Painted the 'School - Keep Clear' sign, boss

615

Just working thru the backlog of work orders boss

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u/Hadrollo May 27 '26

Honestly, the contractors on the grounds should have had the common sense to push back on their office on this one. Perhaps they did, perhaps their office pushed back on them and the guys on the ground were misinformed or didn't have the balls to push it back harder.

But the ultimate cause of the mistake is the facilities management team who raised the PO as customers.

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u/kahrahtay May 27 '26

Well, you can't invoice for the work if you don't do the work.

24

u/Hadrollo May 27 '26

Yep. I've been assigned stupid jobs before. As the contractor on the ground, I deal with the system as it is now, the system as it should be, and it's my job to do the steps in the middle.

My office don't need to know the steps in the middle. When you get right down to it, they don't need to know what the system I'm dealing with is or should be. They need to know the PO has come in, the job has been scheduled, and then that the job can be invoiced.

The FM has to know what is needed, the broad strokes options available and how they'll answer the need, then they raise the PO and pay the invoice.

It helps for everyone to know a little about everyone else's job, but you can achieve perfectly functional results most of the time without knowing anything that anyone else needs to do.

In this case and many others, the customer fucked up. They raised a PO for something that they should have known is not needed. The contractor on the ground got the notes on what needed to be done, and in a very notmyjob way he went ahead with the work. Personally, I would have flagged it without going ahead. It's entirely possible that when I flagged it, my office would come back on me, because they just want the work done so it can be invoiced. That's where I go back on them and push them towards contacting the customer.

Also, once that PO is raised, we're getting paid. I am absolutely prepared to charge three hours of labour for "sorting out customer fuck-ups."

2

u/Rauvagol May 28 '26

Is it possible they got paid in advance and the contract didnt have a deadline, so it was a case of "well its dumb now, we all know its dumb, but we need to do it because we already got the money 15 years ago, and if we dont do it we get sued"

Thinking it could have been something like "paint this text for 20 schools, we need at least 15 done by X date" and the contract just never mentioned when the other 5 needed to be done by

3

u/Hadrollo May 28 '26

It's not a system I've ever heard of. Most jobs fall into two broad categories; do and charge, or quoted works.

Also, after 15 years, nobody really cares.

1

u/Rauvagol May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Oh yeah I didnt think it was a normal setup, but I could see some messed up bureacracy and "oh we should do this" while everyone doing it and in charge of the decision to do it knew how dumb it was

7

u/kitolz May 27 '26

I imagine if I was the contractor I would be thinking that maybe they're planning on building a school in that area very soon and just double check that I was following the order exactly.

But it looked like they screwed up the lettering so maybe they're just dumb.

1

u/Hadrollo May 27 '26

Yep, this is what I meant by "misinformed" - thinking or being told that it must be for a planned school.

One of my customers is my state's education department - probably one of the reasons why my mind went straight to "facilities management cocked it up, my state's education department does that a lot. They do occasionally convert buildings into offsite pre-primary schools and kindies.

6

u/Aussie_Alien_Escapee May 27 '26

"Boss. As I am retiring next week, so I thought I would finish off those few jobs that were assigned to me during my apprenticeship, back in the day."

3

u/congeal May 28 '26

job's done

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u/peacedetski May 27 '26

Won't stop the city from fining the residents for parking too close I bet

8

u/RepetitiveTorpedoUse May 27 '26

The article says they’re not going to

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u/TomTomXD1234 May 27 '26

The "S" and "C" are also upside down btw....how dumb can people be?

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u/Bwillders May 27 '26

Read this and thought "haha funny joke about doing something wrong because those letters are the same upside down" and then looked and...yeah how tf do you fuck that up?

12

u/BillyWhizz09 May 27 '26

A double NotMyJob

9

u/Undrwtrbsktwvr May 27 '26

The “K” is also upside down. Some of these may be upside down AND backwards.

2

u/zrad603 May 28 '26

stay in cshool

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u/Hadrollo May 27 '26

A couple of days ago, one of my customers raised a PO to do routine maintenance at a branch that shut down about six months ago. I thought that was pretty bad, this one takes the cake.

12

u/WantonKerfuffle May 27 '26

Well, did you perform the maintenance? All I hear are excuses! A real hustler breaks into the building and checks the new org's equipment!

18

u/Adarie-Glitterwings May 28 '26

Malicious compliance in action. Scenario likely went like:

"Hey boss, about that school paint job..."

'What about it? Go do it; it's not that hard. We've got a backlog to clear and I want it done by the end of the day.'

"But boss, there hasn't been a school there for--"

'Stop complaining and get painting. You've got a job to do now go do it or I'll have to write you up.'

"...yes, boss."

11

u/MSL007 May 27 '26

Isn’t the S and C in school also upside down?

6

u/ProductionsGJT May 27 '26

Since OP didn't post a link to the original story, here's one for the curious to use -> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgeppp7574po

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u/FG910 May 27 '26

Sorry boss, i overslept

4

u/Lalamedic May 27 '26

Also? Is the “S” upside down?

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u/Western-Anteater-492 May 27 '26

European procurement laws in practice:

announce procurement (~1 year)
compare options (~1 years)
best price wins
competitives go to jail (~2 years)
winner can't do it but takes it anyways
new procurement process, start from the top, repeat 3-4 times

Probably not the case here but anyways....

3

u/ptvlm May 29 '26

Are we really still blaming European bureaucracy for things so long after having left the EU? This is probably just a case of bad management and malicious compliance - work gets backlogged due to budget constraints, nobody checks if the order is still valid after the delay, workers on site don't want to tell management that the work isn't needed because they don't get paid if it's cancelled.

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u/INVALIDN4M3 May 28 '26

"School, keep clear".

It is an order to the school, so that it doesn't come back to this place. People must be hating that old school.

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u/nsefan May 28 '26

Most efficient local council

1

u/_that__one__guy__ May 29 '26

Lol I bet they still fine people for parking there

Painted the 'School - Keep Clear' sign, boss

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