We had one, he would always say, "you don't need your coat or your boots, its not muddy and were just going to be out for a minute". Of course 2 hours latter your tennis shoes are muddy and your freezing your butt off.
I never worked with a chief who stayed in the truck much. We had one that began that toward the end of his time with us. I do not tolerate it either. Sometimes the chief has to do something that puts him in the truck or somewhere cool, but I was taught to inspect what I expect so my chiefs are right there, as am I when I'm in the field.
When I was going back to school, circa 2005-2007, a large company in Tyler had a project on a route I traveled twice a day. The party chief on that project was a registered surveyor and he and I got our license at the same time in 2002. I never drove by that project, for over 6 months, when he wasn't in the truck and the rest of the crew out working. I finally got fed up with it and called his boss. For the remainder of the project, he was still in the truck.
We all get hot and tired and cold and tired, but slacking because you don't want to do it, well that makes a bad habit VERY quickly that is difficult to break. If one of my employees told me the chief was doing that, then I'd council with them. If it didn't change, I'd have to make the changes. That breeds too much bad blood.
A quick fix is to make that three man crew a two man crew. The boss will be able to see immediately the difference in progress.
^
^
^
I agree. You can be a leader and lead by example earning respect, or you can simply be a boss and make people miserable around you. Thankfully I'm not working at that firm any longer and forced to endure the farts & smokes combo that soured the atmosphere in the hot truck so badly...
One more story, Party Chief says to rookie rodman as they show up to a job and he's getting organized with the book. "Go dig up those corners." As the PC sketches or prepares the book for the job the rodman returns to the driver side window and with a ding-ding-clank drops all four irons on the pavement and says, "got em!" Proud of himself the PC commenced to flip out over the perfect execution of his orders, literally...
D Bendell, post: 443878, member: 12975 wrote: ^
^
^
I agree. You can be a leader and lead by example earning respect, or you can simply be a boss and make people miserable around you. Thankfully I'm not working at that firm any longer and forced to endure the farts & smokes combo that soured the atmosphere in the hot truck so badly...One more story, Party Chief says to rookie rodman as they show up to a job and he's getting organized with the book. "Go dig up those corners." As the PC sketches or prepares the book for the job the rodman returns to the driver side window and with a ding-ding-clank drops all four irons on the pavement and says, "got em!" Proud of himself the PC commenced to flip out over the perfect execution of his orders, literally...
I've always told people, "if you want to screw with your boss, do only exactly what he tells you..."
paden cash, post: 443883, member: 20 wrote: do only exactly what he tells you..."
I think the term for that is "white mutiny"
Were you required to sit in the truck while the PC was fermenting himself on facechat, or could you have stepped out to flag some nails, irons, laths?
Maybe put a slight edge on the shovel with a file? All with the PC's blessing of course. I hear you on the sitting in the truck forever thing, it makes the day too long sometimes, but if you keep a short list of things to do, it gets you out of the truck, and makes the day go by a little faster.
No, you're right I did my best to be out of the truck doing something productive when at all possible.
The list of frustrating items related to working with this guy was long. He was prone to looking up from his phone and barking an order or critiquing an element of the work we had been doing without him ever paying attention or offering any instruction in the first place. Then of course we'd get some kind of guff over what we should have been doing that would have required us to read his mind. Once in awhile He'd decide he was gonna pound a hub, then boast about his expert proficiency. Another day, after I had worn out a 4lb Estwing hammer at a massive construction stakeout project over a month or so of using the bull-pin I mentioned the hammer was on its final leg. I worried the thing was gonna fly apart on the back swing. So I walked over to the truck to grab the 8lb'er and he realized I was gone for 40 seconds. He put his phone down to hammer a stake and sure enough the hammer broke and separated the handle from head. Guess what the story was back at the office? It was boast-city central, all about how he wore out the hammer and it broke on his power swings.
Another day we had finished our job but we were ahead of schedule so rather than heading back to the office he did require us to sit in the truck for 30-40 minutes before heading back. Since I am taking evening classes and only get to see my little girls for an hour or two those days between work and school or at night when I get home, I was fuming. I was very close to going to our owner about his malarkey a number of times. One trip back to the office he asked me to fill out his expense sheets. So as I went through fuel receipts I find one for smokes and lottery tickets. I asked him in front of the other guy, "do you want me to put this one for cigarettes and lottery tickets on the expense sheet?" He promptly declined and told us how thatmust have been a mistake. Haha, yeah okay buddy.
I found a better job. Much happier with the new company/guys...
On a summer holiday job at the hometown council, me and a fellow engineering student were employed with the engineering department and our job was CCTV of stormwater and sewer pipes. We were under the control of a council engineering tech graduate employee, who arranged the jobs and took us to site and supervised things. Nice guy, but ... For the office staff there was a lunch room and there were set times allowed for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. Our man had it in is head that not only were we and he to utilise those set times for paid breaks but also to use the office facilities, without exception. So that meant quite often we would get to a job, set up, do a bit of work, pack up and go back to the lunchroom - 3 times a day. On at least 2 or 3 occasions I can remember setting up and immediately packing up without doing any CCTV in order to get back in time. And on at least 2 or 3 occasions I can remember that a site was deemed out of range and therefore not visited because it was deemed that there was not enough time to complete the set up and still get back to the office.
Richard Imrie, post: 444050, member: 11256 wrote: Our man had it in is head that not only were we and he to utilise those set times for paid breaks but also to use the office facilities, without exception.
I've never had quite that experience myself, but a former boss told me that just that happened when he worked for a certain city in Oregon. He said that they were lucky to get 2 hrs of work into an 8 hr day.
I didn't work with that crew but I was told by the crew that one crew chief would take a short nap after lunch every day. He would sit in the truck, light a cigarette, and go to sleep. When the cigarette burned down far enough the burn his fingers he would wake up and go back to work. One day a member of the crew took a paper clip and eased the cigarette down so that the filter was between his fingers. The cigarette burned out and he kept sleeping. A couple of hours later he woke up and blew his top when he realized what happened. After a couple of days he cooled off enough to appreciate the prank.
Andy
My favorite party chief had impeccable field notes. He used to be a draftsman before computer drafting was in use. He knew how to execute a job. After a few months he let me figure out if my angle sets were good. I really appreciated that!
We ran out of rods one day and were far from any store let alone the office. The chief at the time went down the road to "a lot no body would care about" and found an iron rod. He dug it up and brought it back to our job, just in time for us to find a rod and cap right on the money. Thankfully he referenced the rod he stole from down the street so he could put it back, but if we didn't find what we did, we would have recycled an old rod from someone else... I knew it was terrible then and when I think about it now, it just fit this guys personality. On the contrary I did learn quite a bit from the old guy though, some of the what to do's and a lot of the what not do's.
Same guy in the post above also said one day, "I'm the chief, it's not my job to know the data collector." Thank God I knew it or we would have gotten nothing done.
Kris Morgan, post: 443862, member: 29 wrote: I never worked with a chief who stayed in the truck much. We had one that began that toward the end of his time with us. I do not tolerate it either. Sometimes the chief has to do something that puts him in the truck or somewhere cool, but I was taught to inspect what I expect so my chiefs are right there, as am I when I'm in the field.
When I was going back to school, circa 2005-2007, a large company in Tyler had a project on a route I traveled twice a day. The party chief on that project was a registered surveyor and he and I got our license at the same time in 2002. I never drove by that project, for over 6 months, when he wasn't in the truck and the rest of the crew out working. I finally got fed up with it and called his boss. For the remainder of the project, he was still in the truck.
We all get hot and tired and cold and tired, but slacking because you don't want to do it, well that makes a bad habit VERY quickly that is difficult to break. If one of my employees told me the chief was doing that, then I'd council with them. If it didn't change, I'd have to make the changes. That breeds too much bad blood.
A quick fix is to make that three man crew a two man crew. The boss will be able to see immediately the difference in progress.
Those large companies tend to let folks do that for some reason. My guess is they were billing by the hour and they didn't care less if he sat in the truck because the client wasn't complaining me they were still making money. Then Summer of 2008 hit and they were scrambling to plug the bleeding hole. Now we're getting questioned if we run 2 or 3 man crews and to submit a proposal for every little project. Or worse we get we gonna try to do this one without a survey but the landowner requires a certified plat
My first crew chief reminded me of an over eager drill sargent.
He rode us hard all the time.
After him the crews were very efficient and everyone was an Indian without a chief.
The last company I worked at was lost and confused mostly.
Had an older gentleman as a PC for a survey crew for an engineering company. Since we did surveying to support the engineering design, it was not necessarily a requirement that we had to be in the field every day. But when we had to be out in some inconvenient, inclement weather, this guy knew how to take care of us. He always had an extra pair of gloves or some rain gear that he kept in his stash. As a graduate engineer and a new 'surveyor', we were out surveying ahead of a paving crew. He walked into a corn field and came out with a dozen ears of corn. Stripped them, came up with aluminum foil from his stash and some butter... talked the paving crew into putting the corn in the hopper to cook and we (paving and surveying crew) all shared a nice lunch of corn on the cob to supplement our sandwich lunch. He was a great mentor too, but the little things he did to make the work easier for us really paid off.
When I was a 20-year survey virgin, I was assigned to work with a party chief working on a horizontal control job. We were using an old jeep to get up and down way to many hills. The first day he drove. I have never ever been so scared in my life! The next day, I said "John, if I don't drive, I'm not going". He looked at me for a while, and then said "OK". I NEVER rode with him driving again.
Ruel del Castillo, post: 444309, member: 137 wrote: When I was a 20-year survey virgin, I was assigned to work with a party chief working on a horizontal control job. We were using an old jeep to get up and down way to many hills. The first day he drove. I have never ever been so scared in my life! The next day, I said "John, if I don't drive, I'm not going". He looked at me for a while, and then said "OK". I NEVER rode with him driving again.
Did you end up driving, or not going?
