A couple of weeks back I was in Auckland for three days. I’ve passed through the city regularly over the last decade to travel abroad but otherwise never stayed overnight. This is a benefit of owning a private jet, specifically, if something arises one can nip up in the morning, attend to it and return home the same day without incurring the unavoidable time-consuming horrors implicit with commercial airlines.
Anyway, on this occasion I was in Auckland for two nights and three days for a particular non-commercial reason whereupon events threw up a couple of spare hours. My Auckland office manager George suggested he bring me up to date with some of our CBD office-towers as I’m out of touch.
We began with a 30 storey Queen Street building I wouldn’t have been in for probably two decades. I was all eyes whereupon on one floor I witnessed a miracle. This was on a floor currently being fitted out for a new lessee Government department.
We entered and encountered about 30 workmen, all without exception flat out working at their various trades, across the very large floor. Not one was even holding a cell-phone, let alone gazing or jabbing at it as is normal nowadays on building sites.
Since the advent of the smart phone that was literally a miracle. Only one bloke standing about watching all of this activity held one but he wasn’t actually using it.
The explanation for his inactivity soon became clear, specifically he was a Pom and thus culturally programmed to indolence.
George told me they solely use this company for all their fitout and maintenance work, which amounts to tens of millions of dollars annually with office-towers.
The so-called smart phone has been the greatest threat to productivity ever invented. When I reported this miracle to my Wellington manager he nearly wept with envy. Currently he’s investigating the feasibility of flying them to Wellington and hoteling them, for our larger projects.
8 Comments
Same approach works for us…
Finding quality tradespeople with good work ethnic and charge reasonably is like winning lotto…
Sadly, politicians and secondary teachers have advocated for university education as the only option of getting ahead…
The result is we now have an oversupply of paper pushers, on very average wages and large student loans, who’s objective has been to create more paper work (bureaucracy and extra regulation being their forte) to keep themselves in work…forgetting who pays for their costs…
They have mostly been led down the garden path to keep the academics in power, which politicians specialize in…
The solution is more emphasis on trades being a viable option in the classroom, which could take some time given they have scared males away from this vocation..
Correct…had the same argument with 2x sons teachers who advocated academia whereas both are now accomplished electricians with no debt and bright prospects
Economics will deal to the lack of tradespersons in the workplace. Its around $140 an hour for a skilled mechanic now plus a can of brake kleen every 20 minutes. I went into a trade because of the money 50 odd years ago and never regretted it. Was going to be a vet otherwise.
My wife and I work together selling big earthmovers and all kinds of industrial equipment to buyers all over NZ, some in Australia and The UK and Canada from our base near New Plymouth (Brixton).
One day we stopped for lunch at the five Stags pub in Pirongia and ordered lunch and a coffee each. We were sitting at the table each ‘doing phone’ when the proprietor sidles up and says “I don’t get this, you two have hardly said a word to each other since you got here and just have noses in phone” in a what’s this world coming to tone that is not unfamiliar in this publication.
I levelled my steely gaze at the well meaning gentleman and explained to him that prior to the smartphone we would both have been stuck in front of our PCs in the office. I explained that it was only because of the smartphone that we were able to venture out on such a beautiful day and spend some of our hard earned at his Pub. I might add we turn over about $10m a year between us and have a staff of 0 and the job we do (with our smartphones) used to take a big staff and so big costs that are now saved and shared.
Her indoors is her outdoors in Japan right now using her smartphone to do a live video direct to a client so that he can see and hear the machines running, he can ask questions and get her to zero in on stuff that’s important to him and he can buy it from us all those miles away in confidence.
I was the same as you when I had my Nokia with Bell-South, all I wanted it to do was make and receive calls. I didn’t want all the text and other crap they were bringing in. Now I can’t be without it. Might be useful to actually ask one of the people you see on the job what they’re doing/talking to/looking up etc. and you might get a pleasant revelation.
People do fly Auckland tradespeople to Wellington and Queenstown. My Auckland gib stopper/painter/tiler (one guy) is so good and so reasonably priced, he goes all over the place for work. He has been to Wellington for clients. They have been to Waiheke Island for me and it is cheaper to put them up in the local motel than pay the expensive local trades.
Don’t hold back.
What’s the bet they weren’t kiwis.
I’ve started taking note of the smart phone zombies on the train in and out of Wellington each day. I was pleasantly surprised this morning that in my quarter of the train this morning there was another person reading a book, and two people looking at the view. Normally the rest of the carriage is taken up with the living dead.
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