Time wasters

Aren't neighbors and onlookers great. ?ÿEvery question possible including the one about "Did you start from the big concrete block with the brass thingy on top down by Mort Sanders dairy barn?"

My biggest frustration of late has been the large number of people who just lie to me.

They insist they want me to do their survey and ask for me to send them the written agreement at which point I explain that I collect 50% of the written estimate with the balance at completion. They still insist on the written estimate and nothing happens.

They go silent. So I wasted my time preparing a proper estimate and I could have been watching Ancient Aliens.

Subdivision plat review:

"subdivision is approved with the following condition of approval:

Line 3 of legal description change 'following described lein' to 'following described line'"

Plot final, sign, client signs, utilities sign, municipality refuses to sign, says "we need these 15 notes added first"

What was the point of the gd review??ÿ

?ÿ

Welcome to (whatever office that should have your answers). ?ÿYour call is very important to us. Please hold. (30 minutes of rinky dinky elevator music)

My two biggest time wasting pet peeves at the moment are when I go to get something from my truck, like a hammer, that was there yesterday, and it is not there.?ÿ Neither is the backup hammer.?ÿ So I call the other crew, and ask, "where is my hammer?" and?ÿ get the response, "Our truck didn't have a hammer, or a backup hammer, so we grabbed the ones from your truck".?ÿ The other is when I send in a plat and field notes for QA/QC and get a set of comments back.?ÿ I fix the problems, address the concerns, and make the arguments that need to be made, and resubmit the plat and field notes, only to receive notice the plat and field notes have the following errors and need correcting.?ÿ Sometimes this process repeats itself 3 or 4 times.?ÿ I am not a pleasant person when this happens.

?ÿ

"I need to commission the XYZ by Friday, so can I have your proposal ASAP so that I can award it to you. I don't have a scope or terms of reference, so can you include that in your proposal."?ÿ

(Translation: "We've already engaged somebody, but we need to show the client that the fee is reasonable, plus we don't have a scope or ToR so we need some chump to write that for us, and if you are really a pro, include how to do it as well.")

I have answered many client's calls asking for my services while in the field as my office number is being forwarded to my cell.

Will talk with them and explain what I need from them and what I will provide for them and give some number for them to budget for their experience.

Then I ask them to send any existing papers to me and if they decide to hire me to survey their land to send an email or text with their personal data and contact information to the information that will be in a text message or email to be sent immediately after that call.

I then send them information that is pre-typed of my contact information.

I either get that project or not, they all decide upon who they hire either by the price that they have been quoted or hire me because of my reputation.

About a year ago a client had called wanting a family partition to be made and I knew the property well and I quoted him $6,800 and that was something that had been agreed to do after November and before the End of February.

When he waited until late April to contact me and was wanting the same deal, he left frustrated because what I could have done during the Winter at that price had changed into at least $10k+ because the leaves and underbrush and vipers and such were abundant on the property that would have made utilizing GPS a shot in the dark.

That plus I was heavily loaded with existing projects that I am currently finalizing on.

Clients rarely know our business and have been pre-informed by someone else that has already exhausted the client's funds and told that the survey would be some price that is less than the surveyor's budget to make the survey.

Many people get so slammed in the face by the financial hoops they must jump thru that they simply back out and stay in their existing living conditions without finding a way to get what they really want.

Too many times I have wasted time attempting to help silly people to help themselves. ?ÿStupid people insist on doing stupid things. ?ÿThey don't want to hear the bad things that will almost definitely happen if they don't revise their plans. ?ÿYears of learning from others who have made similar mistakes falls on deaf ears.

communication and internal or inter-discipline meetings (without the client) always take longer than I thought...and those phone calls and communication almost always interrupt the work flow of another project, meaning that you have wasted time in there with no one in particular on the hook.

@monte

I know what you mean with the Hammer, I am always telling the crew the spare equipment is upstairs in the warehouse, not in one of the trucks, taking equipment out of one truck to put in another truck will get you fired, unless we are out of spares, and you leave a note on the steering wheel of what you took out. All of the trucks have a full set of equipment, should be able to get in and drive off, crew needs to restock it with rods, laths, and flagging when needed.

Wanna-be-helpful clients who don't want you on site unless they are with you every step of the way.

I unintentionally "cured" one client from following me all day and asking constant questions.?ÿ We got to the site early one morning before the client arrived.?ÿ We found a LARGE yellow jacket nest just off line and threw a significant amount of yellow flagging on it to keep us out of it later.?ÿ The client came walking down the cut line and saw the flagging.?ÿ He went over to see what it was, kicked it around a little, and completely upset the nest.?ÿ I believe he was stung about 20 times before he could get away.?ÿ He decided wandering around in the woods following a survey crew wasn't his "cup of tea".?ÿ He also didn't complain about our crew costs anymore either.

Andy

?ÿ

?ÿ

Asking about something specific before going to the field, being told it is not needed, asking again to be sure they really don't need it, being told they really don't need it, and then going back the following week to get that very thing.

This one really rang a bell for me:

"Workers who run late frequently but are great at doing what needs done."

I had one of those some years ago. At the time, he was the best "new guy" I ever had, bar none! Quick, smart, diligent, but could not come in on time for nothing. He always said, "hey, I'll work late to make up for it." So I'd say, "yeah, but what about the three of us who are in on time, waiting for you every morning? WE don't want to work late!" Nothing worked. I'm so fortunate now to have a real honest to goodness Apprentice who not only shows up on time, but works late anyway if need be, is smarter than I am, and is going to make an excellent surveyor sometime in the next few years!?ÿ

Meetings with no agenda

Meetings that should have been an email

Meetings that should have been a conference call

Conference calls (where you can't understand anyone, anyway) that should have been an email

People that won't reply to email, because too much email

I think most firms could save real $ if they would tightly define their internal expectations regarding email, phone calls, meetings, etc.

@holy-cow

"(30 minutes of rinky dinky elevator music)"

I'd rather put up with that than 30 minutes of telling you which buttons 0-9 to mash for what, then repeating the whole damn monologue in 4 different languages.

The quickest way I have found around this is to keep pressing the "0" button continuously, usually a real person (imagine that) will answer.  ???? 

Reading a bunch of cry babies and snowflakes whine about wasting time on RPLS.com?

@hooks

My biggest time waster is fixing Survey mistakes from Engineering, thinking they are Surveyors.  

@hooks

I knew when I started this thread someone would jump on the obvious comment. 

I prefer to think of this site as being the "water cooler discussion group" we solo operators do not have.

@holy-cow

I dont think this site has any "snowflakes" everyone on here is to old to be a "snowflake". Cry babies, maybe a few whiners a few times.