Young Bulls

[SteveA]

Last week was a little slow and I didn't have work Thur + Fri but on fri  I received a call  from a furn store who had a serious problem with a California King bed assembly.  The customer could not miss anymore work and asked if someone could come Sat.  The manager told me they already had 2 teams of young bulls out there and no one has been able to assemble the bed.  The bed was made in Vietnam - no assembly instructions included - 150 pieces of hardware w/full canopy.  Well, I mentioned I would need a helper and $ 400.00 should do it.  This manager jumped right on it and I thought they seem happy with the cost and I will make up the lost days from this past week. 
Sat morning I said to my Wife - how about taking a ride with me - I have a bed to assemble and need an extra pair of hands. She said sure - off we went.  It was worth every penny and more for this assembly.  What a pain putting this together - up and down 100 times - the side rails with half moon hardware secured with a lock washer, flat washer and nut.  The nut uses their crappy little wrench that's perfectly centered and you're turning the nut 1/5 of the time on each attempt.  The side with the drawers had me working in a 4 inch wide cavity.  4 hours later the bed was assembled.  The customer's Son walked into the room and said wow - I can't believe it's assembled.  Glad it was done I was finally ready to start speaking to people again.  Time for a little humor I said to the Son - I bet when you saw this old couple come to the door you thought my Mom's bed will never be assembled.  The Son a US Army service member looked right at me and replied without a smile or missing a beat - Sir that's exactly what I thought !   God love him but I wanted to deck him for his honesty and observation. 
When we got home I said I'm going to sit in the L/R chair for a few minutes than cut the grass.  She woke me up at dinner time - this old guy was wiped out.
Turns out the bed was designed to be used with or without drawers, with or without box springs.  Depending on how you will use it determines how the wood parts are orientated.
Since it takes so much time to make a hardware connection - if you do it wrong and have to reverse things you loose a half hour.  Assembly directions would have saved me a good hour and a lot of wear and tear on my knees.
SA

[Darren Henry]

I've worked with some of the young bulls furniture stores hire. If I were the customer ( or in this case the son) I would have a lot more faith when I saw some experience show up at the door. Old people know stuff, as the shirt says.