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A lesson from an old timer in a hardware store parking lot
I was picking up some mud in Eugene maybe ten years back, feeling rushed on a Friday. This guy, must have been in his seventies, was loading a beat-up truck with a stack of 5/8 inch board. He saw me struggling to fit a box of corner bead in my car and just walked over, took it from me, and showed me how to angle it against the seat. He said, 'Kid, the board is patient. You ain't.' We got to talking and he told me about hanging rock with a hammer and hatchet before drywall screws were even a thing. Said the real skill wasn't in the speed, but in knowing how a wall would settle over a winter. That stuck with me more than any tool talk ever has. Anyone else have a moment like that, where some old advice just clicked way later on a job?
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skyler_patel7mo ago
Sounds like your boss missed that lesson.
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path477mo ago
My buddy had a boss who would literally schedule meetings just to cancel them five minutes later. He'd make everyone drop what they were doing for no reason. It got so bad my friend started keeping a tally on a sticky note. The boss never noticed, just kept wasting everyone's time. It was the perfect example of someone who had no clue how to actually manage people.
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kelly4706mo ago
Man, that story about the boss scheduling meetings just to cancel them is wild. It's like he thought his main job was to be a human pop-up ad. My old manager used to call these "urgent stand-ups" that were just him reading emails out loud to us. We'd all be standing there, tools down, while he figured out his own inbox. Total power move, zero actual work getting done.
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