Poop Runs Downhill….
That spring my staff and
I implemented the housing rehabilitation function. Over the next three years we rehabilitated or
brought to compliance with code over 140 homes of low or moderate income
persons. Under my program we paved 21
blocks of streets, built 3 neighborhood parks
and laid about 1000 feet of new sewer line including a new,
state-of-the-art lift station. It wasn’t
without excitement though and that was because of Shorty.
I had never dealt with anybody
like Shorty. He lived up to his name as well physically as he did to his reputation. He
was five-foot-two-inches of shear meanness.
As I learned, he lived up to his reputation as a hard to get-along-with,
foul-mouthed, crude and obstinate plumbing contractor who, if you weren’t
careful would use contract loopholes to rob you blind if you weren’t careful.
My project inspector and
project engineer let out a huge moan when we opened the bids for two “mini”
lift stations and almost one-thousand feet of force main in order to provide
city sewerage service to sixteen homes that had failing septic systems. Shorty’s company was low bidder and they knew
it was going to be “a rough ride” for the duration of the contract. There was no valid reason to by-pass Shorty’s
bid and accept the second lowest bidder even if we wanted. Being a newcomer to the City, I didn’t
understand their hesitancy over accepting Shorty’s bid but they quickly filled
me in on his history.
Evidently Shorty had been
a problem from a very young age. There
was some disagreement whether Shorty had been taught his plumbing trade in
“reform school” or actually in an adult prison but it was agreed that he never
learned it in a formal school. It was
speculated that he couldn’t talk without a big cigar hanging out of his mouth
and he used “the “f-word” like it was a required element of speech. Somehow he
passed union apprenticeships and set out on his own and prospered, not because
people necessarily liked him but more likely because there was a scarcity of
licensed plumbers in the area. At any rate, I knew I would have to be careful with
this guy and, perhaps, through charm and flattery, maybe get him to trust me
enough to reason with him if the need arose.
The first meeting was at
contract signing and pre-construction contract coordination with the
engineers. It went pretty well and so I
talked with Shorty for the first time.
I told him I was glad there was a local contractor (him) on the job and
had heard good things about his work.
Actually, the only person who had commented on his work was my project
inspector who said that Shorty’s company was “competent”. I took that as an endorsement…of sorts.
At one point the engineer
suggested that the contractor had an option as to what technique he wanted to
use on a certain operation of the installation and asked me if I had a
preference. I thought this was a good
time to flatter Shorty so I told the engineer that I would defer to Shorty’s
expertise’. Shorty chuckled and said it didn’t matter to him because all he
knew about plumbing was that “..s##t
rolls downhill and payday is every Friday”.
After the stunned silence,
the engineer suggested a common technique should be utilized.
Everything went well for
a week or two but one day I got a call from my project inspector who called
from a bar located near the worksite telling me that I needed to come to the
site right away to resolve a dispute with Shorty. Although it was probably over eighty degrees
that day, I purposefully donned my suit coat thinking that Shorty would
understand that I was “the boss” and I had final say on management of the
contract, not him.
It appeared that Shorty
wanted to change on the force main which would cost us additional
money and probably create a budget overrun to a Federal Grant. That’s not something you want to do. I had to back up the work of our consulting
engineers and stick with the plans as drawn. At first, I tried the softer approach of thanking Shorty for his input but
insisting that the plans be followed.
That just made Shorty angrier. So
I tried reasoning that I didn’t have enough in the budget to make his proposed
change. That didn’t work either. Shorty was raising his voice and tossing
f-bombs around and I responded more angrily and forcefully but he forced me to
use the trump card, “We’re going to use
the golden rule, Shorty. I’ve got the
gold, I make the rules.”
Shorty became
silent. He pulled out his wallet and
started thumbing through a large, impressive stash of bills; some hundreds,
some fifties, and a lot of twenties. I
immediately thought he was going to try to bribe me and I responded
indignantly: “You can’t bribe me Shorty. Don’t even try!”
Shorty said, “ I’m not going to bribe you, I’m just
checking to see if I’ve got enough to pay the judge, ‘cause if I do, I’m
going to knock you on your smart little ass!” That stunned me and it took a few seconds to
recover.
I don’t know why but I
decided at that moment to say,” Just do
it as planned! That’s it. No more
discussion”, and walked away to a fusillade of f-bombs and suggestions that
I had sexual relations with my mother.
Unfortunately, that
wasn’t the end of that project.
I had a clock radio by
the side of my bed and it was set for six A.M. tuned in to the local AM
station. On one morning, I awoke to the
news reader warning Ashland residents that there had been a water main break
and there was no water service to the entire east end of the city. The east side was where we were installing a
new sewer line to serve some twenty houses that had failing septic systems
draining into a creek which, in turn, drained into Lake Superior. I was
suspicious that we had something to do with it so I threw on jeans and a
sweater and drove to the site to see what was going on.
It was my worst
nightmare.
The design and location
of our new sewer/force main was determined by the engineers looking at a set of
plans for the City’s water lines called “as-builts”. When a design is implemented, it often isn’t
where the architects/engineers planned them usually because of soil conditions
or other factors which prevented strict execution of the plans. When the project is completed, the engineers
provide a set of plans to show exactly where everything ended up being
located.
As it turned out, the
as-builts we were operating off of were off by twelve feet. The 48” diameter water main was 12 feet
closer to our new line than indicated on the plans.[1] As a result, our ditch opened up and exposed
the 48” line. When that happened, the
utility had been notified and after consulting with Joe and our engineer
decided that we should proceed to bury our line four feet under the water main.
Work proceeded normally and so Joe went home expecting all “best practices”
which included leaving the smallest possible length of trench open over night
would be followed. This is because the
soil under the water main could dry out and become weaker, so weak in fact that
it might not hold the weight of the heavily loaded main. That’s exactly what happened.
The contractor didn’t follow “best practices”,
Joe wasn’t there to make sure he did and neither was the engineer. The result was that the soil holding the main
collapsed, the ductile iron pipe (DIP ) sagged and pulled it out of a
75-year-old leaded joint, gushing hundreds of thousands of gallons of water
into the trench, and into my new sewer pipes.
Liability ended up being split three ways because everybody screwed
up. Fortunately the damages weren’t
catastrophic for anybody. I never had to deal directly with Shorty again.
[1]
This was before today’s utility locating techniques that use magnetometers and
other sophisticated instruments to locate the EXACT location of utility lines.
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