One of the jobs I worked on was to wire up a chip mill in St. Marys, Idaho.  Our boss took us to a map and explained to us that if we took a specific short cut, the job site was just inside the border of the Subsistence line.  What this meant was that he did not have to pay for sleeping and eating arrangements at the job site.

A cost cutting measure, I presume.

Our crew was 3 journeymen and an apprentice.  We drove back and forth every day.  It was about an hour and a half drive each way, if we took the short cut.  The short cut was about 65 miles, the long way was about 85 miles, but only took about 10 minutes longer.  I’m not sure how the math worked out for saving subsistence versus paying about 10 hours each way just to travel.

It did, however, make for some scenic drives and interesting trips.

One day we were following another car when a pheasant flew up out of the ditch alongside the road.  The car ahead hit the pheasant, and when we got to it, the bird was flopping around on the road.  The guy in the front passenger seat opened up his door and snagged the bird as we passed.  He took it home for supper that night.

Waste not, want not, right?

The job site itself had a pond used to float logs.  An arm of it was located near our work shack.  Someone had thrown a 2×6 across one end of the arm of the pond and the workmen had taken to using it as their own personal “urinal.”  One time the apprentice went to the “urinal” and while using the facility, one of the journeymen decided to joke with him a little.  The journeyman wiggled the 2×6 to scare the apprentice.  It did.  The apprentice fell backwards and landed backside first in the pond.

Seems like an appropriate worksite behavior.

That apprentice took a lot of harassment from those journeymen.  I always thought that we should be teaching the trade instead of harassing the students.  Many of those apprentices, upon becoming journeymen, became just as bad or worse in dealing with the men under them.  It seemed to me that they had it backwards.

Kindness and understanding were just as easily passed along as harassment and initiation.

One of the guys I worked with was a good family man.  He had a wife and two sons when I knew him (back before cell phones were invented), though I never did meet them.

One day he came to work and all morning long he had a strange look on his face; like he was trying to figure something out.  Finally he told us what was on his mind.

The previous weekend he and his wife had been working in the yard, their boys were off staying somewhere, and he told his wife; “It’s such a nice day, let’s go for a drive.”

His wife agreed and said that she would get her jacket and purse while he got the car.  He reminded her that their boys were staying with friends that weekend and they wouldn’t have to rush anywhere.  When his wife came out she said she wanted to drive.  They headed west.

They drove along for quite a way and eventually stopped at a café to eat.  When they came out, the husband took the wheel and off they went again.  They were still not rushing, just driving, since there was no need to hurry home.

Eventually they decided that since they had gone so far, they might as well get a motel room for the night.

About that time the wife remarked; “This looks like a good motel, let’s see if they have a room.”

He went in to check.

They had a room.

A room that was already reserved for them.

It had puzzled him, and when he returned to the car he said; “They already had a room reserved for us” in a questioning tone.

She said; “I know.”

When the guy had told us his account, one of the other men (who had been married many years) asked him; “How long have you been married?”

I never did get the opportunity to meet the guy’s wife, but I think she must have had a lot of moxie.

Before I moved to the Spokane area, there was a local practice for bidding jobs.  When the project plans had been created they would be sent to the supply houses so that they could do a “take off” of material needed for the project.  Any contractor wanting to make a bid on the project would get the cost list of the material from a supply house and work up their bid for the job.

Depending on how often and how much each contractor purchased from the supply house, their price could differ from one contractor to another.  As a consequence the number of electrical contractors bidding on the larger jobs decreased.  Larger purchasers received a greater deduction on their price list and the smaller purchasers could not be competitive.

Even on small jobs, I would sometimes give a bid to a General Contractor and he would “shop it around” to other electrical contractors.  Then he would come back to me and say, “The job is yours if you will do it for this amount of money.”

Of course this would guarantee that you would get the job, but it would also guarantee that you would lose money.

I have found that your best bet is to have loyal customers that know and like your work, your prices, and your trustworthiness.  You can imagine the difficulty a new business would have getting established in an area.

A government contract is more regulated, so it would be good to get a government contract to help get a business established.

Sometimes a company would lose money steadily until they got a government contract. They would make money and get back on their feet.  Then they would lose money again until they got another government contract.

One of my friends had worked at a supply house and gave one of the electrical contractors a real good material price on a project.  The contractor didn’t come back to get the material for the job and my friend wondered what had happened.

Later, he saw the contractor and asked him about the job.

The contractor responded; “Your price was the best, Bill, but I threw in enough money to get a new pick-up and didn’t get the job.”