This problem we and a lot of companies are facing with a worker shortage is ridiculous. I have already turned away over $5,000 worth of work this month, and nearly $10,000 last month in all types of repairs. Painting jobs, plumbing, electrical, sprinkler repairs, fence work, and more have had to be turned away. Not to mention cancellations we have received on sprinkler repairs…….. Last year, when we had more employees, we still turned away over $100,000 in business because we just didn’t have the coverage. We still did quite well last year, and are doing well so far this year, but the potential is much greater if we had the help we need. We could use 2-3 additional employees right now, and even more by the time blowouts come around.
I am not sure how this week is going to go. Monday we have to work on a project we started last summer that went through part of September that we had to halt to prepare for sprinkler blowouts. We are on the last leg of the project, which is running about 300 feet of 10/2 wire along a fence externally in conduit to provide power to an irrigation pump and get the pump plumbed and ready for service. This was Jesse’s project, but since he left it is the responsibility of Jacob and me to finish. I am hoping we can get that job completed in one day, but with running that much wire you never know, plus we have to run the piping around some obstacles as well.
Tuesday I have to have my wife to St. Luke’s downtown at 5:30 a.m. for spine surgery. Due to Covid restrictions, all I can do is drop here off. They will be putting rods along her spine at the L4 and L5 to fuse the vertebrae together, and also doing a bone graft taking the bone from her hip. The surgery is supposed to take just a few hours I guess, but when she had her gallbladder taken out in 2010 a 45-minute surgery ended up taking 4 hours. Also due to Covid, she can’t have multiple visitors in a day. Only one person is allowed per day, and my wife has decided that for the 2-3 days she will be in the hospital I will be the only visitor. Every day after work I will head to the hospital with my laptop for visiting hours and hopefully get some work done while there. I will not be able to do service calls on Tuesday, but Jacob will be out doing what he can.
We are still trying to reach all our sprinkler start-ups, and squeezing in really light repairs in the process. Some might argue that we should turn all work away while we are doing start-ups, but the majority of the time additional jobs are replacing a sprinkler head, or repairing a valve that won’t shut off which can run anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes, and we only take care of ones that are in the zip code or area we are already working in for that day.
We start each day with 3-6 backflow tests in Meridian because they don’t take more than 10 minutes to do, and then move on to sprinkler work. The reason for this is I am usually stuck in my office for 1-3 hours each day getting bombarded by texts and emails, and since we are working together to speed up our service call time at each property, Jacob can do the tests and then swing back by to pick me up when he is finished and we are both getting stuff accomplished.
We will need to concentrate on Meridian, Eagle, and Nampa this coming week. Nampa and Eagle are the only areas we haven’t been to yet, and then we can start another pass around the valley to take care of start-ups that came in after we had already been to the area.
I will be making another post for Monday at midnight, as usual.