Quickly Built Disaster Areas

by sass_my_frass 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • sass_my_frass
    sass_my_frass

    In a former life I worked on 27 quickly-built kingdom hall sites. I got onto the 'plasterworks' team just as I turned 16, yippee!! Over the years we got the schedule pretty tight, in at 2:30 pm on Saturday afternoon, put the panels up. One guy on our team was a licensed electrician but never told the overseers because he knew that the work done there was highly dodgy and he didn't want any electrical fires being traced back to his ticket. Being young nimble and stupid I got the insulation job - fibre glass batts. Once we were issued itch-prevention suits but they were pretty ineffective in the 45C ceiling. I've heard that these days they restrict numbers on site and the only vacancies for sisters to flake around handing out cordial and cake are for the real hotties, and as I was genuinely working in my genuine steel-capped boots I always resented the girls who wore makeup on site. (To my credit, they're the ones who got married as soon as they'd finished school).

    Legend has it that once, a non-witness construction professional was passing the site and was so impressed by the efficiency that he tried for months to negotiate to get our guys to build stuff for him. They quoted him as saying "you don't understand, I want to pay your people to build for me" and themselves as saying "No, you don't understand, these people only work for Jehovah". I guess it wouldn't have worked out for the guy if he'd also had to pay for qualified tradies in a currency other than guilt, babes and sandwiches. Or maybe the insurance would have pushed him over the line. I can't think of any other reason why WBTS hasn't ever tried to contract out their slave labour.

  • Crumpet
    Crumpet

    LOL! Sass - good point!

  • penny2
    penny2

    Wow, you were involved Sass! I guess you would have learned some handyperson's skills at least - that's one positive out of your JW experience.

  • luna2
    luna2

    Hm, yes, its one thing for Jehovah's people to do a shoddy job building a KH for the their brothers and sisters, who would have no one to sue but themselves, and quite another to think about contracting the teams out for pay when they'd be held accountable if something went bad six months down the road.

    The quick-built KH I attended here in CT had some sort of roof leak. The main problem was in the women's bathroom where the damp walls caused the wallpaper to peel off within a few months. It was never spoken about, though....at least not in my hearing. One assumes they've fixed whatever was wrong by now, but who knows. Quickbuilds are legendary for mold problems from what I understand. I doubt paying customers would find that acceptable.

  • sass_my_frass
    sass_my_frass
    I guess you would have learned some handyperson's skills at least

    Yeah I suppose it was good to have learned how to carry a ceiling panel without chipping the edges and how to install a ceiling batt - total learning time about three minutes. I'll have to wait a few years to see if I also got mesothelioma from the insulation glass fibres...

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