The Shelf From Hell: Why Employing People Sucks Part 5
We've recently been sharing our experiences here (links at the bottom for those just tuning into this series) in regards to this shelf both to vent and to share valuable life lessons to be learned about difference in mindset and thus life quality. Our local friend we've referred to as our compadre in these posts is a young low income Mexican man with a wife and a child a third of his age. It seemed like he was doing his best to make a life for himself and his family, so we hired him to help us around the farm to start really getting things done.
This shelf was realistically the last straw, where he spent a few weeks total on what should have taken a couple of days. All we needed was two large but simple shelves to hold plants, what he attempted to deliver was something apparently too complex for his abilities. His stated life dream was to be a carpenter and he was amature at best, which was perfect for what we needed. We did not need or want him to spend days on days notching wood pieces (sometimes with no purpose) to make it look fancier. We wanted his fast but functional work and he was more interested in milking the time clock than finishing the job. He even admitted that at a point.
John eventually finished it with just a few hours of work. It's not perfect but it doesn't need to be and some of the worst imperfections were done by our compadre as part of his efforts to make it nice. And it is a really nice shelf, but that's just not what we needed.
The shelf is finished and in place but honestly sits empty as we've lacked time and motivation. With how much we spent to build it, it's going to take a lot of microgreens sales just to break even on the shelf which is a bit annoying to say the least. It's a bit of a sore spot, sadly.
But it's here, and it's ready for when we're ready for it and that's all that matters now.
Stay tuned as we will soon plant things and share exactly what we were planning on doing with this shelf, which is just another way to make our farm systems more efficient. We've been working with nothing for so long that it's been an interesting process learning to farm here, and with the proper tools.
If you'll notice, one leg is shorter than the rest. It's also too tall and will be top heavy unless we trim the bottom of it.
So yeah, thanks for following this journey with us! For those just joining, check out these links below for the other posts to share the whole story behind this mammoth shelf we've been avoiding.
The Shelf From Hell, Part 1
The Shelf From Hell Part 2
The Shelf From Hell, Part 3
The Shelf From Hell Part 4
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Thanks for following and supporting us, until next time!
When I was a child, my parents used to grow lots of onions and we had a similar construction to store them after the harvest.
But the genious thing was, each shelf was seperate, so two people could carry one full of onions, after we had them out in the sun to dry off a bit, bring it to the storage room and stack them on top of each other.
thats great
am also a carpenter...he tried but to be perfect on carpentry or furniture one needs constant practice focus because carpentry is all about creativity.
nice post
Glassblowing is the same way, so I understand your point completely. We were hoping more for a carpenter with your understanding than one with his.
Maybe he is camera shy or a wanted man and got very nervous with so many photos. Looks like he could not place a beam without a photo being taken.
You sure ended up with the most photographed shelf ever made. Let's hope it lives for many years and displays plenty of micro greens so you can recover your outlays. Looking forward to meeting you guys next February and drinking some kombucha.
Yeah, the thing with the photos is interesting, that's how you percieve it from afar. I actually did my best to take photos when he wasn't around, because he was always trying to make it about him and get me to take more pictures of him. Look at the expression on his face in other posts, it's plain as day. He was posing.
It will last long enough for us to make some profits off of it, but being a wooden shelf in the tropics itll only last a few years before its eaten. Which is crazy.
Cool shelf :D I m wondering: did you pay him by the hour or did you set a fix price for the shelf once done?
It was one of those things where he was supposed to be a general laborer and this was just one of his jobs, supposed to be better suited for him because its supposed to be his craft. Doing the fixed price does nothing but make it take longer with him in particular, we found. We were hoping for better with the daily rate. Turns out he's not intersted in doing much work, even if it's not difficult.
What a shame. Glad you got it done and over with.