators (ADO's). An ADO is some
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    door. It's designed to allow people with limited mobility to pass through a doorway. Barry wins the bid, and calls a meeting. He is handling this job personally. All communication with BigDaddy is to go through Barry, and ONLY Barry. If someone from BigDaddy calls and says, "Nice weather, isn't it?" we are to reply, "I wouldn't know anything about that, let me transfer you to Barry's line." Under no circumstances is anyone from BigDaddy to be given Barry's cell number. And the after-hours on-cal
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  • 04
    A few weeks go by, and we get a call from "GC", who not only is running the job for BigDaddy, but is BigDaddy's son. He's an entitled s ball of a tyrant, with anger issues and a vocabulary that relies heavily on profanity. I'm calling him "GC" because that's his job title, General Contractor. For those who don't know, a GC is responsible for ensuring that everything gets done on a construction site in the correct order. For example, if you are building a bathroom, first you put up the wall studs
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  • 05
    installed. Lastly the plumbing fixtures go in. So you can see, a GC has to deal with several different subcontractors and co- ordinate their efforts. It's a stressful job, and you need the co-operation of the various people....and it's hard to get people to work with you if you're screaming swear words at them, something GC never figured out. This might be a good time to give you a visual of the restaurant layout. This is by no means to scale, just a sketch to give you an idea of what's going on
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  • 06
    O O Oo O O O KITCH HEATER O O O O ADO (o ADO Ö ENTRANCE ADO FUSE PANEL 10 FEATURE WALL 0% WASH ROOMS
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    There are 3 ADO's to be installed, 2 on the entrance and one on the handicapped washroom. The conventional washrooms are down a set of stairs on the right, and by law, there has to be a washroom available for people using wheelchairs, marked as HC on the drawing. This is on a bit of a corridor of sorts used by the servers to bring food in and dishes out. The partitions separating the corridor are about shoulder-high, separating the corridor from the seating area, which is what the circles with 4
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  • 08
    The décor was fancy, and meant to resemble a Victorian Gentlemen's Club, with oak throughout, and thick carpets on the floors. Worthy of mention is the feature wall at the front, with alcoves for displaying sculptures, and places to hang paintings. So GC calls us, and they are ready for the ADO's. We arrive, and install. By the terms of the bid, it's BigDaddy's responsibility to supply dedicated 120v electricity for the ADOS and to run the 12v wires from the activation plates to the top of the d
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  • 09
    and used a wireless transmitter and receiver to trigger it. All of this was specified in the bid, which said that we could install, and then return to hook up the wires once they get run. Barry came and supervised the tech installing the ADOS personally. When GC signed off, buried in the description was a line or two referencing the relevant sections of the bid. When GC signed off on the handicap washroom install there was a line noting that BigDaddy assumes all responsibility for compliance wit
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    tech was right beside him when GC signed off. • Malicious Compliance #1 It's about 2 weeks before opening, and they are in the finishing stages. Barry gets a frantic call from GC that none of the ADO's are working, and they need these to be functional, or they won't get their occupancy permit. Barry heads down the next day with the tech. Barry: "Well, I found the problem." GC: "So fix the problem" Barry: "There's no 120v run to the doors, and there's no 12v wires to hook up the buttons." GC: "Yo
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  • 11
    the bid. You're supposed to do it." GC: "Why didn't you tell me that when you were here the first time." Barry: "I did, and you signed off on it." GC: "Where's the J electrician? over here." Electrician, get your Electrician: "What's up?" GC: "Why isn't there any power for these door operators?" Electrician: "It's not part of my scope of work." Barry: "There's some good news..." GC: "What?" Barry: "If we use wireless for the buttons, we won't need 12v wires. I'll have to bill you for it as an ad
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    NOW GC realizes how interior of the restaurant is 90% complete, and there is no power to a critical part of the building. Without it, no permit. Big Daddy has up big time, assuming that either Barry or the Electrician would run the wires, and not putting it into the scope of either bid. The electrical panel is in the back of the kitchen, and there's no way to bring 120v to the front entrance, except across the ceiling, which would be nearly impossible. All of the lighting and the ornate false ce
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    it was closer and the wires could be run through the false ceiling. The section. that contained the handicap washroom also had offices and storage with a t-bar ceiling, unlike the main room, that had 20 foot ceilings. The electrician charged GC big dollars for the extra work. • Malicious Compliance #2 Remember the handicap washroom? When the building inspector came to do a pre-check, they discovered that the square footage of the washroom, minus the area taken up by the in-swinging door, was les
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  • 14
    would take too long. So GC decided to reverse the swing of the door, and have it swing into the corridor, rather than into the washroom. This had a really bad effect on the operation of FancyAss once it opened, as any time someone wanted to use the washroom, the door blocked the flow of servers in and out of the kitchen. And people are lazy...even able bodied people were prone to using this washroom as it was closest. I don't know what the conversations between FancyAss and BigDaddy were like, b
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  • 15
    And Barry got to invoice for a whole new ADO, as the original was a "pull" style, and reversing the swing meant that a "push" style was required. • Pro Revenge GC called a few days after discovering that the entrance doors needed 120v, to tell Barry that the 120v was available. Barry heads down with the tech to check it out. In the vestibule was a heater known as an "air curtain". It's a big heater, designed to push a high volume of warmed air into the vestibule, to mitigate cold outside air ent
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  • 16
    door ADO's into the same circuit. Barry explains that the bid specified that the ADO's require their own dedicated circuits, one for each. GC responds that he doesn't give a , hook the things up, so Barry does, and has GC sign off again. Only this time buried in the sign off sheet is an acknowledgement that by not providing dedicated circuits, all warranties are void, and subsequent service would be billable. Just like usual, GC scribbles his signature and takes his copy without reading it.
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    These ADO's are finicky about power. There's a motor (obviously) controlled by a circuit board that determines how fast the door opens, how long it stays open, how fast it closes, how much force is used, that sort of thing. If it takes a spike in power it fails, and the ADO no longer functions. A power spike blows a fuse and damages one of the components of the control board. This is replaceable, and the part is worth about 30 bucks. The control board can be fixed in about half an hour, with ano
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  • 18
    the manufacturer and get a replacement. Sure enough, a couple of days later GC calls in a panic. They have the final occupancy inspection scheduled for the next day, and one of the ADO's at the entrance is down. GC: "Your down here and fix it." Barry: "Okay, but this isn't covered under warranty. It's billable." GC: "What the are you talking about? It's not even been a week and it's broken. It's warranty." Barry: "No, warranties were all voided when you didn't provide clean power." GC: " that. G
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    Barry: "It doesn't need a new ADO. It needs a new control board. And I can get a new control board from the manufacturer in 4 to 6 weeks." GC loses his mind. There's no way he can delay the opening of FancyAss for 6 weeks waiting for a part. He calls Barry every name in the book, threatens legal action, etc. Barry responds, "Look GC, I have a control board on the shelf that was rebuilt by a factory certified technician. I can let you have it at 80% of the list price of a new one, and I can have
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  • 20
    GC: "Yes! Just get the by tomorrow!" thing fixed Now Barry knows that GC and BigDaddy him just like they did were going to years ago. That ended up being a "I never said that" dispute. What GC didn't know was every time he called Barry, the call was recorded. You know the "This call may recorded for quality assurance purposes" that you get when you dial in? Well Barry never used his cell phone, never initiated a call, and every time GC called in it was recorded and archived. Every. Single. Time.
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  • 21
    installs the rebuild, then takes the blown control board back to the shop and rebuilds it. A new control board is $750.00. The rebuild he's charging $600.00, for a part that maybe costs $75 to get back into shape. The bid specified that non- warranty service was $125/hr minimum 4 hours, so tack on another $500.00 for labour, and it takes maybe 45 minutes to install a new control board and dial it in. So every control board replacement was generating $1,100.00. There were 27 blown control board s
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  • 22
    number, and said that we could only come and fix it if GC was the one to call it in. Then Barry gets a call from Daddy of Big Daddy wanting to know what this invoice for almost 30 grand is for. Barry explains, and a meeting is called, Barry brings his lawyer, and all copies of the sign-off sheets, as well as transcripts of every conversation he had with GC. It becomes very apparent that GC up large, and that Barry had every "I" dotted and every "T" crossed. BigDaddy is glaring daggers at GC, and
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  • 23
    Barry smiles, and slides his ace across the table. It's a Contractor's Lien against BigDaddy, FancyAss Restaurant, and Massive Realty Company, the owners of the building. Here's the thing. FancyAss was owned by Internationally Famous Chef (IFC), who makes his living getting Very Important People to invest in opening a new restaurant. This is a place where they go to be Very Important, and bring their business contacts with them. After a short time, when the restaurant is the happening place in t
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  • 24
    the investor's money, and the investors make a nice return. Only now they can't sell, with a lien on the place. And these investors have rabid pitbulls as lawyers. some of them ARE lawyers. See you in court, BigDaddy. Only you're not facing Barry's lawyer, you're facing a whole new level of legal expertise. Have fun with that. Barry got his revenge, and then withdrew service based on the disputed invoice. He's the only company allowed to service and install this brand of ADO as he has a protecte
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  • 25
    were warned off by the manufacturer, who even relayed the fact that Big Daddy had called them directly looking for service, and they referred BigDaddy to Barry. Barry will definitely get paid, as it's a standard to hold back 10% of the payment to a construction company for a year, and the holdback will definitely cover the invoice. So FancyAss will pay Barry and then take it out of BigDaddy's holdback. Either that, or they will sue BigDaddy into dust, and force BigDaddy to cough up and settle th
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  • 26
    competitors, and Barry didn't say a thing to them. Maybe Big Daddy is over one of the competition, and what hurts his competition, helps Barry. What makes this deliciously Pro? You think maybe, just maybe, Barry, who has decades of experience in the industry, might have had an Electrician friend that could show him the Electrical bid? And that maybe Barry knew from the beginning that there was no provision for 120v in either package? Or that the washroom was too small? Or that GC, a corner cutte
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    in all TL;DR A subcontractor complies with a bid, to the letter, and covers his correspondence, General Contractor ends up paying big dollars for their error, allowing subcontractor to recover money he was screwed out of years ago.
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