Da Big Job

In a previous post I said that I hadn't heard back from "The Contracting Company" about the latest bid we submitted for them.

Well, thanks to poor communication I just didn't KNOW they wanted us to do the job. Seems that instead of calling me to say, "hey, we want to use you on the 14th street job." They simply faxed back their response. The onus falls to me on this one because while people normally call, I can't assume that they will. This particular contractor employed by this company is a project manager who has been with them for some time and so he uses office administration for some of his communication.

I am used to over the phone convo's with project managers themselves, but an office person decided to fax. Humpf.

Well, for whatever reason I never saw the fax from the contractor, so I was completely oblivious.

The guy finally called me last week to see if I'd received the fax he'd sent to me a week and a half ago and I'm like..."No. I assumed you had decided to go with someone else."

"No we want you guys to do it and we need you to start next week." says Mr. Entrenched Project Manager. (who is actually very nice)

I calmly say, "Let me check my schedule and see if I can shift things around." as if I'm all kinds of busy. Then I quickly call mentor/expert/boyfriend to see if there is ANY way his crews can do this work. I wasn't sure they'd be able to because they've had their own money-making fish to fry.

But, ever the capitalist, M/E/B (hmmm, maybe that will be his abbreviation from now on) said "we can do it." (He's awesome that way)

Now we have five, count 'em FIVE guys over at this big house in a nice neighborhood slammin' and jammin' on some wood floor, Baby. It's a big, old house that is getting a beautiful remodeling job. I want to go see it when they're finished.

That's the house up there.

I'll be taking pics of those finished floors!

Our goal is to have the floors finished by a week from Friday. Alas, we are ready to put down stain and the homeowner is dragging his or her feet on calling us to tell us what color they want. If the guys (crew) call me to say, "we've sanded as much as we can sand and are ready to stain." and the people STILL haven't called me, I'll let the crew go home for the day. We aren't going to pay employees to sit around twiddling their thumbs.

On another note, I may have made another contact with another contracting company!

When I went to the job site to scope things out on day one of this current project I pulled up behind a man who was with a different contracting company doing work in the house across the street. He waved at me when I got out of the car thinking I was there for his project. And, of course, I thought he was Mr. Entrenched Project Manger because I've never met Mr. Entrenched Project Manager face to face. Well, we had a good laugh over the mistaken identity thing and then he asked for my card. I obliged and he gave me his, so...you never know. I might have another contracting company to do some work for.

This makes me very happy.