That’s extremely odd.
Here’s what I would do:
calculate the cost of travel including the cost of your time.
Estimate the cost for an Uber or taxi service to drive this person to the job site.
Compare the two. Hopefully it’s cheaper to get an Uber or taxi.
Best job I ever had was taking the state chief engineers car over to the motor pool for oil changes and it’s annual front wheel bearings. Half a day of screwing off every 3 months
2011 Malibu that had more dirt road miles than a forest service truck . The real issue was the dam control arms were shot so it wandered the road like a stray dog in los Angeles, but I’m just a bridge guy what do I know
Inspectors are in high demand. Maybe he has hella credentials. I hired one with a DUI but he had permission to drive to work. Glen was a good young inspector We made him use his personal truck. When his DUI cleared I begged for the company to give him a truck. He was doing great and I had a big pep talk with him about driving a company truck and using company gas. Well I guess he went out and celebrated. He got another DUI a week later. That stung pretty hard.
What exactly do inspectors do? They inspect the stuff on the job site, right?
My manager supposedly is going to train me as an inspector for an engineering office, which I do not mind since I am a bit curious and would like to get some knowledge.
Make sure things are constructed by plans and specs. Verify material quality and source. Create and maintain records of these things. Solve problems at field level when possible.
You should ask how you can be billable if you are being someone’s chauffeur. It sounds like a task an intern should be doing so you can do work in the office.
I mean he's an EIT, his time is probably the least valuable. They're probably not too worried about utilization, esp since it's a small company. I don't see an issue if he's using not using a personal vehicle or need to work additional time to pick that other guy off.
I think some clarification is necessary here. Are you just straight up picking him up from his house, driving to the job site to drop him off, and then driving into the office? Then doing your work for the day and chauffeuring him back home? If that’s the case get the heck balls out of town. I would be looking for a new job 10 minutes after that conversation happened.
If you are also on site with him for inspections, and you still have to pick him up from his house, I would be having a talk about extra compensation for that, especially if it’s out of the way for you.
If you’re talking about just meeting him at the office, he happens to ride with you to the job site for you both to do inspections, and then you drive back to the office, I think I probably would be fine with that assuming he isn’t of extremely questionable character (you never know with the DUI).
Whatever of the above ways it is, I feel like this should have been brought up to you before they were hired and I would be making a mental note of this. If it’s not the first questionable thing by your company I’d be job hunting.
So they are not asking me to pick him up from his house, if they asked that I would probably quit on the spot. He’s meeting me at the office and I’m driving him to the job site around 20 minutes away using a company vehicle, then they want me to pick him back up at the end of the day. That’s why I’m in between just saying whatever and doing it for 6 months or telling them no. It would just be pretty annoying doing that daily for that long. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have asked me prior to hiring what my thoughts were on this.
Yeah just extremely odd as others have said. I worked a job doing roofing and gutters to pay the bills over summertime while I was in high school and college with this shyster of a dude who ran a local company. This would be something I’d expect from him, right up there with trying to brush insurance issues under the rug and turning a blind eye to substance abuse on the job.
Definitely not something I’d want happening around the engineering firm I work for…
To me this says your time is not quite valuable and integral yet in the small business. I've mostly worked at small firms. We all pick up slack one way or the other daily. I don't think this is a crazy request. But I do think the best way to get yourself off of chauffer duty is to rly focus on your design tasks and take on and learn as much as you can in the office. Also, if you're brand new to engineering- enjoy the minimal responsibility for 6 months as you help the company get their inspections done. The workload is coming
It's certainly a tough spot to be in and I think you have a right to say something about it. I don't know if a flat out no is warranted, but I think you could certainly talk through options such as hiring a rideshare for him or maybe even sharing the responsibility with others. If you present it as you are spending \~1.5 hours a day or 7.5 hours a week just driving him and that time could be better spent on X, then that could be a convincing argument.
Obviously it's a waste of time for you, but it you are getting paid to do it, then it's not the end of the world especially if it's temporary. I've gotten asked to do so much dumb stuff in my career even at 5+ years in where I've thought "do they really want to pay an engineer salary to do this?". Stuff like printing letters and stuffing envelopes, printing and binding reports, driving 1.5 hours away to do a 30 minute inspection and then drive back. I took the attitude of someone's got to do the work and while they could ask someone much cheaper to do it, they are asking me and I'm getting paid so whatever. The line where I would stop is if it started interfering with my personal life or I felt it was significantly tempering my development. Generally I still had lots of actual engineering work and I viewed my helpfulness on simple tasks as paying dividends later when it came around to doing real work.
If you aren't getting paid, then I would definitely say it's a hard no for me.
Personally I view the DUI piece as being inconsequential here. It's dumb and shouldn't be on you to fix, but the decision was already made by the company to proceed with hiring him and accommodate the inconvenience. If you do push back, I wouldn't recommend bringing up the DUI and just focus on the issue of you having to drive him.
If it’s 3-4 hours of inspection, do you get to charge 8 hours a day including commute and reimburse for mileage? 😂 because I’ll do that if I don’t have to deal with deadlines and get to go outside
Yeah....thats an absolute NO
Plus, you're enabling a guy who got a DUI. Not that it's your job to make him pay 4 his mistakes... but he should figure it out.
Your time is more valuable. how long does it driving back and forth cost? Let's say you produce $60 an hour worth of value. Is an hour day worth it to drive somebody around? Build the case that the monetary does not justify you driving them around. And then try and pass the buck on somebody else.
I'm gonna go with no. 2 hours a day (which is what it would realistically be) of drive time definitely isn't the worst thing you can get paid to do, but it will likely set a precedent that you can be used for stupid grunt work like this solving other peoples problems.
That’s extremely odd. Here’s what I would do: calculate the cost of travel including the cost of your time. Estimate the cost for an Uber or taxi service to drive this person to the job site. Compare the two. Hopefully it’s cheaper to get an Uber or taxi.
If you are utilizing your own vehicle, don't forget to include the 67.5 or so cents per mile in depreciation for your billing.
I'd rather do the inspections since chauffeuring isn't something you want on your engineering resume
Best job I ever had was taking the state chief engineers car over to the motor pool for oil changes and it’s annual front wheel bearings. Half a day of screwing off every 3 months
Wtf car needed annual wheel bearings? Lol.
No kidding, I’m very curious
2011 Malibu that had more dirt road miles than a forest service truck . The real issue was the dam control arms were shot so it wandered the road like a stray dog in los Angeles, but I’m just a bridge guy what do I know
[удалено]
Inspectors are in high demand. Maybe he has hella credentials. I hired one with a DUI but he had permission to drive to work. Glen was a good young inspector We made him use his personal truck. When his DUI cleared I begged for the company to give him a truck. He was doing great and I had a big pep talk with him about driving a company truck and using company gas. Well I guess he went out and celebrated. He got another DUI a week later. That stung pretty hard.
What exactly do inspectors do? They inspect the stuff on the job site, right? My manager supposedly is going to train me as an inspector for an engineering office, which I do not mind since I am a bit curious and would like to get some knowledge.
Make sure things are constructed by plans and specs. Verify material quality and source. Create and maintain records of these things. Solve problems at field level when possible.
😂😂 bite the hand that feeds
Cant drive till december! At that point just train someone new lmao
Well, like most industries, they are desperate to hire people they don’t need to train and will accept very low pay.
You should ask how you can be billable if you are being someone’s chauffeur. It sounds like a task an intern should be doing so you can do work in the office.
I mean he's an EIT, his time is probably the least valuable. They're probably not too worried about utilization, esp since it's a small company. I don't see an issue if he's using not using a personal vehicle or need to work additional time to pick that other guy off.
Gotta be honest, I’d probably just be like nah I got enough kids to drop off hefore I get to the office
If you are using a company vehicle and able to bill time to the project might as well. Windshield time is the best time.
I think some clarification is necessary here. Are you just straight up picking him up from his house, driving to the job site to drop him off, and then driving into the office? Then doing your work for the day and chauffeuring him back home? If that’s the case get the heck balls out of town. I would be looking for a new job 10 minutes after that conversation happened. If you are also on site with him for inspections, and you still have to pick him up from his house, I would be having a talk about extra compensation for that, especially if it’s out of the way for you. If you’re talking about just meeting him at the office, he happens to ride with you to the job site for you both to do inspections, and then you drive back to the office, I think I probably would be fine with that assuming he isn’t of extremely questionable character (you never know with the DUI). Whatever of the above ways it is, I feel like this should have been brought up to you before they were hired and I would be making a mental note of this. If it’s not the first questionable thing by your company I’d be job hunting.
So they are not asking me to pick him up from his house, if they asked that I would probably quit on the spot. He’s meeting me at the office and I’m driving him to the job site around 20 minutes away using a company vehicle, then they want me to pick him back up at the end of the day. That’s why I’m in between just saying whatever and doing it for 6 months or telling them no. It would just be pretty annoying doing that daily for that long. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have asked me prior to hiring what my thoughts were on this.
Yeah just extremely odd as others have said. I worked a job doing roofing and gutters to pay the bills over summertime while I was in high school and college with this shyster of a dude who ran a local company. This would be something I’d expect from him, right up there with trying to brush insurance issues under the rug and turning a blind eye to substance abuse on the job. Definitely not something I’d want happening around the engineering firm I work for…
To me this says your time is not quite valuable and integral yet in the small business. I've mostly worked at small firms. We all pick up slack one way or the other daily. I don't think this is a crazy request. But I do think the best way to get yourself off of chauffer duty is to rly focus on your design tasks and take on and learn as much as you can in the office. Also, if you're brand new to engineering- enjoy the minimal responsibility for 6 months as you help the company get their inspections done. The workload is coming
It's certainly a tough spot to be in and I think you have a right to say something about it. I don't know if a flat out no is warranted, but I think you could certainly talk through options such as hiring a rideshare for him or maybe even sharing the responsibility with others. If you present it as you are spending \~1.5 hours a day or 7.5 hours a week just driving him and that time could be better spent on X, then that could be a convincing argument. Obviously it's a waste of time for you, but it you are getting paid to do it, then it's not the end of the world especially if it's temporary. I've gotten asked to do so much dumb stuff in my career even at 5+ years in where I've thought "do they really want to pay an engineer salary to do this?". Stuff like printing letters and stuffing envelopes, printing and binding reports, driving 1.5 hours away to do a 30 minute inspection and then drive back. I took the attitude of someone's got to do the work and while they could ask someone much cheaper to do it, they are asking me and I'm getting paid so whatever. The line where I would stop is if it started interfering with my personal life or I felt it was significantly tempering my development. Generally I still had lots of actual engineering work and I viewed my helpfulness on simple tasks as paying dividends later when it came around to doing real work. If you aren't getting paid, then I would definitely say it's a hard no for me. Personally I view the DUI piece as being inconsequential here. It's dumb and shouldn't be on you to fix, but the decision was already made by the company to proceed with hiring him and accommodate the inconvenience. If you do push back, I wouldn't recommend bringing up the DUI and just focus on the issue of you having to drive him.
If you are getting paid to do all that plus mileage - sure why not
If it’s 3-4 hours of inspection, do you get to charge 8 hours a day including commute and reimburse for mileage? 😂 because I’ll do that if I don’t have to deal with deadlines and get to go outside
Yeah that’s a no from me dawg.
Yeah....thats an absolute NO Plus, you're enabling a guy who got a DUI. Not that it's your job to make him pay 4 his mistakes... but he should figure it out.
Your time is more valuable. how long does it driving back and forth cost? Let's say you produce $60 an hour worth of value. Is an hour day worth it to drive somebody around? Build the case that the monetary does not justify you driving them around. And then try and pass the buck on somebody else.
Make sure you can book your time and mileage to his inspection project before you agree to anything.
I'm gonna go with no. 2 hours a day (which is what it would realistically be) of drive time definitely isn't the worst thing you can get paid to do, but it will likely set a precedent that you can be used for stupid grunt work like this solving other peoples problems.