Submitted for your consideration... So far in your career, how frequently would you say that your employers have expected you to do things that "violate" your personal principles, but you do them anyway?

Interesting question... It's actually an interview question. "Tell me about a time when..." Hard to answer, because I'm one of the lucky few that's never faced that dilemma.

easy question you answer by telling how you violated the personal principle but subsequently found that it was held in error and you are the better for it. i.e. I was opposed to cold ing on principle, but then a cold turned into phone sex, so I realized cold ing is a great thing and I made the employer lots of money!

Just once But it was a weak personal principle anyway.

training asked to come in and do training off the clock. Done it a couple times goes against my principle of working for free.

never that i can remember, but they regularly expect me to do things that violate the laws of physics, e.g., complete engineering projects months before it is possible.

is this like the time i did not want to start a demo on a house until i had the permit in hand, the boss told me to do it an that the permit was enroute. 3 hours later the house was on the ground, no permit yet an the home owner came home to tell me that it was the wrong house an i was to wreck the one across the street

bullshit

look it up, we have it happen about once a month down here. there are like 30,000 house that need to come down, and none of them have numbers on them. just an x with search crew numbers on them

Sounds like B.S. The permit is for, well, permission to demolish. For you to demolish the wrong house means there's something else wrong at your company and it has nothing to do with government permits to demolish. Granted I'm not an expert, but how can you go weeks setting the thing up to come down and not at some point figure out "oh crap, wrong house"?

he doesnt give a shit, fuckin union workers they are all the same - prob ed his union rep and got half a weeks pay docked slap on the wrist

why do you hate my union?

unions are just organizations of whiney babies who are opposed to free market capitalism and want special government treatment

unions are the best way to make sure the guys working on site are trained proper. everyone in my hall has there osha cards, hazwop, has 100 hours min of seat time training on any machine they run. also we are happier workers as we know we have a safe pension, health care insurance, and our pay is secure

unions are anti-american

and yall take your marching orders from Havana

Anti-union sentiment I think a lot of it comes from the very real world in which this occurs: 1. Your guy, all the training, etc. making $35 or much more an hour 2. Person with four year degree, years of experience in a field, struggling to make $20 an hour and zero job security How one fixes this situation is beyond me.

i make 22.19 here every hall has different pay ranges. and like i have said many times, a degree does not give right to more money. i have earned all the knowledge i have, and i have a lot of time in a class room. the work is not easy, the stresses on us are high, and do you really want some one with out the training building a bridge you drive on?

Right back at you I assure you it works both ways, yet for what I do wages are now down to $15 - $18. Why is my 14 years of experience and college degree and such worth less? Does a company really want me to do my job poorly and let the public reap the reprecusions? The difference is, whether you wish to admit it or not, is union support. You have it, I do not nor does my industry. While I appreciate your wage sounds fair, maybe even low, you know as well as anyone that in many cases it's far far too high. I know a guy here that's a pipe layer (big pipes) and gets $50/hr. He works 4/hrs. then hands off to his assistant then hits the bars and gets his $50/hr for 8 hours. There is a reason people have had it with unions even if there are some valid reasons for having a union.

oh and they suffer from a false sense of entitlement

it takes about 15 minutes to get ready here this is in new orleans. there are blocks of houses that need to come down and you can not tell numbers. like i said it happens alot right now. the guy was coming to do a little work on the place, it was gutted like every other house here

how'd it get the x and search crew number then? And didn't the guy figure out, by the other houses coming down, that he should speak to you guys? Bottom line I guess is that you guys need to be more careful. If it's too much work to get a city map and plot grid or whatever else ensures you bring down the right house then maybe your company should be doing something else for work. IMO anyway.

it is not just us i know of many other companies that have had it happen, one had the permit, just the wrong house. the numbers are all from after the flood, every house has them

like i said it is common right now. you can not tell the difference in the houses that are gonna be rebuilt and the ones that are coming down. after the waters were gone, they gutted every single house to get the mold and biohazard out. some people are still waiting on insurance money to rebuild and others sold to the road home program. there is no way to tell. next thing is the city is a little slow on the uptake here so it is not uncommon to start work with out permits. i know that the company i was working for had to pay for the house value out of pocket. there insurance would not cover as we did not have the permit in hand

I hear ya, but There's simple fixes for all this, at least from where I'm sitting. Put big signs up in neighborhoods that say "anthing with X and whatever get blowned up! If your house has one and isn't scheduled for demolision xxx-xxx-xxxx". I dunno. Guess as long as it all works out in the end for everyone :)

we do not blast and there are areas that are 60-70% demo listed. the x comes from back 3 years ago and every house that was under water has it. they had search come in and it was how to tell the place was cleared of bodies or survivors

You're really not listening to me Every solution I mention you counter with "well, but um". Three years and your industry had no system in place to prevent this type of thing from happening so frequently? The fact that it's happening so frequently tells me there was no system in place. I mean, sorry bucko, basiy no foresight or planning happened nor is happening in the face of all those mistakes. That's pretty sad, it's very sad.

i like to blame the city, the parish, fema, and the road home program. all are sending out demo orders, some for the same house. none of them communicate with each other and are all in a pissing match for the money from the fed. i have seen where we had demo order from the city, and no demo memo from fema...what do you do then? we are under contract to demo as they tell us.

As I said And this is my process management experience talking here, you cut the crap and find the easiest solution to a clearly complicated issue of communication between the govt., your industry, and homeowners that plan to rebuild. That fix is, literally, big signs on every intersection (on a corner) with indications of what red X's mean etc. and what to do if you see one on your home but you DID NOT want your home demo'd. Unless fema or the local city govt. etc. will not allow your industry to post such signs then how hard can it be? It would be very effective and much cheaper than paying homeowners for the house that just got wrecked by mistake. Even IF fema etc. would need to be consulted I'm sure that an agreement could be found for sign postings of the type i'm talking about. In almost all cases like the one you're describing there is an answer and it's usually super simple and straightforward.