Client says contractors are working "too fast" demand they work slower, making project cost four times more: '$200,000 for a job that should have realistically only been worth about $45,000'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Nov 26, 2024 6:00 PM EST

Efficiency is usually a prized quality, especially when someone's time is costing you a lot of money. In fact, when you work on a contract basis your clients are usually accusing you of wasting time or for charging time that wasn't worked or worked "appropriately" enough for the project. It's unusual to have the client accusing you of working too quickly and demanding that you take your time on something—unless the job is being charged at a flat rate and they're concerned about the quality of the work, at which point this inverse might prove true. 

When this project manager foolishly accused this concrete-cutting company of being "too fast and unsafe" in their work, the construction manager frustratedly declared that all members of his staff should adhere strictly to the safety protocol. This snail-like pace of work caused the time estimate of the project to spiral out of control, escalating from a $45,000 project to a $200,000 one, which saw the project manager losing his bonus from his own company while the construction manager walked away with a sizeable bonus himself and a windfall for the company.

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    Cheezburger Image 10433744640
    via Andy Quezada For Unsplash+
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    We are working too fast? Okay, we will slow down for you. XL I recently found this sub and I think I have a great story for it. This happened about 2 years ago. I work in construction but more specifically I cut concrete.
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    A lot of people aren't familiar with my job but all you really need to know is that I dont pour any concrete. I use big diesel and hydraulic powered saws to cut and remove it. I work at a relatively small company (15 employees) and we are THE company to use for concrete cutting and removal in our area. I was the first employee hired at this company and my bosses are amazing, they have been in the industry for 25 and
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    30 years respectively. We will call them Brad and Cody. They know what they are doing and they still get out and work in the field and will out work any of our employees. We were awarded a no-bid contract at a very large facility to cut and remove a very large section of their outdoor slab because it had cracked. This was routine for us, we could do it in our sleep, but it was still a large project. The reason we were
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    given the contract but not held to a number was because they wanted it done right and fast and they knew that we were they guys to do this even though we aren't always the cheapest. The customer requested us to bring extra equipment and specialized saws "just in case". Important later.
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    The day comes that we are supposed to start and they wanted us on site at 6:30am for a safety meeting. Brad and Cody went out while I stayed back to get my crews ready for the day before heading out to meet them. when I arrived at 8 am, they were still standing by their trucks just talking. I asked them how the safety meeting went and they said that no one had shown up
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    yet. Finally they got there at around 9 am and didn't even acknowledge that they were late. We met the guy that was in charge of the project, his name was John. John said during the safety meeting that there would always be a few people around from his company to watch us while we worked. we figured it was weird but no big deal. We ran a routine safety meeting after and it was time to work.
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    We got about a third of the project completed in 1 day. The entire time we were working there were no less than 25 people standing around watching us work. we kept joking with them to just set up bleachers, it would be easier to watch that way. They made us call it quits at 4pm so they could go home. Right about this time we started to figure there was something up with
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    these guys, they didn't care that we didn't get started until late and wanted us to end early, yet a big part of us being there was to get it done fast? Either way we figured we would still be able to get done in about 3 days and make record time for a project of this size, all while making a fair amount of money for ourselves.
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    The next morning as we were getting ready to head out for they day, Brad received an email. it said "While we can tell that x company are master operators with their machines, we feel as if they are operating in an unsafe manner by running multiple machines at once and request that they slow down to maintain safe working conditions. They
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    also didn't try to make sure our supervisors felt that they were safe throughout the day." Brad was ped. we were called in to get things done fast and not once had we done a single thing that could be considered unsafe. when we got to the job that day for the safety meeting, Brad had changed from "screw these guys they don't know anything about what we are doing" to "okay we are too fast? we will slow it right down for them".
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    At the safety meeting John (same guy who sent us the email) looked at us and said "okay everyone knows what we are doing, lets get it done." He tried to end the safety meeting with that, but that's when my boss spoke up. he said, "hold on, since no one is man enough to tell us in person and just want to hide behind their emails, lets get this straight. we are too fast and unsafe for you?" John became
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    visibly uncomfortable and stammered out "well, there was a lot of people standing around and watching you yesterday and I just felt that someone would get hurt if they decided to get closer to watch". I had set up safety cones with red danger tape strung between it and told no one to cross. we had taken proper safety precautions. if they didn't
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    feel comfortable to have that many people watch, then DONT HAVE THAT MANY PEOPLE STANDING, WATCHING, AND DOING NOTHING! all Brad said was "okay we will be real slow and if someone crosses our line, we shut the site down for an hour for another safety meeting."
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    Time for the malicious compliance, we started up for the day. Something to note about our saws, tractors, and other heavy equipment is that we have the ability to turn up the idle, or in other words we can turn up or down the speed of the motors, so instead of everything moving normally and how it should, which is fast, everything is moving at turtle speed. Brad told
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    us all that if we ever sped up our machines that he would kick us off the job, even Cody, his business partner. I was cutting with our saw while Cody was in the excavator to remove the pieces that I cut. Brad was in the skid steer to haul the pieces to the dump truck.
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    I would cut the concrete into a 6' x 6' piece, which would normally take me about 20-30 minutes. It was taking upwards of 3 hours for one piece. after I would cut, Cody in the excavator would turn his machine on, slowly turn and stop. extend his bucket. stop. lower the bucket. stop. tilt the bucket. stop. pick up the piece.
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    stop.turn. stop. drop the piece. stop. shut off his machine. All without idling up. Then Brad would start his machine and repeat the same process to load into the dump truck. you get the point, it was PAINFULLY slow. after the first piece was ready to be pulled out and Cody started the process John, who was just sitting on the sideline pale faced crossed my line to ask if we were
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    really serious, at that point Brad screamed "SHUTDOWN!" and we all stepped away for an hour for a safety meeting. John crossed the line 3 times in the first day and 8 times total throughout the project. His employees never once crossed the danger line. effectively John was the only one he should have been worried about in his email about "getting too close and being in danger."
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    John kept saying "no way you guys are being serious, what happened to what you were doing yesterday? you were so much more efficient." Brad just said "I have in writing that you felt unsafe, so for the remainder of this project we will be operating at a safe pace."
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    It ended up taking us 3 weeks to finish at that horribly slow pace instead of 3 or 4 days at full speed. The best part? The head of the facility came out to see what was taking us so long, we showed him the email and he agreed with what we were doing. He told us he hates John and that
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    he's insufferable to work around. He said that the success of this project is directly tied to Johns yearly bonus. he asked how much we were charging them, and we told him that per piece of equipment and truck and saw that is one the site is being billed to them by the hour and that John had requested that we have nearly double the amount of equipment than we actually needed or used. The facility head
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    just laughed and said "fantastic, I will make sure you are paid in full, don't go easy on us with the bill." That's how we maliciously complied our way into charging about $200,000 for a job that should have realistically only been worth about $45,000. I even got a solid $20,000 bonus because Brad and Cody are fantastic bosses and knew we made a killing on that job.
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    Snoo_9076 • 4h ago LL F John!
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    darkenedgy 4h ago Lmao I love that the facility head was willing to waste money to throw John under the bus.
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    TJamesV • 4h ago . Top 1% Commenter Holy f 1. I loled when John crossed the line. Like dude, you were warned. Did he never cave and tell you to forget the email and return to a normal pace? What a blockhead.
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    crumblednewm... 4h ago • John really, realllllyyy must have been insufferable if it was worth $200k to kick his a to the curb, lol.
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    Flatulent Oppo... 4h ago. I would love to have seen John's face when he found out his Xmas bonus was just a single 0.
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    SirEDCaLot 2h ago. • I would cut the concrete into a 6' x 6' piece, which would normally take me about 20-30 minutes. It was taking upwards. of 3 hours for one piece. after I would cut, Cody in the excavator would turn his machine on, slowly turn and stop.
    via bigcapper69
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    extend his bucket. stop. lower the bucket. stop. tilt the bucket. stop. pick up the piece. stop. turn. stop. drop the piece. stop. shut off his machine. All without idling up. Then Brad would start his machine and repeat the same process to load into the dump truck.
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    As someone who's seen what those machines can do in the hands of a skilled/experienced operator, this must have been extremely painful for Cody and Brad. It's like asking a Michelin-starred chef to prepare a cut of A5 Wagyu steak and please cook it well done and serve it with an extremely spicy horseradish-jalapeno sauce.
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    Yeah the chef can do it, but every bit of training they've had makes it painful to knowingly do it wrong.
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    YourDadsUsern... • 2h ago. Friend of mine was a locksmith. On lockout jobs where they show up pop a lock and let someone into their car or business the actual job takes seconds with a pick g in or a hook that goes under business doors. The problem is nobody wants to pay for something that looks so easy and takes seconds so
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    he "inspects" the lock, looks. some things up on his computer, gets a look from a couple angles, copies down any numbers on the lock, maybe sticks manual picks in to "check the pins" or some crop. After about fifteen minutes of "work" he pops the lock and everyone's happy to pay.
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    HeavyNeedlew... • 4h ago And Brad screamed "Shutdown!" Fabulous story!
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    CoderJoe1 4h ago Top 1% Commenter I'm guessing your company was paid with John's bonus money.
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    litsalmon 4h ago Some people really do boggle the mind. Stop getting in the way and let the professionals do what they do. They know what they're doing. That's why they're professionals.
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    my-coffee-nee... 4h ago That's a beautiful story. I want to work for Brad and Cody.
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    Born_Grumpie • 4h ago • I was an IT contractor back in the 90's, we got hired by a company to build out a new server room, it was a 3 month contract for a 3 week job. On the first day the manager overseeing the project left. No worries the other guy on site new the project and left us to get on
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    with the job, the following Monday, he didn't come in and never came back. Again, no worries we knew what was needed and kept on working, the agency that hired us was okay as they were getting paid and paying us. We finished the job in about three weeks and called the agency to work out what we should do as we had 3 month contracts.
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    They said they had more work for us and we could start the other work while still getting paid for the remainder of the three months or just stay home and get paid, I took more work and got paid for both it was a great couple of months for me.
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    WriterWithASh... 2h ago That is the absolute best way I've ever seen one person f their own job so intensely. LOVE that John was universally disliked enough that they were willing to pay you more than triple what they should have lol.
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    AppropriateRip... $ 4h ago John works so hard to earn a negative bonus. I hope he got no raise and a bucket of concrete.
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    bettyy90210 • 2h ago. So satisfying. I just don't understand why John even bothered intervening because you were all handling the situation well and would have made him look good. He cost himself his own yearly bonus.
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    Coolbeanschilly ⚫ 2h ago Sounds like John needs to get fired.
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    whydya-dodat • 4h ago John, making other people rich since... whenever the h I he was hired.
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    Capt_lurch4774 • 3h ago Part way through I just went, "Oh god." I knew what was going to happen. John got what he asked for after all.
    via bigcapper69

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