building

Oh man, seeing an unruly short-sighted person get their comeuppance just feels some kind of right. You'd think that given the context, and the fact that they were dealing with a big time, six figure client, that they'd have been more professional, but no they put their pride first. Yeah, they put their pride first and ended up paying the ultimate price. Definitely a valuable lesson. 

Sure, you're allowed some creative license when it comes to designing a living space, but some of the unprofessional "not my job" moments and low budget solutions involved in building that place can get to be a bit much. It's hard to choose between having a permanent kitchen toilet or a permanent unmovable rafter ladder. What about a repurposed jug door handle? No?

Building a house is hard. Or at least it seems like it when you see all the "not my job" moments of dubious professionalism that go into building anything. People really have a knack for putting toilets in inconvenient places. Who knows, maybe it's nice to have a toilet at the top of the stairs? It becomes a place to survey your domain. Either way, there's no project that goes on without a few moments of professional ineptitude.

No matter how confident you are, it's always a good idea to get a second eyes on a project. "Hey, what's with this stairway to nowhere" they might say. Or "did you realize that when your van door slides open it condenses Butter Salesman into Butt Man." There are more stupid design failures out there than you could shake a stick at, and even that stick might have some fatal flaws. These design failures deserve some blame.

Sure, doing your job the right way is fine and all, but you save some much time and energy by doing things completely improperly. Sure, these become "not my job" moments of failure, but think of all the time and effort saved when you install a gutter system in a way that conveniences no one. These "not my job" moments of dubious professionalism are making it easier for some of us.

We don't really think about bricks. In a world where new buildings are steel and transparent, the brick has become a symbol of rugged pragmatism of days past. But in the right hands, a few bricks can become a highly aesthetic thing of satisfying perfection. They're graceful. Very unlike these "not my job" moments of incompetent construction or these OSHA safety failures.

A whole lot of us have looked at some fixture in our home and thought "man, it wouldn't be too difficult to gussie that thing up a bit. I could borrow Doug's saw and crack that baby open. Maybe throw some extra pipes in there. Yeah, I could have a super toilet." Most of us who have that thought realize very soon after that it's not as easy we might think it is. The rest of us go for it and end up with some low budget DIY engineering solutions.

When it comes to construction work, it helps to have an idea of the end result in mind. Without that you get some impressively unprofessional "not my job" moments. There's pipes going every which way, extremely inconvenient toilets, and unsafe maneuvers being attempted all over the place.

There are some things, like bulging water damage that just hurt to see. There are other unsafe maneuvers that we have more control over, like jacking up a car with another car, that also hurt to see. It's a mess of improper execution and incompetent construction out there, as creative or convenient as it may seem at the time

In a world where people are constantly asked to make new things, some of those things are not going to work out exactly as planned. That means we get some design fails that were someone's one job. Sometimes it's an accidentally filthy sign, sometimes it's a toilet that drains to nowhere. There are infinite ways to end up with design failures that don't quite cut it.

People may not have a whole lot of money, but what they do have is creativity and ingenuity. And sometimes they have more of that than decent sense. What results are gutters made out of old boots, precarious ladder formations and a whole lot of other impressive and dumb low budget DIY solutions.

People want work done fast, cheap and well. Unfortunately, all three of those are never going to happen at the same time. There are some impressively unprofessional "not my job" moments that slip through when no one's looking. But hey, it's better to get the job done-ish than not done at all, right?

Karen's out for blood after her own kids drew all over her walls. Given a completely reasonable option, she chose to not listen and hound this building supervisor on vacation. That choice netted her nothing but the toddler. For some more outrageous Karen-ness, here's a bridezilla Karen who ended up looking like a Pauper at her own wedding and some more unfortunate times people went full Karen.

What would the world be without impressively unprofessional "not my job" moments? Probably more efficient. It just so happens not every task is as easy as we'd like it to be, but that doesn't stop us from putting in the minimum amount of effort. There's staircases to nowhere, misspelled everything, and a straight up general lack of responsibility. Not bad.

Designing stuff is hard, and it's conducive to all kinds of design fails. If it's a sign, you have to check for embarrassing spelling mistakes. If it's a building, you have to make sure there aren't any pipes going straight through any staircases. People are pretty good at their jobs in general, but there are still a lot of impressively unprofessional "not my job" moments.