Penny and Bulldog

Wow, what a day! Today was amazing! There are a couple of highlights to my day personally, and also technical highlights to my day as well. The day of drywall mudding in the trusses has been unrivaled until today – today was its equal!

There was a time where I would say that whatever day was THE BEST DAY EVER!! I think I have been around too long now to get quite that excited about any one day anymore, but this was an amazing day. One reason that it rivaled that drywall mudding day was in terms of the intense spirit and positive energy of my crew, enough to get me “nicknaming” a lot of the people there; that gives people a heightened sense of belonging. I have noticed this through mostly construction experience though, and different of the guys in charge will give out nicknames, it doesn’t mean someone is a “favourite”, but often people respond well to those names, especially if they are given and received respectfully, and in good humour. For example, one of the guys today was Bulldog, from Fraser, to a T! Bloody absolutely PERFECT match, right down to the pitch and gruffness/gravel in his voice. So I mentioned that to him about halfway through the morning, and he thought that was pretty cool, and ran with it! One of the women in my crew informed me later that the name I picked was a good one, because this guy had a tattoo of a bulldog on the back of one of his shoulders! LOL, that worked! If that guy is ever onsite again, he is Bulldog, hands-down!

Another name I ran with was this guy who had “Penny” on a sticker above his name for the day, and when I met my crew in the morning I couldn’t read his actual name, but I could read “Penny” very clearly. So I looked at this guy and said “Penny?!?” The whole crew laughed, and so did he. But that name kind of stuck, although I did not push anyone’s nicknames too far. I called everyone by their real names, but also kept the nicknames going throughout the day. It’s hard enough to keep everyone excited, let alone remember 13+ names throughout the day, so you have to have jokes in your back pocket for when you inevitable mess up people’s names! He was also a good worker, he learned how to use the skill saw, and was someone I could depend on to get the job done. Some people will do that; they will allow themselves to take on a job early in the day, and then you can depend on them throughout the day to do their job and contribute their new skill to the work of the project. It also gave this guy his own way to belong to the group.

Another thing I did today was something I “re-learned” after last Saturday; break people up into small groups, and assign them projects, then instead of having to find work for, or follow up on, 13 different people, you only have to find work for/follow up on about 3 or 4 groups. That is a lot easier.

Sometimes I have to give people away. It is NOTHING personal usually. I had to do that with several people today, as my “boss” – as she had adopted the role of – needed people. One not so good thing about today though, is that there were too many people there, and I did not have the opportunity to train one of the people who, as Alison noted, was one of the quiet ones, who may have the most gumption. Hw was always hanging back, and acting like “it’s okay, I’ll just wait”, well then, he was just waiting all day. I felt bad because I didn’t have time to show him anything, so he always got the leftovers. He didn’t step up all day long to be the squeaky hinge, and get in on any of the building groups I had going. But he did get to work with a lot of different groups onsite, and do many different things. Maybe next time. Let’s see how much he puts out if someone takes the time to show him what to do, and recognizes and encourages him.