Contractor’s Corner: Hilarious and tragic tales from the field – March 2025
By Dave Stafford
Many a day has started out right only to end in absolute chaos, loss of reputation and money. And some weeks were made better through a good laugh or two along the way. Rather than the usual serious column of how to fix things, maintain profit or solve a dilemma, here are some short stories about funny or tragic events over the years.
“LANDING LIGHTS” IN A CORRIDOR
I got a call from a well-mannered client for whom we had just installed carpet, one area of which featured a 100’ corridor with carpet-inset borders.
“Dave, I like the overall job, but our main corridor looks it has landing lights on the right side. We didn’t pay for that, did we?’”
I had no idea what he might be talking about, so I arranged a quick visit and learned that when the installer had cut the carpet for borders, he included the selvedge edge in white, undyed carpet in the outer portion of the border. With the patterned inset carpet, solid-color borders and corridor lighting, it did appear as a long, unbroken line of lights.
Our inventive fix was a handful of magic markers “dyeing” the white border color to match the border!
THE “DISAPPEARING” LEVELING COMPOUND
In a large high-rise office building near Washington, D.C., a section of an upper floor was being converted into a media room for televised conferences. A contract requirement was laser-leveling the floor. Shot blasting was done along with other minor repairs, and then a cementitious self-leveling flooring (Ardex) was pumped into the area. But no one had noticed a 3/4” to 1” hole in the center of the floor. (Perhaps someone had just stuffed some paper or fabric into the hole, but that’s probably being kind.)
As they pumped product, a depression was noted near the center of the area, so they added more of the pour in the hopes of leveling the area. It looked like it was working for a while. However, the floor coverage was lower than expected, so the crew chief rechecked his calculations and noticed that they still had that troublesome area near the center of the room.
“I wonder if we have a leak or something?”
Yes, the Ardex material was slowly making its way through the hole to the floor below.
A fast-set-type floor patch fixed the hole, and they continued with the job. Alas, that’s not the end of the story.
An executive walked into his office on Monday to find his desk covered with “a hard mountain of cured cement patch from above.” I understand his screaming could be heard throughout the floor.
“YOUR INSTALLERS LAID MORE THAN CARPET”
This was a straightforward, after-hours re-carpet job where furniture was moved, old carpet was taken up and new carpet replaced. A generous amount of time was given for completing each area. However, the progress seemed overly slow after the first week.
There was no issue with carpet take-up or floor prep, and the new carpet looked great. The crew chief just said, “The job is taking longer.”
The facility manager said, “I wondered about that and found a couple of our cleaners on the night crew were not getting their work done, either.”
According to the interior cameras and “other evidence,” the story came out. Two members of the installation team had created “sparks” with the night cleaning crew and made use of the nice, soft new carpet to entertain themselves during the night hours. When confronted, the crew chief admitted his part and was replaced. The job was finished but not without grumbling from the client: “I didn’t expect to pay for romance on the job.”
THE GYM FLOOR NIGHTMARE
During summer break, a school had bid out the sanding and refinishing of its gym floor. All went well with the primer coats of epoxy. This was when solvent-based sealers were still being used. After final screening and tack-rags had removed the dust, the application of moisture-cured polyurethane was applied. It seemed the thick sealer was taking longer than usual to set up.
The crew decided to have lunch, leaving the most junior member to watch the area. By this time, the crew member had been in the space long enough to become intoxicated by the fumes from the sealer. He decided to open both sets of gym doors to “get some fresh air into the area and encourage drying.” In flew a cloud of mosquitos and other bugs, which promptly died, falling into the curing polyurethane and becoming embedded in the surface!
When the project manager returned and the crew member sobered up, he was fired-a complete debacle, since the entire floor now had to be stripped, cleaned and then recoated.
THE LAWYER WHO DIDN’T LISTEN
There always seems to be one on every installation job: an individual so self-absorbed that they’re oblivious to what’s going on around them. In this case, it was the type of lawyer we all love to hate: arrogant, pedantic and a poor listener.
Mark, our crew chief, told him, “Go around, we are spreading glue in this area. That’s why we piled up several toolboxes to block the area.”
The lawyer stepped over the toolboxes, intent upon walking down the corridor. He took three steps and began doing an imitation of someone on ice. The more he tried to right himself, the worse it became. With a final windmill-like pirouette, he crashed to the floor. And it became even funnier as he tried to stand up. Mark and the crew broke out laughing. He was covered in glue from head to toe, front and back. As we heard later, suit, shoes, shirt and ego had serious damage!
Mark made a full report the next morning to me, still chuckling. I was laughing too, until I got a call from the lawyer demanding that we pay for a suit, tie and new shoes “because your crew created an unsafe work area.” When I tried to counter, he said, “Yes, some boxes were piled up in that area, but ‘no yellow caution tape was employed.’ How much will it cost you to go to court? Because it won’t cost me anything.’”
Gritting my teeth, I wrote the check to cover his apparel and sooth his ego. But I still laugh about the description of his antics on the wet glue.
RIGHT CARPET AND BUILDING, WRONG FLOOR
Usually, a paperwork error is caught through various checks and balances. In this case, the “3” looked like an “8” to the new crew we had employed. They showed up at the right building, went to the eighth floor and specified location, and unfortunately for us, the layout was virtually identical.
As the work ticket directed, they removed all furniture, ripped up the carpet-over-pad and tack strips, direct-glued the carpet they’d been given, replaced the furniture and left the building. It was not until the next day that we heard from a furious facility manager, “You guys went to the wrong room, ripped up new wool carpet and pad in the office of our vice president, then glued down the commercial-grade carpet meant for a training room.”
We continued to do business with this building manager, but he never let us forget that costly mistake. Of course, we had to replace the carpet and make amends.
THE VCT THAT WAS LAID UPSIDE DOWN
In a multipurpose room, new VCT was to be used to freshen the look of bare concrete. The crew unloaded the cartons of tile, did some minor floor prep and got busy spreading adhesive. While the glue tacked up, the crew chief went to pick up lunch for the team and told a crew member to “go ahead a start laying tile on the grid lines.” He was pleased that the job had been completed when he returned, so he gave it a cursory glance and judged the job finished.
This might have been the end of the story, except the facility manager complained that the new area “was difficult to scrub, and the floor finish didn’t seem to give much of a gloss and was a ‘bitch’ to buff.” An unusual complaint, so we went to check the area. All the tile was installed upside down!
“The color is good, we like it, but I wish it were easier to maintain,” the facility manager said.
With some tips and tricks, we solved that issue with the maintenance chief (and slipped him a big tip), and all was well.
THE LOW BID, BAD FLOOR PREP, $100,000+ PROBLEM
Rory lost out on a bid to replace the flooring in a large school cafeteria to the general contractor’s sub, but the school’s facility chief lost no time in calling Rory when he began having problems with the floor.
“Ed, as you’ll remember, we didn’t get that job. The general contractor did that with someone else.”
“Oh,” said Ed, “I didn’t know that. Can you at least help me diagnose the problem?”
Rory said, “Sure, I’ll take a look with you.”
As Rory and Ed looked at the area, which was beginning to resemble an undulating intersection of various pathways, he suggested bringing in a third-party independent flooring inspector to avoid any bias. That uncovered the following: moisture testing was apparently not done and the concrete substrate showed high levels. The application of self-leveling compound to correct substrate irregularities was done without the required primer. And the adhesive had not been allowed to tack properly, so there was poor adhesion with the flooring.
The recommendation was a complete tear-out, shot blasting, application of a special membrane to deal with moisture, then replacement of the floor. The school sued the general contractor, and Ed had Rory do the job this time, rather than the general contractor.
SAVINGS OF $3,000 CAUSES $1.2+ MILLION IN COSTS
One of the horror stories of my career as a flooring contactor began with me selling some 20,000 yards of carpet tile to a government agency. The government buyer was forced to go with a small-business set-aside and awarded the installation contract to a small, disadvantaged contractor installer. This installer had limited knowledge of carpet tile and working with systems furniture and took the job too cheap.
To save some money-estimated to be about $3,000-he found the least expensive pressure-sensitive carpet tile, without regard to the manufacturer’s requirements. Unfortunately for all, his choice was incompatible with the carpet tile backing (PVC) and caused “plasticizer migration.” This is when the carpet tile begins to dissolve and slip and slide, causing peaking of the edges, which in turn causes a tripping hazard and instability with the tile unit.
To cure the problem, the installer added even more adhesive. This did not work and exacerbated the adhesion issue. At that point, this became “my problem.”
“You have sold us defective carpet tile, and we want you to fix it.”
The manufacturer, a third-part independent inspector and I visited job, determined the problem was the adhesive used, and informed the arrogant and upset buyer. He wasted no time in hiring his own inspector, who reached the same conclusion.
In a slightly calmer tone, he asked how this situation could be fixed. I explained (and forwarded a copy of the inspection report) that all carpet tile would have to be removed, the floor area be scraped and cleaned to remove adhesive residue, then sealed. The old carpet tile could not be reused, so new carpet tile had to be purchased and installed while dealing with some 150,000 square feet of area occupied by systems furniture.
Then the threats began in earnest, to which the manufacturer and I replied, “It was your decision to hire the installer, not ours. He is at fault.”
I heard the installer went bankrupt. The client ended up re-purchasing carpet tile and paying for the labor to do cleanup and complete installation, estimated to be $1.2+ million. The buyer was apparently transferred or fired.
Bad news always travels fast, so the details of this saga rippled through our region. And it took up my time, added to my stress for almost a year and forever remains in my memory.
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