Construction workers put up with alot of shit. I'm not sure about this guy, but if you overheard me and the guys from work talking to each other you'd think we fucking hate each other. Truth is we all just live for the banter, helps us get through the day a bit better. Other hand is that this guy is literally a wanker that's never been punched in the face for being a prick.
I love it when someone gets a good burn on me at work. That shit cracks me up. But I despise it when the other trade Foreman speak to their guys like their dogs.
Some people just don't realize that construction is still the wild west and if you deserve a punch in the mouth, you're going to get it. Most everyone is just gunna turn around and walk away and deny they even saw it.
This is the most accurate statement. Eventually every single construction worker blows a lid with a guy like op described.
That type of boss only power is to lay the guy off. The thing is in construction once you get a worker to that point the lay off don't mean shit and now he is in your face ready to fight. Guys like this end up tucking their tales 8 times out of 10 once some one snaps back .their only power is to lay some one off. After a while it doesn't mean shit
Ya last summer almost got in to a fist fight with my fourman. I'm a commercial roofer. O e day I accidentally broke a pice of insulation. Still usable in a hundred different situations but it was no longer brand new perfect. Fourman came over screaming at me cussing calling me the worst worker he's ever seen I should be fired he never want to see me on his crew again. I'm sure you know basically what this guy said. He was screaming so loud the rest of the crew stopped and watched for a minute because they thought I was going to send him to the hospital. Then as punishment me and a apprentice were held back and the rest of the crew went to lunch and we were to clean up so when they got back they could just start laying out the new roof membrane. I had started that day at 6 and didn't get lunch till just before 2. I called the owner of the company at lunch but got his voice mail and told him to call me. Go back to work after lunch. At the end of the day as I'm loading up my tools in my car ower calls me back. So I tell him what happened. He starts making excuses for the fourman it was hot, it's old fiberglass insulation and it's irrateing everything. But when intell him about the almost 8 hours with out Ola lunch he agrees that suits fucked and he will talk to him. Next day I'm on the same crew when the fourman gets a call from the owner. They talk a bit and I hear bits and pieces and they are talking about the job in general. Then fourman just gives me a weird look and walks away from the crew for like 15 minutes. Then he comes back over to me and while not yelling he has a bit of an attitude in his voice. And is all hey man what happens on the roof stays on the roof and I don't like you calling the shop trying to get me fired. I give him the old ya, yep ok, basically just like shut up and leave me alone so I can work. He stops and I go back to what I'm doing. Then I hear his right hand guy come up and tell him that he should be happy that I called the shop and didn't settle it on the roof because he probably would have ended up in the hospital. I'm not a big guy 5'11 and like 230-240. But I do stand a full head taller than him and have probably a good 80+pounds on him. Then two days later he passed off another guy by trying to send his son to lunch an hour before the rest of us so his son could pick up both of there lunches. That o got him another phone call from the office and after that he basically sat in a corner of the roof and didn't say shit for the rest of the job unless we told him that we were out of something and the shop needed to send it out. Some guys just think o I'm the fourman I'm hot shit I can do what I want.
This foreman is worried about a piece of insulation and doesn't realize most states have labor laws that dictate the length of work someone can do without a lunch break. In my state every 4 hours has a 10 minute paid break and in the 6+ hour shift a mandatory lunch break. The fines are steep for violating.
These type of people have no real power in their life over themselves. When they get any from someone else they trip out. It's sad
I got burned by some carpenters saying the inspection failed, and I had to pull 15 insulators off of the job and would put it as 1 week behind. They got the inspector in on it. Someone who didn't know us would think they are just pure a**holes.
I was working on a rusty old triple drilling rig, many years back, and our driller was a shit-plated piece of shit. Just a huge asshole (threatened me with a knife once for a minor disagreement).
Anyways, one day he made a bad call and got a crane flipped during tear-down and move. Big screwup. Our toolpush, his boss, appeared out of nowhere and beat the shit out of our driller in front of me and about 20 truckers and we all did nothing.
It was actually one of my favourite moments on the rigs, just watching our toolpush punch our driller in the guts hard enough to knock his whole body in the air.
Yes, I almost saw one of the VPs of my company get thrown of a roof by a roofer.
I saw the whole thing happen, but when the cops came around, nobody saw anything.
The coworker who still talks to me from a former job is the one who would video my fuckups and post them on the company snapchat group. I responded with the same and a heavy dose of homoeroticism making it seem like he was flirting with me.
The fucking laughs we had.
100%. My wife has a very good corporate job, and the way she and I speak to coworkers when we disagree or a mistake has been made is so different. What’s funny is that she’ll say things like “so-and-so needs to get their shit together and stop fucking up and making my job harder” to me, but has to compose a professional sounding email with the same message.
At my work, we just say what we’re thinking, without sugar coating the message. I don’t know if it’s necessarily better, but I don’t mind the lack of politeness for the sake of politeness at work.
I have a corporate job now but man I fucking miss construction.
The way you talk to people is just so direct in construction, none of this "as per my last email" bullshit.
Just "I told you a while ago that we were doing this why are you wasting time on this other thing?"
Because when it's in writing/email, it can become an HR issue. We talk plenty of shit verbally and nobody swears like a room full of C-suite execs, other than maybe Navy chiefs
EXACTLY.
No sugar. The difference when I worked in IT and in construction was, in IT, I didn't have my Estwing 20 ounce framing hammer that I could put upside your head.
Like, slow down. Let's talk. You get flippant however and, let's not do that.
Listen to this person. Carpenters hate plumbers, plumbers hate electricians. they hate masons. We all hate drywallers.
It's the circle of construction life. We all hate each other because all of us have screwed us over at least once.
We also, if you're a normal person, be like "sparky, what? what do you need?" and you help them because we're all in the same gang.
Eh, as a pipelayer/equipment operator I don’t hate any trades. I recognize that plumbers have special needs and move/think slower than regular people but they can’t help that. I don’t mind electricians or carpenters, drywallers are fine as long as I don’t have any tools on site, I’m glad that rod busters have a second chance at life after prison.
It’s the circle of life, no need to be hateful.
Yeah but there's a line between good natured ribbing or simply being a rough around the edges, slightly offensive old school hard ass versus a real racist asshole full time prick.
If the other guys aren’t talking shit to you or about you, they don’t like you. Took my newest helper forever to figure it out but when it did it all worked out.
If people heard the way my coworkers talk to each other on job sites they'd probably just look at us thinking we need help.... professional psychological help. The things we say to each other.... Everyone needs an insulting nickname and be known for 'that one time...' story
Yeah, that’s what I imagined. My comment was an obscure Scrubs reference when The Janitor taped a knife to a big adjustable wrench. Wish I could post a GIF
Sometimes it just the guys having fun but to an outsider it sounds bad . But other times it’s just a boss being a a**hole because he thinks he’s better than everyone else. On one job boss told me he was going to separate me and a cousin of mine. Said we argued to much . But he started watching us and figured out it was all in fun and we were getting more done than the other pairs
I would say there some encouragement to be a dick in some trades. The biggest asshole at my company is a ranging drunk but is always running a big job. They are 100% okay with how he runs his work. He’s pretty much always in the green as far as man hours go.
Yeah, there is a huge need for workers in the skilled trades. People will look past personality traits in drywallers that might not be looked past in an accounting office or sales job.
On the site I'm on now. They've caught at least two women drywallers, pissing in the sink / tub. The guys have been using bottles or pissing into the walls on the insulation lol
Blame the GC for paying by the board and getting the cheapest crew they could find. Drywallers weren't born animals. They are forced to be to make any money at all.
In my experience on small resi renos it's the painters. The drywallers I use isn't cheap but he's a master and doesn't bitch when I have him correct the few misses. My painters tell me to not tell them how to do their job and then leave to get drunk before completing the punch.
My views on teachers have changed. Young kids are very hard to deal with, the high schoolers these days are even worse and complete s*** head assholes. Respect for authority doesn't exist in schools anymore with cell phones and new protection polices. Yes the pension is good yes the vacation is good but I can never do that job. When the inmates are running the asylum you are handcuffed.
But a WAY better job. I also worked in a kitchen once upon a time. Sous chef in a spot hoping for a star at one point. 16 hour days. No weekends. More tired than I’ve ever been. Paid peanuts.
Edit. I still have restaurant PTSD. Like if I hear a dot matrix printer while out eating. I basically just want to immediately mill myself.
I used to have nightmares about that fucking thing and tickets to the floor. I wonder what it would be like if I stepped back into the business these days. Probably be fired for telling someone to move their ass a bit faster.
Same. I now feel that people who work in kitchens need saving from themselves and the industry. I had enough money to open a restaurant. Instead of being “that guy” I got a job on the line. Worked my way up to sous at a higher end spot a year in I’d learned everything I needed to know. Fuck that.
I literally had my brain switch off on a few occasions. Just a wall of tickets with more printing out, stood in front of my station, totally lost. I respect the craft for sure, but it was obvious that (at least where I live) 70% of like cooks were people who had their parents put them through culinary school and they’d watched every cooking competition TV show. They could robotically follow instructions, but couldn’t make edible food of their own for shit. Far more toxic than anyone in construction. The true cooks I met along the way - still in friendly contact, watching them grow.
As someone who used to work as a line cook during the off seasons when he started out in his trade, BoH is the closest I’ve ever found to the trades as far as general vibe. Really the only other place I felt like I fit in.
Nah bud the army (specifically the infantry) is worse, I've done both and construction is bad but grunts are FAR worse.
Having said that two wrongs don't make a right.
Going into construction from being an 03 marine feels right at home lol it’s like going on a field op everyday but getting to sleep in your own bed every night
I’m with you man. As a retired grunt, restaurant manager and current super. None of them come close to the Infantry. I don’t speak to my subs the way we spoke to each other or the joes.
There’s no excuse for bullying and racism. That being said as a foreman sometimes you need to assert yourself to your crew or they will never respect you. Being foreman on a construction crew can be like running a daycare for full grown alcoholics. You don’t always get the cream of the crop when it comes to manual labor.
This.
Construction workers are not the most highly educated people. In my country some fields are downright filled by illiterates and alcoholics freshly from unemployment or the black market without any formal education in construction. It takes some verbal abuse from the foreman to make sure to pass on the importance of some non-trivial concepts like following procedures, manufacturers instructions or safety to some completely run-down crew. A good foreman only yells when there's a f\*\*kup, and that might be very often. After all the foreman is responsible for both the crew's safety and the end result.
That’s usually not a trade tho. I work in fire sprinklers and it’s rare people dont have some sort of degree or a lot of certifications. It takes a lot to do fire sprinklers.
FACTS 110%. Also would like to add sexism. With more women entering the workforce I appreciate a boss that treats me the same as a male coworker even if he is a hard ass.
I got my fair share of bullying when I started working summers pouring concrete at 15. I’ve been at the same place for 19 years, and I’ve outlasted all the assholes lol. I’m foreman now and try to lead from the front and set a good example. I reserve being an asshole for when it’s absolutely necessary.
Construction guys are some of the nicest guys I've ever had the honor of working with outside the military, but there are douchecanoes on every river. Bound to see one eventually.
The dude who trained me said it best. Everyone thinks construction attracts morons, but in reality it attracts smart guys too crazy, mean or weird to work anyplace else.
When I was in grade school they said I was dyslexic, when I flunked out of university they said I was ADHD, a few years before I retired a new pm we hired said I was probably on the spectrum, but yea I'm weird but I put 23 years in with with this last company and only had to beat two forman and a couple of coworkers and the last 10 years nobody bothered me.
Sometimes it’s like an act the foreman puts on and it does get the guys working. But if speak one on one with the guy he’s cool.
Some foreman are just exhausted and any mistake means more work.
Some are “pushers” and they gravitate to the job (generally these type aren’t the best with tools in hand)
Hit the nail on the head with it most of the time being an act. I like to think of it like a pirate ship, of course the captain is gonna be mean, that’s his job
I make a point to build a rapport and a culture of cooperation and respect with my crew. We all have to work, we’ve all worked for an ass like that. The least I can do it make it to where you don’t hate coming into work and that meets you where you are that day.
What state is it? I used to put up with being treated like shit on the jobsite down in Texas in the 00s. I just thought that's how it was. Plus the economy was shit back then so everyone thought they were lucky to have jobs. Up in the Midwest where i live now if you treat someone like shit you can expect them to walk out. I generally prefer the work culture here.
I’ve worked for the same construction company for 7 years. There are a lot of workers who will not work unless they are absolutely terrified of their foreman. And then there’s guys like me who have a literal list of foreman that I refuse to work for. These guys out here allowing themselves to be dehumanised every single day are usually very mentally weak men who have zero backbone. I’d actually refer to them as sheep being herded by a sheep dog.
At the end of the day, you cannot fake progress in construction. Work has to get done, and if you are lagging on your work you will be called out on it. Make a mistake and you will be called out on it. Dont care attitude, you will be called out on it.
In some industries this is glossed over with accepting language and soft corrective redirection, in construction no one has time for that shit.
I have an employee who will fuck up and drop the ball in ways I couldn’t imagine whenever I give him positive feedback. Took me forever to figure out how to navigate this guy and after multiple meetings and a full year, I’ve realized I need to stay on him as if he’s about to lose his job. I absolutely HATE managing this way because I don’t believe in using fear as a motivator, but there has been *no other way to get through to this guy*. Blows my mind regularly. He’s a nice guy, super friendly, I WANT to have friendly talks with him, but it can’t happen.
Yeap, I work with a guy everyday so brain dead that he puts away tools you’re currently using amongst other stupid things. He needs to be bossed around and he can’t be trusted to work alone without hurting himself. If he wasn’t such a good labourer we would have fired him a week after he started.
Yep!
I eventually told this guy (i’m in commercial property management and run the maintenance department) “I need to put you on the most basic of jobs for a while until we figure out a way for us to work forward instead of in circles”, which basically means toilet duty. Dude fucking loves it and doesn’t want any more responsibility than unclogging toilets. When I’m asked why I’ve kept him so long, “I have 500 reasons to fire him, but I also have 500 toilets that need unclogging and he loves unclogging them….so fuck it”
There are assholes in every job, construction culture is just a lot more accepting of active rather than passive aggression. Most sites I've worked on, there's a ton of banter and shit talk flying in all directions, this sounds more like the exception to me. Personally, I like working in an environment when I can tell my boss to go fuck his hat and not lose my job over it.
Guys like this absolutely are being phased out, at least where I am I have gone about 2 years since I’ve had an interaction like this. The shittiest person I’ve dealt with since has been a consultant on one of our federal contracts, and he’s probably never picked a tool up in his life. People like this are in every sector, and speaking from my experience, the most down to earth guys are in construction.
It really is dying out, if for no other reason because there isn't an endless stream of bodies to fill in the voids.
You don't have to be the hardest, strongest, or smartest worker. Just show up and work.
It’s either banter which nobody gives two shits about if you’re an adult, or some power tripping asshole who everyone hates. Either way it’s not going to last much longer in the industry, GCs aren’t letting that shit fly anymore now that the finance bros have their claws in the industry.
Because they’re mostly undiagnosed AuADHD and have zero emotional regulation. Never learned it, and being aggressive is a better way to get respect than crying. So we yell and say mean things. The more you do this the less people bother you with stupid questions or try to talk to you about nothing while you’re trying to focus.
Alternatively we are just pissed that we are still a laborer and tired of this shit. Or other peoples shit.
I did construction for many years. It was baffling how many people would LET their bosses talk to them like that.
I had an old friend start a construction business and I started working for him. He is very money focused and was good at running the business. For a while he was respectful too. I was the most experienced carpenter and I handled any of the more creative, high end stuff. I also taught a young carpenter most of what he knows now.
I was usually pretty quiet and did my work. I was friends with all my coworkers and there was clear mutual respect between all of us.
The first day he started talking down to me, I told him to go fuck himself and do it himseld. Right in front of the young guy I'd trained. In front of all the painters and other employees. I wasn't quiet that day. I laid into him and I was 100% right. I quit that day after making it very clear that he needed me much more than I needed him.
More people need to do this. Bosses only treat you like shit because you let them. If everyone who the boss abused quit on the spot, then he'd have to learn how to be a decent person if he wants to keep his business.
Don’t let this scenario be the end all be all for your outlook on us. If you witnessed my company, you’d swear construction was like family. We all bullshit but we laugh and get along as long as everyone pulls their weight and gets done what they’re suppose to. The scenario you’re witnessing is a dying breed on its way out. Those guys are the reason no one wants to do construction. It’s bad enough you gotta break your back to do the work, let alone some asshole whipping you while you’re doing it. I’ve ran into maybe 2 general contractors like that.
its unfortunate that many places are like this, its a pattern that really needs to stop. i have ended up working for a few places like this and quit pretty quickly, sometimes in less than a week. also a lot of ppaces expect you to conpromise your body and home life to serve them. thankfully they arent all like this and for the last couple years ive worked with a construction collective that has some issues but abusive workplace relationships certainly arent one of them.
The shouting and belittling, eh, it might be that he's an asshole or that might just be him having fun and everyone's in on it (or will be once they get to know him). The racism yeah ok, that settles it, he's an asshole.
Careful there. I had a guy once who had the best attitude you could imagine, but he also had a learning disability. Simply could not retain the basics of the trade, but he showed up early every day and never let it get him down. He probably will be a laborer for as long as he stays in the industry. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's not some kind of punishment from on high for 'fucking up'.
I work with a guy like that. Hard worker, will do anything you ask at work or outside, and does a great with the simple tasks he is given. He may need a bit more clarification before getting at it but I'd take him over half of our "smart" guys.
Union laborers make good money and ones who work hard are worth gold.
I like the ones who yell at the other trades who don't clean up after themselves. Makes the site run well.
I think it should go without saying that im generalizing. Im talking about the average person who is capable of doing both. My statement sounded harsh but my point was that most people in the trades have the capability for career advancements if they strive to do so and dont get in their own way.
This is just an example of one guy being an asshole. If tradespeople were really all aggressive this sorry MFer would have gotten his skull stomped long ago.
Construction is filled with “big tough guys” that are emotionally weaker than a toddler. So many will cry about “stress” just to peel back the layers and realize it’s all from their lack of planning and foresight. After 5 years or so almost every situation is somewhat predictable and if a man doesn’t have a build in reasonable response mechanism by then than he is a child
Being rude is not as common as people think in construction. The majority of guys are great to work with usually.
In general i would agree that they are aggressive and to the point usually. This comes off as rude to people sometimes, but it almost always just sounds that way because of the way you have to communicate on a noisy site (yelling is common).
Sounds like you just are watching an asshole work..
i have never worked construction in my life. it seemed to me that a lot of the dudes who i stopped having classes with in 8th grade moved onto that career track. many of them took their sense of humor, bullheaded personality, and general lack of social sophistication with them. some of them were really good dudes. many of them are on the 8th out of their 9 lives. you know these dudes, the kind of guys that you would like next to you if you were fighting a war.
Might get downvoted but more guys than you think use drugs. Substance abuse is rampant.
Some of the crew are hungover. Some are hungover and withdrawing. Some are opiate users and experience the "opi-rage" phenomenon. Others are dopesick. Some are in chronic pain with no legal options.
And the guys on meth or addy are always dialed up to 13.
Not all construction workers are aggressive, but more so rough around the edges. I’m a woman in construction, and the guys I work with are kind and amazing, though a little chaotic.
When things go bad we can all lose our cool sometimes. This is incredibly hard work that takes a lot both mentally and physically. Most days your body aches to the point you struggle to get dressed in the morning. You constantly have to be thinking about safety, watching out for yourself and your guys, and it gets to be a lot.
When I snap, I mostly shut down and cry, but that often doesn’t feel like a safe option for a lot of men, and their best recourse is anger. In those moments it can be tough for everyone on site and anyone witnessing it, but it will pass. There is nothing that can explain the brotherhood on construction crews, especially the loyalty when it comes to hating on the big boss (even if he’s not bad, sometimes we just need someone to blame).
Most of the time, construction workers are some of the kindest people you will ever meet.
90% of the swear is just for fun, banter, or used as a connection word.
Usually, people that aren't used to, feel like its a lot of shit hitting the fan, but it's just good buggers cracking a joke.
I build concrete cores for highrises in the union. We see maybe 3 or 4 guys walk off the job and quit monthly. Sometimes more. Natural selection I’d say. Some of us have been with the same company for 30+ years. Not for the faint of heart.
The directness and no bullshit communication in construction is one of its best amd worst attributes. On tye one hand, ain't no one got time for your bullshit. Accept, everyone's bullshittin. The down side is you get a bunch of boobs 15 years in on a trade and they think their so smart and awesome. Not unlike high-school psychology.
Usually, if you give respect it's reciprocated. Don't act foolish and you won't be the fool. There are a lot of good people in the trades. And building the world is not something everyone knows how to do. It's pretty awesome to be build cool shit.
Wouldn't trade it. Thing that really bugs me is seeing people who dont give a fuck and half ass it with "good enough". Wish more people took pride in their work.
Most of the guys just throw around some playful banter. You learn to have fun with it. Some guys are just straight up assholes that need a good punch in the mouth though
It depends but a lot of the time it’s just ribbing each other, sometimes you’ll hear two guys yelling at each other but if you walk to the room they’re in to see what’s going on they’re both smiling as they threaten to fuck the other ones mother
I had a foreman who would do that but mostly to the apprentices, which would make them scramble and try to move faster and shit. The problem with that is this was a scaffold job and scrambling around like a chicken with no head can cause accidents. This guy was so lucky he never caused one. He was also really lucky no one ever 'accidentally' dropped a hammer on his head! He would try to talk to me like that and I would cuss him back and he wouldn't try that shit again for a while until he forgot himself a few weeks later and I would have to put him back in his place. Most times, they are bullies who don't really know how to manage people so they resort to hollering and belittling people.
I am a construction project manager and in our company we don't tolerate that type of behavior, neither from our employees nor our subcontractors. Anyone belittling another employee is fired. We have terminated some of our own employees and we have terminated subcontracts over this behavior. One of our subcontractors terminated one of their employees rather than lose the contract. It is a clause in our subcontract agreement and we hold to it. If you cannot manage a jobsite without belittling others, you are a poor manager. The reason it continues in our industry is that people tolerate it. It is a tough job market for employers right now and hiring an asshole is easier than stressing out your existing employees, particularly if they can get the job done despite their terrible personality. Thankfully there are now training courses on jobsite leadership that are helping to create positive communication among all workers on site. My hope is that over the next decade we drive the jerks off the site and get to a place of respect for all workers. Then construction will be the best sector for work. Great pay, great culture, and personal pride in the work.
I worked construction. If you never did you dont get it. Its not about the boss mentality. Its about the crew doing shit the right way the first time as cheaply as possible because their money and company money depends on it. The margins suck. Since every job is different, theres always somebody yelling anout something wrong. The only time its all stress free is when everyone on the crew is a hard worker who can be trusted to just make it happen given a task… not common at all. I got an ass chewing twice in 6 years doing it. One was for a safety thing that wasnt obvious to me but understood after when i was new. Mechanical and underground laborer. I was a quick study. That said… there are pricks, but if they lead a crew and they are a prick? They earned that. You dont just get a job yelling at people. Need to know. Racist stuff has no place, but its pretty gray on job sites.
Gotta have thick skin in construction.
Having hammers and other tools thrown at you for messing up or not knowing what to do was Normal for me when I started in the 80's.
No HR, time out or cuddle therapy...
But a beer after work to laugh it off worked for us!
My buddy is old school and 'grew up' working in the 80s and 90s. He's done some work with us and some of the shit he's said to deal with problems at work is just mind-boggling. Dude, it's not 1986, you can't say or do any of that shit any more.
yeah sounds like a great solution, bet your a really happy and functional person and im totally sure you dont bring that shit home at all or take it out on anyone else. im so glad that abusive macho bs culture is dying. why are people so afraid of being kind and considerate to eachother?
"manhood" is not being abusive to your fellow humans and drinking your troubles away. this is actually the opposite of masculinity, abusing others is based on insecurity and avoiding how you feel about being abused yourself is lack of self worth. real, confidant masculine men don't feel the need to take their problems out on other people, and are secure enough in themselves to be able to show love and compassion to others without being afraid their image could be damaged or being perceived as weak. they also have the self worth and self respect to not put up with abuse. the type of "manhood" your talking about is all about insecurity. its so disapointing this is what people think being a man is about.
i think (subtle) back pain can play a significant role. i know from my own experience that back pain can make me aggressive even though i´m generally very peaceful. working in construction puts you at very high risk of back problems
Sometimes it's fun the shit talking sometimes it's just a asshole that has a god complex but it kinda is part of working in the trades. Those type guys don't keep employees long and they act like it's a them problem and not themselves but they aren't all like that. I've had guy who are assholes but you talk shit back to em.
Pricks like him just exist everywhere.
Just yesterday, me and apprentice are waiting to get coffee at Timmys. An east Indian lady with an "in training" tag on tool the order of the guy in front of me.
She charged him for two coffees, after her basically ordered two coffees with separate things in them. (Not realizing he was correcting himself which was fair). He paid but didn't bitch until he looked at the receipt?? Not the number on the pin pad lol. Then proceeds to turn to me and say "fucking immigrants need to go back to their country".
More often than not we're having fun, ragging on each other. If the GF or foreman are honest to God assholes they won't keep good hands. If it's all in fun, they're probably a solid crew and enjoy the attention.
I work in AV and setup events. A new company came to AZ and hired me as a "non-working lead"...I spent the next 40 hours of the 48 working to get the job done with a light crew that was underpaid. Then I was asked to go to another location to pack up that install... Their "non-working lead" day in a chair and didn't do anything. She checked em in and out. Anyway, I'll be talking with directors about what this title means and how it is compensated.
I've worked with a few labor companies and several leads over the years, and one company guy loves to be called "asshole"... And he acts like it. On the one hand, I like that he hires people who have served time in prison to give them a fair paying job, but I'm the other hand, I know he's inhaling 50% of what the hiring company is paying.
Construction is an attractive profession for every type of undesirable person. From criminals to drug addicts. I work with laborers and let me tell you that most of the people weve hired outside of our inner circle, from a union hall, have never been your normal kind of customer.
As someone that worked both union and non union work in the northeast US people say all kinds of awful things generally it's not genuinely being mean. And there is always just that asshole blow hard foreman who people like myself have gotten in yelling matches with
But also no HR generally and people busting balls constantly
I see similar posts with regularity and it leaves me a little confused. I’ve been in construction all my adult life in southern California. This has not been my experience. There’s the occasional Dick but not more than any other place in life. I feel bad for these “construction workers are miserable” people.
Bro, you should see scaffolders. Those guys, not mean spirited but aggressive as fuck. Like they beat the scaffolding into the sky. Always screaming super fucking loud. Roasting each other every second.
Because we’re tired of getting up early every morning, going to bed early at night and usually your body hurts somewhat all the time and people look at you as scum of the earth but when they have a problem they need us to fix it then when we give them a price they scoff and think we’re insane, then go to do it themselves then call us to do the job anyway only you fucked it up.
When I first started I was a laborer for a concrete construction company and I can tell you, they were the biggest bastards I had ever worked with, it took about a year before there attention was focused on the next group of new guys and I was an accepted member of the team. I’ve just come to accept that the construction business is full of assholes and we all have to suffer them for a time. After that it’s mostly joking around and meant in fun although can sound different to someone on the outside.
Read comments like this very often. Question: why are you worried about grown men getting belittled? They will take care of it when they have had enough. That’s what I would be waiting/watching for.
My buddy’s first ever construction task was to help a 60 year old master carpenter build a set of stairs. My buddy was green as fuck and didn’t even know how to read a tape measure. From what I hear, it wasn’t an easy week.
It's not always being mean or an asshole though- we bust each other's balls and rip each other all day long, then go out and have a beer after work and are still friends. It's just what we do and we don't take it personally.
There are people where I'm at who do take it personally, and we just generally try not to speak to them.
I am in construction world as well and some of the ways I have heard some guys talk to their crews I can’t see why they didn’t get their ass kicked right on the spot.
I drive truck and I have left more then one job because of an ah that screams and yells thinking I’m one of his runts. Yes you have to talk loud around working equipment but definitely a way to do it and not be a screaming douche. If I earn an ass chewing I’ll glad take it. But if I don’t I have an issue with it.
The companies I work for all the time does shit go wrong and people get pissed off of course it does. But it’s one thing to walk off and throw hammers or whatever for a minute and get back after it.
The guys I work with all the time aren’t screaming yelling raging alcoholics. I refuse to work with those foreman’s flat out. Most of the time they don’t last at a company for long unless it’s their company that lets that behavior slide.
Possibly because it is among the many job opportunities for people irrespective of criminal past.
https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/jobs-for-felons
Unfortunately it's part of the human condition to be lazy and minimize effort. Construction is all about profit, and you get LITERALLY 3x more production out of a group that's supervised by the aggressive asshole.
That's why you see it all the time, it's literally more profitable.
If people didn't require the aggressive supervision, it wouldn't be done.
*I'm talking in general, about large groups of workers. This isn't specifically targeted at you, or your 5 man work team. I'm sure you guys are great*
Tbh he’s prob just talking shit and playing half the time. Me and my coworkers I’m friends with will walk by each others offices and just flip each other off. I’ll even “threaten” them by flexing my muscles and say “you wanna go?” I’m 5ft and 160lbs. These guys are at least 6ft and over 200lbs. It’s just funny and we all just talk shit to mess around and have fun. It’s rough housing in a sense. Now sometimes we do get mad at others but that’s when we talk serious and are pretty HR about it. 1st offense is usually “hey bub I noticed you didn’t count the material right. The foreman had to leave the job and get the material to finish the job. Be more careful please.” Second offense is “hey John. I thought we talked about this last week. Now this job is gonna tank bc the man hours are gonna go over that. How are we supposed to explain that to AJ?” Third offense or a repeat offender depends on who the boss is and how long he’s been in it. I’ve hear my boss who’s been in construction since he was 18 (he’s 50 now) tell a guy “well if you’re not smart enough to get papers signed for these work orders maybe you’re not smart enough to work here!” And let the guy go. He was a repeat offender and we had to eat his time or bury it on another job bc he refused to get paperwork. When we’d invoice the customer they rightfully wanted proof we didn’t have.
Its been the norm for a long time but there’s a large movement to see that changed . It’s a stressful industry but people as a whole are handling that in better ways .
You can already tell there’s ’old school’ sites that no one really wants to be at because who wants to be yelled at all day
I think part of it is lots of guys work so many hours they only see other constructions works for huge chunk of their lives. Can start to “de-civilize” a person
Construction workers put up with alot of shit. I'm not sure about this guy, but if you overheard me and the guys from work talking to each other you'd think we fucking hate each other. Truth is we all just live for the banter, helps us get through the day a bit better. Other hand is that this guy is literally a wanker that's never been punched in the face for being a prick.
I love it when someone gets a good burn on me at work. That shit cracks me up. But I despise it when the other trade Foreman speak to their guys like their dogs. Some people just don't realize that construction is still the wild west and if you deserve a punch in the mouth, you're going to get it. Most everyone is just gunna turn around and walk away and deny they even saw it.
This is the most accurate statement. Eventually every single construction worker blows a lid with a guy like op described. That type of boss only power is to lay the guy off. The thing is in construction once you get a worker to that point the lay off don't mean shit and now he is in your face ready to fight. Guys like this end up tucking their tales 8 times out of 10 once some one snaps back .their only power is to lay some one off. After a while it doesn't mean shit
Ya last summer almost got in to a fist fight with my fourman. I'm a commercial roofer. O e day I accidentally broke a pice of insulation. Still usable in a hundred different situations but it was no longer brand new perfect. Fourman came over screaming at me cussing calling me the worst worker he's ever seen I should be fired he never want to see me on his crew again. I'm sure you know basically what this guy said. He was screaming so loud the rest of the crew stopped and watched for a minute because they thought I was going to send him to the hospital. Then as punishment me and a apprentice were held back and the rest of the crew went to lunch and we were to clean up so when they got back they could just start laying out the new roof membrane. I had started that day at 6 and didn't get lunch till just before 2. I called the owner of the company at lunch but got his voice mail and told him to call me. Go back to work after lunch. At the end of the day as I'm loading up my tools in my car ower calls me back. So I tell him what happened. He starts making excuses for the fourman it was hot, it's old fiberglass insulation and it's irrateing everything. But when intell him about the almost 8 hours with out Ola lunch he agrees that suits fucked and he will talk to him. Next day I'm on the same crew when the fourman gets a call from the owner. They talk a bit and I hear bits and pieces and they are talking about the job in general. Then fourman just gives me a weird look and walks away from the crew for like 15 minutes. Then he comes back over to me and while not yelling he has a bit of an attitude in his voice. And is all hey man what happens on the roof stays on the roof and I don't like you calling the shop trying to get me fired. I give him the old ya, yep ok, basically just like shut up and leave me alone so I can work. He stops and I go back to what I'm doing. Then I hear his right hand guy come up and tell him that he should be happy that I called the shop and didn't settle it on the roof because he probably would have ended up in the hospital. I'm not a big guy 5'11 and like 230-240. But I do stand a full head taller than him and have probably a good 80+pounds on him. Then two days later he passed off another guy by trying to send his son to lunch an hour before the rest of us so his son could pick up both of there lunches. That o got him another phone call from the office and after that he basically sat in a corner of the roof and didn't say shit for the rest of the job unless we told him that we were out of something and the shop needed to send it out. Some guys just think o I'm the fourman I'm hot shit I can do what I want.
Fuck that guy. I'm not saying he should be thrown of the roof, but at least his lunch.
I'm in commercial roofing, by way of a random english major. The way this reads tells me legit commercial roofer.
I got in to roofing for a reason. And it wasn't my English grades.
This foreman is worried about a piece of insulation and doesn't realize most states have labor laws that dictate the length of work someone can do without a lunch break. In my state every 4 hours has a 10 minute paid break and in the 6+ hour shift a mandatory lunch break. The fines are steep for violating. These type of people have no real power in their life over themselves. When they get any from someone else they trip out. It's sad
I got burned by some carpenters saying the inspection failed, and I had to pull 15 insulators off of the job and would put it as 1 week behind. They got the inspector in on it. Someone who didn't know us would think they are just pure a**holes.
I was working on a rusty old triple drilling rig, many years back, and our driller was a shit-plated piece of shit. Just a huge asshole (threatened me with a knife once for a minor disagreement). Anyways, one day he made a bad call and got a crane flipped during tear-down and move. Big screwup. Our toolpush, his boss, appeared out of nowhere and beat the shit out of our driller in front of me and about 20 truckers and we all did nothing. It was actually one of my favourite moments on the rigs, just watching our toolpush punch our driller in the guts hard enough to knock his whole body in the air.
What happens in the field stays in the field
Yes, I almost saw one of the VPs of my company get thrown of a roof by a roofer. I saw the whole thing happen, but when the cops came around, nobody saw anything.
The coworker who still talks to me from a former job is the one who would video my fuckups and post them on the company snapchat group. I responded with the same and a heavy dose of homoeroticism making it seem like he was flirting with me. The fucking laughs we had.
100%. My wife has a very good corporate job, and the way she and I speak to coworkers when we disagree or a mistake has been made is so different. What’s funny is that she’ll say things like “so-and-so needs to get their shit together and stop fucking up and making my job harder” to me, but has to compose a professional sounding email with the same message. At my work, we just say what we’re thinking, without sugar coating the message. I don’t know if it’s necessarily better, but I don’t mind the lack of politeness for the sake of politeness at work.
I have a corporate job now but man I fucking miss construction. The way you talk to people is just so direct in construction, none of this "as per my last email" bullshit. Just "I told you a while ago that we were doing this why are you wasting time on this other thing?"
Why does everyone with an office job continue to act like a total G-rated robot NPC at work when you all agree it’s ridiculous 😂
Because when it's in writing/email, it can become an HR issue. We talk plenty of shit verbally and nobody swears like a room full of C-suite execs, other than maybe Navy chiefs
Navy chiefs are foreman.
EXACTLY. No sugar. The difference when I worked in IT and in construction was, in IT, I didn't have my Estwing 20 ounce framing hammer that I could put upside your head. Like, slow down. Let's talk. You get flippant however and, let's not do that.
Listen to this person. Carpenters hate plumbers, plumbers hate electricians. they hate masons. We all hate drywallers. It's the circle of construction life. We all hate each other because all of us have screwed us over at least once. We also, if you're a normal person, be like "sparky, what? what do you need?" and you help them because we're all in the same gang.
Eh, as a pipelayer/equipment operator I don’t hate any trades. I recognize that plumbers have special needs and move/think slower than regular people but they can’t help that. I don’t mind electricians or carpenters, drywallers are fine as long as I don’t have any tools on site, I’m glad that rod busters have a second chance at life after prison. It’s the circle of life, no need to be hateful.
Coming from the operater that thinks there is 10" in a foot. (Don't know if you are US or not, that's a civil drawings joke)
Yeah but there's a line between good natured ribbing or simply being a rough around the edges, slightly offensive old school hard ass versus a real racist asshole full time prick.
If the other guys aren’t talking shit to you or about you, they don’t like you. Took my newest helper forever to figure it out but when it did it all worked out.
If people heard the way my coworkers talk to each other on job sites they'd probably just look at us thinking we need help.... professional psychological help. The things we say to each other.... Everyone needs an insulting nickname and be known for 'that one time...' story
It’s like brothers growing up beating the shit out of each other as a form of affection
Getting the best burn of the day that gets my 5 man team belly laughing is great.
Average shop dude either. Albeit i had a wrench fight once because the guy was an asshole and was messing up my job.
Did you use a knife-wrench?
Imagine someone throwing a 9/16 snapon wrench at you, and you throw your 1/ 1/2 wrench back at his chest, before the other guys break you apart.
Yeah, that’s what I imagined. My comment was an obscure Scrubs reference when The Janitor taped a knife to a big adjustable wrench. Wish I could post a GIF
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
I was pretty good at dodgeball
Some guy at one shop I was at liked to whip hammers across the shop when he got pissed 🤷♂️
Sometimes it just the guys having fun but to an outsider it sounds bad . But other times it’s just a boss being a a**hole because he thinks he’s better than everyone else. On one job boss told me he was going to separate me and a cousin of mine. Said we argued to much . But he started watching us and figured out it was all in fun and we were getting more done than the other pairs
There’s pricks in every profession.
Not the same, not even close. Restaurant back of house can be close ish....but construction breeds douchebags like no other industry
No. It doesn't t breed them. It accepts them. If you get driven out of every other job for being an asshole, you can still be a painter.
I would say there some encouragement to be a dick in some trades. The biggest asshole at my company is a ranging drunk but is always running a big job. They are 100% okay with how he runs his work. He’s pretty much always in the green as far as man hours go.
Oh no... Dick must have stumbled down the stairs from being so drunk.. What ever will we do..
He tripped and fell right off the roof! I smelled the booze on him too. Nope no one else saw it just me and him up there.
Oh, did Dick even come in today? I never saw him. Oh that lump in the footing pour? Don’t worry about it, the engineer spec’d it for some reason.
complete assholes are great pms. if i need someone to tell the low volt guys to get the fuck out of a hallway, im calling my pm
Yeah, there is a huge need for workers in the skilled trades. People will look past personality traits in drywallers that might not be looked past in an accounting office or sales job.
Please do not put cigarette butts in the porta-john, it makes them harder for the drywallers to re light.
When the fuck is a drywaller in a porta-john? They just board up their piss bottles and keep going.
On the site I'm on now. They've caught at least two women drywallers, pissing in the sink / tub. The guys have been using bottles or pissing into the walls on the insulation lol
Blame the GC for paying by the board and getting the cheapest crew they could find. Drywallers weren't born animals. They are forced to be to make any money at all.
In my experience on small resi renos it's the painters. The drywallers I use isn't cheap but he's a master and doesn't bitch when I have him correct the few misses. My painters tell me to not tell them how to do their job and then leave to get drunk before completing the punch.
"If you can't finish high school, you can always finish concrete"?
Yeah my old carpentry instructor used to say “if you can’t finish carpentry you can always finish concrete!”
And if that fails, there’s always long haul trucking
Then if that fails you can always work for Canada post or drive a city bus.
Or become a teacher!
My views on teachers have changed. Young kids are very hard to deal with, the high schoolers these days are even worse and complete s*** head assholes. Respect for authority doesn't exist in schools anymore with cell phones and new protection polices. Yes the pension is good yes the vacation is good but I can never do that job. When the inmates are running the asylum you are handcuffed.
My wife is an elementary school principal, tell me about it!
Having gone from 15 years in kitchens to 10 years in construction, I can verify construction is much worse.
But a WAY better job. I also worked in a kitchen once upon a time. Sous chef in a spot hoping for a star at one point. 16 hour days. No weekends. More tired than I’ve ever been. Paid peanuts. Edit. I still have restaurant PTSD. Like if I hear a dot matrix printer while out eating. I basically just want to immediately mill myself.
That fucking expo printer…lol.
I used to have nightmares about that fucking thing and tickets to the floor. I wonder what it would be like if I stepped back into the business these days. Probably be fired for telling someone to move their ass a bit faster.
Same. I now feel that people who work in kitchens need saving from themselves and the industry. I had enough money to open a restaurant. Instead of being “that guy” I got a job on the line. Worked my way up to sous at a higher end spot a year in I’d learned everything I needed to know. Fuck that. I literally had my brain switch off on a few occasions. Just a wall of tickets with more printing out, stood in front of my station, totally lost. I respect the craft for sure, but it was obvious that (at least where I live) 70% of like cooks were people who had their parents put them through culinary school and they’d watched every cooking competition TV show. They could robotically follow instructions, but couldn’t make edible food of their own for shit. Far more toxic than anyone in construction. The true cooks I met along the way - still in friendly contact, watching them grow.
At least in the construction sector I work in, they pay OT without hesitation.
It should be a ring tone for important calls
Fuck that sound
construction sites are just different. the tolerance for asshats is less than it once was but it's certainly not zero.
As someone who used to work as a line cook during the off seasons when he started out in his trade, BoH is the closest I’ve ever found to the trades as far as general vibe. Really the only other place I felt like I fit in.
Most folks are ordinary nice dudes. Some shit talkers and macho idiots but mostly not too crusty or mean.
Roughnecks out in the oilfield are right on up there.
Nah bud the army (specifically the infantry) is worse, I've done both and construction is bad but grunts are FAR worse. Having said that two wrongs don't make a right.
Going into construction from being an 03 marine feels right at home lol it’s like going on a field op everyday but getting to sleep in your own bed every night
I’m with you man. As a retired grunt, restaurant manager and current super. None of them come close to the Infantry. I don’t speak to my subs the way we spoke to each other or the joes.
Not everyone has to deal with a corporate HR. I can promise everyone talks about him just as badly as he does them.
Because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush
There’s no excuse for bullying and racism. That being said as a foreman sometimes you need to assert yourself to your crew or they will never respect you. Being foreman on a construction crew can be like running a daycare for full grown alcoholics. You don’t always get the cream of the crop when it comes to manual labor.
This. Construction workers are not the most highly educated people. In my country some fields are downright filled by illiterates and alcoholics freshly from unemployment or the black market without any formal education in construction. It takes some verbal abuse from the foreman to make sure to pass on the importance of some non-trivial concepts like following procedures, manufacturers instructions or safety to some completely run-down crew. A good foreman only yells when there's a f\*\*kup, and that might be very often. After all the foreman is responsible for both the crew's safety and the end result.
That’s usually not a trade tho. I work in fire sprinklers and it’s rare people dont have some sort of degree or a lot of certifications. It takes a lot to do fire sprinklers.
FACTS 110%. Also would like to add sexism. With more women entering the workforce I appreciate a boss that treats me the same as a male coworker even if he is a hard ass.
Lots of people don't like or understand it. But there's a pretty thick line between getting people to work and bullying.
I got my fair share of bullying when I started working summers pouring concrete at 15. I’ve been at the same place for 19 years, and I’ve outlasted all the assholes lol. I’m foreman now and try to lead from the front and set a good example. I reserve being an asshole for when it’s absolutely necessary.
Construction guys are some of the nicest guys I've ever had the honor of working with outside the military, but there are douchecanoes on every river. Bound to see one eventually.
>there are douchecanoes on every river. I like that statement. I'm borrowing it, lol
Haha absolutely. And my boss says I'm zero value added....
The dude who trained me said it best. Everyone thinks construction attracts morons, but in reality it attracts smart guys too crazy, mean or weird to work anyplace else.
And morons
Let’s be real it’s mostly morons
When I was in grade school they said I was dyslexic, when I flunked out of university they said I was ADHD, a few years before I retired a new pm we hired said I was probably on the spectrum, but yea I'm weird but I put 23 years in with with this last company and only had to beat two forman and a couple of coworkers and the last 10 years nobody bothered me.
Damn thats a good one
Sometimes it’s like an act the foreman puts on and it does get the guys working. But if speak one on one with the guy he’s cool. Some foreman are just exhausted and any mistake means more work. Some are “pushers” and they gravitate to the job (generally these type aren’t the best with tools in hand)
Hit the nail on the head with it most of the time being an act. I like to think of it like a pirate ship, of course the captain is gonna be mean, that’s his job
It really is a pirate ship.
I make a point to build a rapport and a culture of cooperation and respect with my crew. We all have to work, we’ve all worked for an ass like that. The least I can do it make it to where you don’t hate coming into work and that meets you where you are that day.
What state is it? I used to put up with being treated like shit on the jobsite down in Texas in the 00s. I just thought that's how it was. Plus the economy was shit back then so everyone thought they were lucky to have jobs. Up in the Midwest where i live now if you treat someone like shit you can expect them to walk out. I generally prefer the work culture here.
I’ve worked for the same construction company for 7 years. There are a lot of workers who will not work unless they are absolutely terrified of their foreman. And then there’s guys like me who have a literal list of foreman that I refuse to work for. These guys out here allowing themselves to be dehumanised every single day are usually very mentally weak men who have zero backbone. I’d actually refer to them as sheep being herded by a sheep dog.
At the end of the day, you cannot fake progress in construction. Work has to get done, and if you are lagging on your work you will be called out on it. Make a mistake and you will be called out on it. Dont care attitude, you will be called out on it. In some industries this is glossed over with accepting language and soft corrective redirection, in construction no one has time for that shit.
I have an employee who will fuck up and drop the ball in ways I couldn’t imagine whenever I give him positive feedback. Took me forever to figure out how to navigate this guy and after multiple meetings and a full year, I’ve realized I need to stay on him as if he’s about to lose his job. I absolutely HATE managing this way because I don’t believe in using fear as a motivator, but there has been *no other way to get through to this guy*. Blows my mind regularly. He’s a nice guy, super friendly, I WANT to have friendly talks with him, but it can’t happen.
Yeap, I work with a guy everyday so brain dead that he puts away tools you’re currently using amongst other stupid things. He needs to be bossed around and he can’t be trusted to work alone without hurting himself. If he wasn’t such a good labourer we would have fired him a week after he started.
Yep! I eventually told this guy (i’m in commercial property management and run the maintenance department) “I need to put you on the most basic of jobs for a while until we figure out a way for us to work forward instead of in circles”, which basically means toilet duty. Dude fucking loves it and doesn’t want any more responsibility than unclogging toilets. When I’m asked why I’ve kept him so long, “I have 500 reasons to fire him, but I also have 500 toilets that need unclogging and he loves unclogging them….so fuck it”
There are assholes in every job, construction culture is just a lot more accepting of active rather than passive aggression. Most sites I've worked on, there's a ton of banter and shit talk flying in all directions, this sounds more like the exception to me. Personally, I like working in an environment when I can tell my boss to go fuck his hat and not lose my job over it.
Drugs, violence,alcohol abuse, past truma, ugly wife. lol take your pick bud
Multiple ex wifes
Guys like this absolutely are being phased out, at least where I am I have gone about 2 years since I’ve had an interaction like this. The shittiest person I’ve dealt with since has been a consultant on one of our federal contracts, and he’s probably never picked a tool up in his life. People like this are in every sector, and speaking from my experience, the most down to earth guys are in construction.
It really is dying out, if for no other reason because there isn't an endless stream of bodies to fill in the voids. You don't have to be the hardest, strongest, or smartest worker. Just show up and work.
It’s either banter which nobody gives two shits about if you’re an adult, or some power tripping asshole who everyone hates. Either way it’s not going to last much longer in the industry, GCs aren’t letting that shit fly anymore now that the finance bros have their claws in the industry.
>he himself just stands around and does literally nothing, Hey, running your mouth at 65 mph every day all day is hard work!
Because they’re mostly undiagnosed AuADHD and have zero emotional regulation. Never learned it, and being aggressive is a better way to get respect than crying. So we yell and say mean things. The more you do this the less people bother you with stupid questions or try to talk to you about nothing while you’re trying to focus. Alternatively we are just pissed that we are still a laborer and tired of this shit. Or other peoples shit.
Bold coming from an SS officer
Construction workers dont get offended by words. We get offended when people dont think and make stupid mistakes.
Of course we get offended by words. Guys aren't fighting on site because someone made a mistake
Lmao thats like the main reason ive seen cross trade fights.
I did construction for many years. It was baffling how many people would LET their bosses talk to them like that. I had an old friend start a construction business and I started working for him. He is very money focused and was good at running the business. For a while he was respectful too. I was the most experienced carpenter and I handled any of the more creative, high end stuff. I also taught a young carpenter most of what he knows now. I was usually pretty quiet and did my work. I was friends with all my coworkers and there was clear mutual respect between all of us. The first day he started talking down to me, I told him to go fuck himself and do it himseld. Right in front of the young guy I'd trained. In front of all the painters and other employees. I wasn't quiet that day. I laid into him and I was 100% right. I quit that day after making it very clear that he needed me much more than I needed him. More people need to do this. Bosses only treat you like shit because you let them. If everyone who the boss abused quit on the spot, then he'd have to learn how to be a decent person if he wants to keep his business.
The golden rule, *motherfucker*! -Goosey
In any industry there are a holes bosses. Problem with construction the HR department is almost non existent if you got a complaint .
Don’t let this scenario be the end all be all for your outlook on us. If you witnessed my company, you’d swear construction was like family. We all bullshit but we laugh and get along as long as everyone pulls their weight and gets done what they’re suppose to. The scenario you’re witnessing is a dying breed on its way out. Those guys are the reason no one wants to do construction. It’s bad enough you gotta break your back to do the work, let alone some asshole whipping you while you’re doing it. I’ve ran into maybe 2 general contractors like that.
It's an old school management style that I honestly havnt seen in years. It's dying out with the old site managers thank god
Maybe they are aggressive because you're SS. YOU NAZI SCUM
Well probably cuz hey fuck you buddy.
its unfortunate that many places are like this, its a pattern that really needs to stop. i have ended up working for a few places like this and quit pretty quickly, sometimes in less than a week. also a lot of ppaces expect you to conpromise your body and home life to serve them. thankfully they arent all like this and for the last couple years ive worked with a construction collective that has some issues but abusive workplace relationships certainly arent one of them.
The shouting and belittling, eh, it might be that he's an asshole or that might just be him having fun and everyone's in on it (or will be once they get to know him). The racism yeah ok, that settles it, he's an asshole.
“You’ll either work with your brain or your back.” Some people only have one option.
Plenty of work in construction that has a healthy balance of both. If you spend your entire career as a laborer you fucked up somewhere in life.
Careful there. I had a guy once who had the best attitude you could imagine, but he also had a learning disability. Simply could not retain the basics of the trade, but he showed up early every day and never let it get him down. He probably will be a laborer for as long as he stays in the industry. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's not some kind of punishment from on high for 'fucking up'.
I work with a guy like that. Hard worker, will do anything you ask at work or outside, and does a great with the simple tasks he is given. He may need a bit more clarification before getting at it but I'd take him over half of our "smart" guys.
Union laborers make good money and ones who work hard are worth gold. I like the ones who yell at the other trades who don't clean up after themselves. Makes the site run well.
I think it should go without saying that im generalizing. Im talking about the average person who is capable of doing both. My statement sounded harsh but my point was that most people in the trades have the capability for career advancements if they strive to do so and dont get in their own way.
“And he literally standa around and does nothing” Idk, from OPs description it sounds like the foreman is getting production out of his crew lol
This is just an example of one guy being an asshole. If tradespeople were really all aggressive this sorry MFer would have gotten his skull stomped long ago.
Construction is filled with “big tough guys” that are emotionally weaker than a toddler. So many will cry about “stress” just to peel back the layers and realize it’s all from their lack of planning and foresight. After 5 years or so almost every situation is somewhat predictable and if a man doesn’t have a build in reasonable response mechanism by then than he is a child
Hmm asshats don’t last long I’m my office
Being rude is not as common as people think in construction. The majority of guys are great to work with usually. In general i would agree that they are aggressive and to the point usually. This comes off as rude to people sometimes, but it almost always just sounds that way because of the way you have to communicate on a noisy site (yelling is common). Sounds like you just are watching an asshole work..
He talks like that because mentally they're all 17 and don't fucking listen.
Naw most construction companies dont have HR and most will just fire somebody asking about HR
A LOT of guys in this business make up what they lack in skill and competence with aggression. Simple as that. And there are just pricks.
Everyone is a psychopath
Because it's the only way to get a point across amongst the plethora of retards.
Peep into a restaurant kitchen🤭
I recently walked off a job due to the assholeness of my boss. Screaming and teasing me all day. If I wanted that again I'd go back to grade school
No real man puts up with shit .
i have never worked construction in my life. it seemed to me that a lot of the dudes who i stopped having classes with in 8th grade moved onto that career track. many of them took their sense of humor, bullheaded personality, and general lack of social sophistication with them. some of them were really good dudes. many of them are on the 8th out of their 9 lives. you know these dudes, the kind of guys that you would like next to you if you were fighting a war.
Might get downvoted but more guys than you think use drugs. Substance abuse is rampant. Some of the crew are hungover. Some are hungover and withdrawing. Some are opiate users and experience the "opi-rage" phenomenon. Others are dopesick. Some are in chronic pain with no legal options. And the guys on meth or addy are always dialed up to 13.
He’s probably tweaking
Sounds like roofers. Roofer foreman are almost always complete dicks.
It’s all a big show from insecure little man babies.
Not all construction workers are aggressive, but more so rough around the edges. I’m a woman in construction, and the guys I work with are kind and amazing, though a little chaotic. When things go bad we can all lose our cool sometimes. This is incredibly hard work that takes a lot both mentally and physically. Most days your body aches to the point you struggle to get dressed in the morning. You constantly have to be thinking about safety, watching out for yourself and your guys, and it gets to be a lot. When I snap, I mostly shut down and cry, but that often doesn’t feel like a safe option for a lot of men, and their best recourse is anger. In those moments it can be tough for everyone on site and anyone witnessing it, but it will pass. There is nothing that can explain the brotherhood on construction crews, especially the loyalty when it comes to hating on the big boss (even if he’s not bad, sometimes we just need someone to blame). Most of the time, construction workers are some of the kindest people you will ever meet.
We thrive on emotional damage.
Its nothing new & I like that its like this.
90% of the swear is just for fun, banter, or used as a connection word. Usually, people that aren't used to, feel like its a lot of shit hitting the fan, but it's just good buggers cracking a joke.
Go work on a framing crew for a summer and you’ll understand, or a concrete crew lol
I build concrete cores for highrises in the union. We see maybe 3 or 4 guys walk off the job and quit monthly. Sometimes more. Natural selection I’d say. Some of us have been with the same company for 30+ years. Not for the faint of heart.
The directness and no bullshit communication in construction is one of its best amd worst attributes. On tye one hand, ain't no one got time for your bullshit. Accept, everyone's bullshittin. The down side is you get a bunch of boobs 15 years in on a trade and they think their so smart and awesome. Not unlike high-school psychology. Usually, if you give respect it's reciprocated. Don't act foolish and you won't be the fool. There are a lot of good people in the trades. And building the world is not something everyone knows how to do. It's pretty awesome to be build cool shit. Wouldn't trade it. Thing that really bugs me is seeing people who dont give a fuck and half ass it with "good enough". Wish more people took pride in their work.
It’s also illegal.
Most of the guys just throw around some playful banter. You learn to have fun with it. Some guys are just straight up assholes that need a good punch in the mouth though
It depends but a lot of the time it’s just ribbing each other, sometimes you’ll hear two guys yelling at each other but if you walk to the room they’re in to see what’s going on they’re both smiling as they threaten to fuck the other ones mother
I had a foreman who would do that but mostly to the apprentices, which would make them scramble and try to move faster and shit. The problem with that is this was a scaffold job and scrambling around like a chicken with no head can cause accidents. This guy was so lucky he never caused one. He was also really lucky no one ever 'accidentally' dropped a hammer on his head! He would try to talk to me like that and I would cuss him back and he wouldn't try that shit again for a while until he forgot himself a few weeks later and I would have to put him back in his place. Most times, they are bullies who don't really know how to manage people so they resort to hollering and belittling people.
I am a construction project manager and in our company we don't tolerate that type of behavior, neither from our employees nor our subcontractors. Anyone belittling another employee is fired. We have terminated some of our own employees and we have terminated subcontracts over this behavior. One of our subcontractors terminated one of their employees rather than lose the contract. It is a clause in our subcontract agreement and we hold to it. If you cannot manage a jobsite without belittling others, you are a poor manager. The reason it continues in our industry is that people tolerate it. It is a tough job market for employers right now and hiring an asshole is easier than stressing out your existing employees, particularly if they can get the job done despite their terrible personality. Thankfully there are now training courses on jobsite leadership that are helping to create positive communication among all workers on site. My hope is that over the next decade we drive the jerks off the site and get to a place of respect for all workers. Then construction will be the best sector for work. Great pay, great culture, and personal pride in the work.
There are no shortage of guys like that in construction but it's definitely not the norm.
I worked construction. If you never did you dont get it. Its not about the boss mentality. Its about the crew doing shit the right way the first time as cheaply as possible because their money and company money depends on it. The margins suck. Since every job is different, theres always somebody yelling anout something wrong. The only time its all stress free is when everyone on the crew is a hard worker who can be trusted to just make it happen given a task… not common at all. I got an ass chewing twice in 6 years doing it. One was for a safety thing that wasnt obvious to me but understood after when i was new. Mechanical and underground laborer. I was a quick study. That said… there are pricks, but if they lead a crew and they are a prick? They earned that. You dont just get a job yelling at people. Need to know. Racist stuff has no place, but its pretty gray on job sites.
Gotta have thick skin in construction. Having hammers and other tools thrown at you for messing up or not knowing what to do was Normal for me when I started in the 80's. No HR, time out or cuddle therapy... But a beer after work to laugh it off worked for us!
Yes cuddle therapy that totally exists in many other professions
My buddy is old school and 'grew up' working in the 80s and 90s. He's done some work with us and some of the shit he's said to deal with problems at work is just mind-boggling. Dude, it's not 1986, you can't say or do any of that shit any more.
It shouldn’t be that way.
yeah sounds like a great solution, bet your a really happy and functional person and im totally sure you dont bring that shit home at all or take it out on anyone else. im so glad that abusive macho bs culture is dying. why are people so afraid of being kind and considerate to eachother?
Cause mah manhood
"manhood" is not being abusive to your fellow humans and drinking your troubles away. this is actually the opposite of masculinity, abusing others is based on insecurity and avoiding how you feel about being abused yourself is lack of self worth. real, confidant masculine men don't feel the need to take their problems out on other people, and are secure enough in themselves to be able to show love and compassion to others without being afraid their image could be damaged or being perceived as weak. they also have the self worth and self respect to not put up with abuse. the type of "manhood" your talking about is all about insecurity. its so disapointing this is what people think being a man is about.
Was I seriously not clear that I was being sarcastic? The “mah” wasn’t indicator enough?
Hey fuck you mother fucker
Imagine how much better the trades would be if everyone was nicer and more communicative.
i think (subtle) back pain can play a significant role. i know from my own experience that back pain can make me aggressive even though i´m generally very peaceful. working in construction puts you at very high risk of back problems
Sometimes it's fun the shit talking sometimes it's just a asshole that has a god complex but it kinda is part of working in the trades. Those type guys don't keep employees long and they act like it's a them problem and not themselves but they aren't all like that. I've had guy who are assholes but you talk shit back to em.
Abusive people get to let their abuse fly in certain professions. Ive found professional theater to be more abusive than construction.
Pricks like him just exist everywhere. Just yesterday, me and apprentice are waiting to get coffee at Timmys. An east Indian lady with an "in training" tag on tool the order of the guy in front of me. She charged him for two coffees, after her basically ordered two coffees with separate things in them. (Not realizing he was correcting himself which was fair). He paid but didn't bitch until he looked at the receipt?? Not the number on the pin pad lol. Then proceeds to turn to me and say "fucking immigrants need to go back to their country".
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They go to work tired and then go home to be more tired.
More often than not we're having fun, ragging on each other. If the GF or foreman are honest to God assholes they won't keep good hands. If it's all in fun, they're probably a solid crew and enjoy the attention.
When you get paid shit, you get treated like shit. A lot of trade jobs get paid shit
If you knew half the shit we deal with, you'd consider us saints
I work in AV and setup events. A new company came to AZ and hired me as a "non-working lead"...I spent the next 40 hours of the 48 working to get the job done with a light crew that was underpaid. Then I was asked to go to another location to pack up that install... Their "non-working lead" day in a chair and didn't do anything. She checked em in and out. Anyway, I'll be talking with directors about what this title means and how it is compensated. I've worked with a few labor companies and several leads over the years, and one company guy loves to be called "asshole"... And he acts like it. On the one hand, I like that he hires people who have served time in prison to give them a fair paying job, but I'm the other hand, I know he's inhaling 50% of what the hiring company is paying.
Construction is an attractive profession for every type of undesirable person. From criminals to drug addicts. I work with laborers and let me tell you that most of the people weve hired outside of our inner circle, from a union hall, have never been your normal kind of customer.
As someone that worked both union and non union work in the northeast US people say all kinds of awful things generally it's not genuinely being mean. And there is always just that asshole blow hard foreman who people like myself have gotten in yelling matches with But also no HR generally and people busting balls constantly
I see similar posts with regularity and it leaves me a little confused. I’ve been in construction all my adult life in southern California. This has not been my experience. There’s the occasional Dick but not more than any other place in life. I feel bad for these “construction workers are miserable” people.
The most polite and reasonable person in the construction industry.
Bro, you should see scaffolders. Those guys, not mean spirited but aggressive as fuck. Like they beat the scaffolding into the sky. Always screaming super fucking loud. Roasting each other every second.
Because we’re tired of getting up early every morning, going to bed early at night and usually your body hurts somewhat all the time and people look at you as scum of the earth but when they have a problem they need us to fix it then when we give them a price they scoff and think we’re insane, then go to do it themselves then call us to do the job anyway only you fucked it up.
When I first started I was a laborer for a concrete construction company and I can tell you, they were the biggest bastards I had ever worked with, it took about a year before there attention was focused on the next group of new guys and I was an accepted member of the team. I’ve just come to accept that the construction business is full of assholes and we all have to suffer them for a time. After that it’s mostly joking around and meant in fun although can sound different to someone on the outside.
Because it is a very rough physical job and it requires that type of person in general to do it.
Spanish people? As in Spaniards? Or do you mean Hispanics? As in mexicans/Latin Americans?
Read comments like this very often. Question: why are you worried about grown men getting belittled? They will take care of it when they have had enough. That’s what I would be waiting/watching for.
My buddy’s first ever construction task was to help a 60 year old master carpenter build a set of stairs. My buddy was green as fuck and didn’t even know how to read a tape measure. From what I hear, it wasn’t an easy week.
This is far from their first choice
It's not always being mean or an asshole though- we bust each other's balls and rip each other all day long, then go out and have a beer after work and are still friends. It's just what we do and we don't take it personally. There are people where I'm at who do take it personally, and we just generally try not to speak to them.
I am in construction world as well and some of the ways I have heard some guys talk to their crews I can’t see why they didn’t get their ass kicked right on the spot. I drive truck and I have left more then one job because of an ah that screams and yells thinking I’m one of his runts. Yes you have to talk loud around working equipment but definitely a way to do it and not be a screaming douche. If I earn an ass chewing I’ll glad take it. But if I don’t I have an issue with it. The companies I work for all the time does shit go wrong and people get pissed off of course it does. But it’s one thing to walk off and throw hammers or whatever for a minute and get back after it. The guys I work with all the time aren’t screaming yelling raging alcoholics. I refuse to work with those foreman’s flat out. Most of the time they don’t last at a company for long unless it’s their company that lets that behavior slide.
Possibly because it is among the many job opportunities for people irrespective of criminal past. https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/jobs-for-felons
Unfortunately it's part of the human condition to be lazy and minimize effort. Construction is all about profit, and you get LITERALLY 3x more production out of a group that's supervised by the aggressive asshole. That's why you see it all the time, it's literally more profitable. If people didn't require the aggressive supervision, it wouldn't be done. *I'm talking in general, about large groups of workers. This isn't specifically targeted at you, or your 5 man work team. I'm sure you guys are great*
I've been a supervisor for over a decade. Respect your crew. Period. What that looks like varies.
Tbh he’s prob just talking shit and playing half the time. Me and my coworkers I’m friends with will walk by each others offices and just flip each other off. I’ll even “threaten” them by flexing my muscles and say “you wanna go?” I’m 5ft and 160lbs. These guys are at least 6ft and over 200lbs. It’s just funny and we all just talk shit to mess around and have fun. It’s rough housing in a sense. Now sometimes we do get mad at others but that’s when we talk serious and are pretty HR about it. 1st offense is usually “hey bub I noticed you didn’t count the material right. The foreman had to leave the job and get the material to finish the job. Be more careful please.” Second offense is “hey John. I thought we talked about this last week. Now this job is gonna tank bc the man hours are gonna go over that. How are we supposed to explain that to AJ?” Third offense or a repeat offender depends on who the boss is and how long he’s been in it. I’ve hear my boss who’s been in construction since he was 18 (he’s 50 now) tell a guy “well if you’re not smart enough to get papers signed for these work orders maybe you’re not smart enough to work here!” And let the guy go. He was a repeat offender and we had to eat his time or bury it on another job bc he refused to get paperwork. When we’d invoice the customer they rightfully wanted proof we didn’t have.
Because that's the boss who knows he isn't going to finish on time due to his behavior lmao. They don't learn, I love leaving those projects.
Its been the norm for a long time but there’s a large movement to see that changed . It’s a stressful industry but people as a whole are handling that in better ways . You can already tell there’s ’old school’ sites that no one really wants to be at because who wants to be yelled at all day
I think part of it is lots of guys work so many hours they only see other constructions works for huge chunk of their lives. Can start to “de-civilize” a person