electric mist

drained and... not

These last two weeks have been productive. I have finally finished with all of the paperwork for a very large (business) project that I loathed like the smell of a thousand rancid skunks, and I sent it in today to the person who needs to review it. I did more than she asked for originally in the hopes of not only resolving the problems which necessitated the damned paperwork to begin with, but which would, I hope, prevent her from needing anything else from me. I suspect she probably will, and if and when the problem ever gets resolved, I'll probably talk about the horrific experience then, but for now, I am just going to bask in the glow of being done. DONE. done done done done done. And let me just add, fucking done.

I also finished all the reams of paperwork that were required to wrap up a big Federal job we'd had, and it almost competed with the thousand-rancid-skunk award, except that at least by finishing this one, we should get the retainer the big honking suckass General Contractor owes us. We almost never work as a sub-contractor and now I remember why: total stupidity of gargantuan contractors who will not spend the dollar extra an hour to hire someone who actually knows what a "payable" is, or even, dare I hope, what a computer is. This company won this huge Federal job and approached us to bid the concrete work, and it looked so alluring and lucrative when it was first presented to us, and it was a bit like thinking you're dating someone sweet and caring and totally in sync only to find out that really, they are a demented Gollum-like creature who only wants to lure you in long enough to kill you. The job itself was complex, but they made it worse. One of the things you have to do when you do GC work for the government is turn in who your sub-contractors will be (and their resumes) when you bid; when you're awarded the job, you're supposed to stick with those subs or substitute others with equal or greater qualifications. In this case, the GC didn't -- they kept us, but they subbed others who just weren't up to par. They go into the bid process with one bid and then shop around after winning the job to see if they can find someone to beat that sub's price, thus pocketing the difference. Several times the whole job shut down because of a sub-contractor who couldn't get his act together. One time, at two a.m., the painting sub-contractor (whose job was a round-the-clock, 24-hour shift thing) dragged up all their equipment and left without notice... yeah, that was fun. So anyway, the job is done, and all of the insane paperwork is done and turned in and approved and wow, we may even get paid (which these people have a bad rep for trying to find devious ways to back-charge their subs so they can keep the retainers owed to the subs... but we've been beating them at that game since we had a heads up about their methods early on.)

So yay me. Two massive head-aches gone, lots lower stress levels.

As for the other business, the new one, things seem to be moving forward, though very slowly since the partner is recovering from the heart surgery. Honestly, I hadn't wanted to ask him anything, and we'd visited him without letting him talk about it; he still seems to think we're moving forward, though, so I guess that's good.

Posted by toni at May 20, 2004 09:11 PM