This happened in 2017 when I was an apprentice electrician in New York City. As anyone in construction can tell you, the apprentice is the one sent out to get the coffee for everyone on the job, and as I was one of only two on the job site and was fresh in the business, I was the one who was picked to get it most of the time. Every day, when the work day started, I would go to each of the other workers, get their order (if any), and then later pick it up for break, bringing it down to where we were all working to eat together. Or, in the case of the foreman and sub-foreman, I’d leave it in the shanty upstairs if he was going to be up there.

The foreman overall wasn’t a bad guy, but he tended to run a bit hot and cold. Most days he was nice, friendly, understanding, chatty, and overall a good guy. Some days, however, the stress would get to him and he’d get a bit angry and snappy. And of course, I wouldn’t know this until my first interaction of the day when I asked for his coffee order. On those days, he’d generally respond with something along the lines of…

Foreman: “What is it with you and coffee? Why are you asking me about coffee? I don’t want to hear about coffee! Go away! Go away!”

It didn’t happen too often, but it got annoying being yelled at for doing my job. Usually, I’d get his coffee order later, but one day it took me asking him three times before this exchange happened.

Foreman: “Why are you asking me about coffee?! Stop asking me about it! [Coworker], what is the one thing I say I never want to hear about?”

Coworker: “…dust masks?”

Foreman: “Dust masks and coffee! I never want to hear anything about them again! Go away!”

So, I shrugged, said okay, and walked off. I didn’t talk to him again about it that day.

Fast forward a few days to Monday. I was sitting downstairs with the other workers at break as we ate our sandwiches and drank coffee. The foreman and sub-foreman showed up.

Foreman: “Hey, [My Name].”

Me: “Hey, [Foreman].”

Foreman: “So, ah, I take it my coffee is upstairs in the shanty?”

I pointed at the sub-foreman.

Me: “His is.”

Foreman: “Well, where’s mine?”

Me: *Smugly* “What is the one thing you told me you never wanted to hear about ever again?”

There was a long pause.

Foreman: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Me: “I just did.”

Another pause.

Foreman: “Go get the [several pieces of very heavy pipe that take two people to lift] and move it from [Sub-floor 8] to [Sub-floor 2].”

And then he walked away. He probably thought he was punishing me since it was nothing but stairs to get up those floors, but I just laughed as the other apprentice had already asked me to help him do that anyway. 

I left that job site a month or two later, but the foreman never snapped at me about coffee again, and he always calmly gave me his order.

The dumbest thing I’ve ever heard at work actually came from my mouth. It was when I first started with the cleaning company I’m with now. A lot of times, if we approach a construction site soon enough, we can win the bid for the post-construction clean-up, which is a nice score.

I had a friend of mine who was in the sanitation business bringing me around the Manhattan area, and I’m a big guy, but the situations were just nuts. It was so loud, you had to yell, but you didn’t want them to think you were yelling at them, so you had to tread lightly. Construction workers are rough and short-tempered; if they think you’re yelling at them instead of just yelling over the noise, they go nuts.

I walked up with my friend to the General Contractor and he introduced me. The first words out of my mouth:

Me: “Hey, cool, so are you guys building up or…?”

They both looked at me like, “Or what?!”

In my defense, I had just read an article about earthscrapers — the opposite of skyscrapers — but nonetheless, when we got back in the car, my friend turned to me and said:

Friend: “Don’t you ever ask somebody if they’re building up again. You sound like an idiot.”

I learned my lesson that day.

Parking has always been kind of an issue at my workplace. We’re landlocked and cannot, per city ordinance, expand out anymore to add stuff. We do have a chunk of area on the northwest corner of the lot that has room to add a small parking area, but that area of the lot is on a hill that slopes down toward the building. In the lawn, there is a drain with a big metal grate that sits at the bottom of the hill for rain and snow melt to go.

On the northwest side of the building is a side entrance that workers can use to come into the warehouse and packing area. Ownership figured adding some additional parking at that spot would let some of the packers park right by an entrance and they wouldn’t have to walk very far.

Ownership and the maintenance team worked together for a while. They all drew up a plan that would best fit for a parking area in the available space we had, and ownership pulled the trigger on getting the work done. A few months back, they got some bids and went with a construction company that would be able to handle all our needs.

Fast forward a few months. Construction has begun.

For the past few days, a construction crew has been in.

Day 1: They’ve been digging up the ground, grading it, and making things nice and smooth. The plans for the construction work call for them to dig up the drain in the lawn, fill it in, and pour blacktop over it.

Day 2: A new long concrete curb is poured in and left to set.

Day 3: The crew comes back and puts down the new blacktop, getting it nice and smooth, and things look great!

Work is done, the new parking area is finished, and now things have to set for a few days before anyone can officially park on it.

Here’s where it gets funny… on a sad and pathetic level.

No one, out of the eight to ten people who had their hands in the drawing up of the new parking area, thought about water runoff. The new parking area has an entrance driveway and an exit driveway, both of which slope downhill into the parking area. The ground right up to the entrance has been poured with new concrete and blacktop, and the area was graded to slope directly to the side entrance. This leaves water from rain or melting snow to build up and run into the building.

This $20,000 to $30,000 job was set up to fail because maintenance and ownership did not think to include a drain for water runoff. They had the construction company remove and fill in the original runoff drain but never had them add a new one.

Now, maintenance has to dig up new concrete and blacktop and then dig through the grass leading to the closest drain-off point. We’ll need to pay for the construction company to come back out and pour new concrete again and fix the blacktop.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I’m not an engineer, and I don’t work in construction, but I know why roads have a crown in them, and I understand why there’s a slight downward grade in parking lots that leads to a drain. You need a spot for water runoff to go!

Back in the 1960s, my father-in-law took early retirement. He and my mother-in-law set about building their own house in rural Wales and lived in a small caravan on the site. He hired bricklayers and roofers but did everything else himself with help from my husband and me.

When he reached the stage of needing the interior walls plastered, he asked around but could not find a plasterer who was willing or available to do the job. Then, one day, a man came to the door and offered his services, saying he was a plasterer who had been made redundant and fallen on hard times, and he and his little dog were sleeping in a nearby farm’s barn.

[Father-In-Law] was a bit sceptical about his story, but [Mother-In-Law] looked at the dog and realised that, although the man looked scruffy, the dog was well-fed and happy. She persuaded [Father-In-Law] to give him a chance, so he was told to plaster one small room as a trial.

He made a great job of that room and was hired to do the rest of the house, while my [Mother-In-Law] made sure he had one good meal each day. With the money the plasterer made, he was able to find somewhere to stay. Following recommendations from my in-laws, he was able to get more work, and he went from strength to strength, all thanks to [Mother-In-Law] noticing that he had taken good care of his little dog through his rough times.

This story is part of our Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

2022 Roundup: The Best Feel-Good Stories Of The Year!

Read the next Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) story!

Read the Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

I work at a sign and vinyl application franchise. We do a lot of corporate signage, but occasionally, we get unique orders for use of our vinyl stock.

I answered the phone one day for a client whose business was in glass installation. He explained that he needed a reorder of a product he’d gotten in June: a three-by-five-foot protective vinyl application to a matching-sized pane of glass. 

We went through a few details and he mentioned that this time, the glass they’d bring in for production would be nearly an inch thick.

He explained that the client to whom he’d be supplying the glass had the pane as part of a glass coffee table. And three months after they’d installed the first one, an employee sat on top of it and completely cracked it, completely ruining it.

I kept my voice steady for the rest of the call — the poor guy sounded so dejected — but I couldn’t stop giggling at the thought of some poor employee finding out the hard way that you shouldn’t sit on glass coffee tables.