Minor Win thread - Life is good!

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

That's more like a major win really.

This makes me sound like an old man but......not a lot of younger people want to do construction/laborer sorts of jobs. I get that it's hard but it can be a great career, much more than anything else you would normally get as a teenager etc.

I finally found a kid that wants to work and he works plenty hard. He gets $20 an hour and is worth every penny. He is still young and has a variety of young problems but I hold out hope that we can give him a solid outlook on life. It helps that the guy that works for me was his football coach many years ago too

My new 18 year old tech is working out well.  

The crotchety old man in me wants to say he works hard and shows up to rebel against his millennial parents by actually showing up for work. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

So, earlier this summer i gave a couple of middle school kids an opportunity to make 10 an hour working for me. 

At first, they did ok. Neither had a whole lot of experience, or was taught much by their uninvolved dads. 

Mid summer, one got on the football team, other wound up taking care of younger siblings for the summer. However they came on random weekends and i found stuff for them to do. They learned quickly, and were earning their $10hr. Today, i decided im underpaying them. These two young men are machines and worked my ass into the dirt keeping up with them

Kids these days!

Just got the green light from the finance manager to buy the fallback Challenge car. Looks like we WILL be at this year's Challenge, maybe with a fun old VW, maybe with a super cheap, faster, newer German car. Maybe with both...

I was yammering to the girlfriend about you weirdos and what the Challenge was. She asked when it was and it turns out we both have that weekend off. She asked if I wanted to go and then asked if it was ok if she went too. Uh yeah, I'd love for you to go with me!

So I got registered, purchased banquent tickets and booked a room at the host hotel.

Should be a fun weekend! 

This last weekend my wife played bass at two gigs, rode her bike 12 miles and did a bunch of house work.  One year ago she was in and out of the ER trying to figure out why most of her body was numb and she had no energy.

In reply to APEowner :

That is fantastic news!  Good for her.

Things happened today

TunaMom is a textbook narcissist. The drives people apart and puts herself in between everyone kind.

A few years ago Tunasister and I patched up over, what essentially was absolutely nothing, and pushed TunaMom out to the healthy-boundaries line.

Tunasister moved closer to me, around 20 min drive. She got married and just had her first kid a few weeks back. Tunawife offered to watch Tunanephew so Tunasister could go back to work (they are dual income by necessity right now).

Tunasister insisted on paying for the childcare.

Tunawife and I decide to split the payment five ways. 1/5 goes to a 529 for Tunanephew which we opened, and 4/5 to a 529 for my four kids. We're stopping the nonsense at this generation. Tunawife and Tunasister get along really well, and Tunakids love having Tunanephew around during the day.

Confirmed with FlL that his LQ9 is still up for grabs, and he'll go ahead and get the truck closer to ready to come in and pull it!

Super cool.

In reply to classicJackets (FS) :

Courier swap?

The seat on the new old truck is gone. Gone from 18 years of hungry butt cheeks nibbling at it. At the Pick-n-Pull 50% off extravaganza last weekend,  I  strike out on seats. They  are all haggard,  same as mine.

Ah, but the passenger cushion always has less butt time. So I find the matching candidate and liberate it.

I'm working on it today and figure out the cushions are handed. Left side is not the right side. Not everything matches up. 2 push pins have no holes. A drillbit says there are. A couple of hogrings later and my seat is 89.4% better than before.

Total cost? $5.00

In reply to Appleseed :

Cool.  Same reason the driver's seat in my Beetle is the passenger seat from a Neon.  Also, new old truck?  Build thread?

At least I have cell phone insurance. My s8 active has become extremely unreliable after only two years (it was a reman).

Asurian is sending me a new s9 fir only $112 bucks. 

And, i think I made my first new motor sale order after only four days on the new job!

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Congrats!  Somebody told me once - you need to be Superman the first 90 days.  

Come in early and stay late.   Eat a sandwich driving to the next customer (check your teeth B4 going in) - screw lunch.  Keep your truck organized and spotless.  Take catalogs home and study them.  Check in with your inside contact often.  Ask a lot of questions. Bring the boss lemon drops.  After 90 days they stop watching and let you be the Saleman you want to be.  

I had a really good day at work today and don't have anybody to brag about it to so you will have to indulge me a little. 

I was given an unexpected promotion today.  I'm a maintenence technician at a manufacturing facility.  7 days shy of three years with this company and I've moved from off the street entry level position of JR tech all the way to the top as a maintenance tech III. I had no history of industrial maintenance work.  I have no tech school education besides three years of auto mechanics in high-school. But it feels like a natural fit for me.  And it's nice to be rewarded for doing good work instead of just having more and more work piled on like in my previous places of work.  

I give the car hobby a large part of the credit.  Understanding mechanical,  electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic systems and fabrication from a lifetime spent playing with cars has directly translated to my ability to earn a very good living doing something that I'm very good at.  

I guess my education was formed in the pages of Car Craft, Hot Rod. Peterson's 4-wheel & Off-Road in my youth and then later on GRM the magazine and last but not least all of the free education I've received here on this forum. I'm forever grateful for that.

So thank all of you smart mother berkeleyers for helping me to get to where I am. 

In reply to Nick Comstock :

Congrats man, that is awesome. 

In reply to Nick Comstock :

That pretty cool - congrats on your promo.  

Maintenance guys are my favorite customers - they are realistic when you explain problems. 

Once I brought a guy the wrong hydraulic adapters and they were nice to me and said they'd keep them - you never know when you might need them.  

I don't mind filling the excursion at these prices

RevRico said:

I don't mind filling the excursion at these prices

I think I need a tanker truck of that

I made a casual comment on YouTubes to the song Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes. Paul Simon commented back thanking me. Yes, THAT Paul Simon.

Datsun310Guy said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Congrats!  Somebody told me once - you need to be Superman the first 90 days.  

Come in early and stay late.   Eat a sandwich driving to the next customer (check your teeth B4 going in) - screw lunch.  Keep your truck organized and spotless.  Take catalogs home and study them.  Check in with your inside contact often.  Ask a lot of questions. Bring the boss lemon drops.  After 90 days they stop watching and let you be the Saleman you want to be.  

That's solid advice.  I will keep doing it! My goal is to be back where I was at. Mental health financially within a year, beyond in two. It really seems that showing up at the customers frequently is the only way to go at this well. 

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

We had a 40 year sales guy that always showed up.  BP Amoco in Whiting, Indiana needs hoses delivered on Saturday morning?  No problem and they became a $1,000,000 account.  Customers forget so you need to show up a lot.  

In reply to Nick Comstock :

Congrats. It's a great trade with good pay, I've been doing it for almost 40 years, and I know my automotive background has helped. Any chance you'll get a license out of it? 

Datsun310Guy said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

We had a 40 year sales guy that always showed up.  BP Amoco in Whiting, Indiana needs hoses delivered on Saturday morning?  No problem and they became a $1,000,000 account.  Customers forget so you need to show up a lot.  

First, congratulations on starting the new gig and making your first sale!

Further to Datsun310guys point: make yourself available, be easy to get in touch with.  Always answer the phone, return any calls /texts/ emails quickly.   “I don’t know but I’ll find out and get back to you” is a perfectly reasonable answer.  

Be yourself, put in the time and success is almost inevitable.  My final nugget for this morning: remember that while it may a problem for your customer for you it’s an opportunity.  You’ve got this!