Poor Communication Skills

 

It doesn't matter how smart you are if you don't communicate well.  This also includes simply being accessible and responsive to clients and co-workers.

This guy at his next job interview: 

        HR:  I see you majored in communication. 

 
        This guy: No, miscommunication.  

        HR:  But it says on your resume, "Communication".  

        This guy:  See?

Gotta Be More Responsive!

The supreme challenge of our time: how to be available and provide great service without being a slave to your inbox.  Can it be done?  A couple of years ago, a 4 hour response time seemed to make most email senders happy.  Today it's under an hour.  At the rate this is going, in a couple of years a response will be expected before the email is received.  

For another related "heckuva rush" cartoon click here. 

I Said GLU-lam!

George Bernard Shaw famously said, "The single best problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

I've worn out countless red pens marking up engineers' memos so they actually say what the engineer thinks it says.  It's like there's a crystal clear picture of exactly what the engineer's thinking in an imaginary bubble floating over his head as he writes.  Unfortunately, that picture can get lost in translation and there may be an entirely different picture in the imaginary bubble floating over the head of the person reading it.  When this happens, you get situations like these (click here).

One helpful rule of communication I learned at home as a kid:  "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".

Big Enough Fer The Both of Us

If only they'd built those old west towns a bit bigger, there might have been a lot fewer gunfights. 

I can see it now:  Two rough characters square off at twenty paces in the middle of town wearing tool belts and slinging nail guns.  "This here town just ain't big enough fer the both of us", one would say, "so me 'n my gang'll start buildin' over there and you'n yer gang c'n build over here." 

It's Just a Simple...

Anyone who prepares estimates or fee proposals knows this scenario: You get an RFP for a potential project with a vague description (and, if you're lucky, a rough sketch) and you're asked to provide a fixed all-inclusive precise unwavering fee for all necessary services to see this nebulous project through to completion.

In early 1998, we were asked to quote a structural fee for "just a simple 4,500 square foot restaurant". Little did we know the eventual complexity of the project or that the architect was "going for an award on this one" - a fact we discovered during repeated changes during design. In the end, the project turned out very well, the architect won his award...

...and our final job cost was about 10 times our fee.

I Did It Just Like You Showed

This one was inspired by my partner Scott Jones who sent me a photo of a project where the contractor thought the delta cloud on the drawings meant to cut a cloud-shaped hole through the floor slab.

That's How It's Shown

A good set of construction documents can help make a project go smoothly. A confusing set (or a confused contractor) can cause some real trouble.

For more cartoons related to drawings and specs, click here.

Might Not Be the Latest Drawings...

The inspiration for this came from a large project where the contractor created several headaches for himself and for us because he was building from an old set of drawings.

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When this cartoon was originally drawn,s I called the cartoon contractor Terry (coincidence?) instead of Bob.

A Surprise Visit From OSHA

I thought it would be hilarious to show a superintendent who misunderstood a phone message tipping him off about a surprise visit from OSHA standing on the job site trying to explain to the straight-faced OSHA inspectors why he's dressed for the beach.

Good-Size Red Heads

Everyone who knows what a Red Head is can appreciate this one. Inspiration came as I was thinking of a time back in the early 90s when I was standing on a narrow steel beam about 150 feet off the ground inside the central shaft of the under-construction Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. I was watching a couple of iron workers install bolts to repair some misplaced anchors that held up the end of the beam I was standing on. To them, they were just putting in a couple of "good-size" Red Heads.

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Click here if you don't know what a Red Head is