What phrases did you hear as a newbie by the older techs

RayWohlfarth · July 22

The heat is in the tools kid This was told to me on a bitter cold job site next to the river and it was not true.

It's not a mistake until you walk away from it This I carried with me my entire career and still live by it now. I was a dopey first year apprentice and made a mistake. I told the journeyman what I did and he smiled told me the phrase.

Just curious what you heard

ratio · July 22

"The heat's in the tools", heard that lots as a youngster. Been saying that myself now for a few years—but I'm old and expensive enough that I get to be inside when it gets cold!

pecmsg · July 22

you dumb mo5}{# <{(@/;!!!

HVACNUT · July 22

"I forgot what you don't even know yet."

old_diy_guy · July 22

I've taught you everything you know, but not everything I know.

EBEBRATT-Ed · July 23

"If it's worth doing it's worth overdoing"

pumpcontrolguy · July 23

"A temporary fix is the most permanent one"

HomerJSmith · July 23

If you cut a pipe 3 times and it's still too short, you need a new pipe!

"I taught you everything I know and you still don't know anything." - (I'm trying, Boss, I forget a lot. I think it's genetic.)

RayWohlfarth · July 23

LOL I love these lines We had an apprentice working with me and kept giving us the wrong size pipe nipples that he threaded. The journeyman asked me to start doing it and the other apprentice confessed he didn't know how to read a ruler, had no idea what the smaller lines meant. From then on, he was known as inch and quarter by the journeyman. He became a good fitter and ran some really large jobs

Steve Minnich · July 23

Dollar waiting on a dime.

EBEBRATT-Ed · July 23

Yes. "Dollar waiting for a dime" is a great one.

I saw an old timer send the apprentice to cut and thread some pipe. The kid was trying to do a good job and get it right, but the old man was getting tired of waiting.

"Billy, just thread the pipe, we are not building a nuclear reactor".

Intplm. · July 23

You got time to do it wrong, then you got time to do it right.

Intplm. · July 23

Hand me the Italian screwdriver. From my Italian boss.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes · July 23

"…………needs a muffler bearing."

Or, "Sit right there and wait." Said to the new apprentices to sit in front of the freshly cut drain pipe in the crawlspace while the journeyman tells the homeowner to go ahead and flush the toilet.

EdTheHeaterMan · July 23

When I worked for two years at a wholesale supply house, I was often asked whether we had any left-handed pipe wrenches, left-handed screwdrivers, Left handed pipe cutters, or other such items.

One cold winter day, an apprentice came up to the counter and asked for a bucket of steam. One of the secretaries overheard him, came into the office laughing, and told everyone what had just happened.

Here is the rest of the story:

We kept several bags of calcium chloride in the basement stockroom for technicians who used it to warm refrigerant cylinders when charging heat pumps in very cold weather.

After everyone finished laughing, I asked, “Did the counterman get it for him? We have about ten bags of it in the HVAC parts room. Look it up in the computer. The code is CALCLO50 (calcium chloride, 50-pound bag). Some old-timers call it a bucket of steam.”

“I can’t believe you sent that guy away without the product. Now he’ll just go to one of our competitors and buy it.”

The laughing stopped, and one of the office employees ran out to the parking lot, but the customer was already gone. The branch manager and I were laughing out loud when she returned. I had just made the whole thing up off the cuff. The rookie was having a joke played on him, and I turned around and played a joke on the “Plumbing Division” office staff. HVAC guys can be that way at plumbing supply houses sometimes.

By the way, there really is such a tool as a duct stretcher, but it does not actually stretch the sheet metal. And I'll bet you that rookie would think if was another prank.

HomerJSmith · July 23

@Intplm. Your comment reminds me of—"Why isn't there time to do it right, but time to do it over?"

@EdTheHeaterMan , A short story told to me by another contractor. The community college had an internship program for future plumbing geniuses. This contractor had a wantabe working on dismantling some gas piping who wasn't quite getting it. He said, "You're going to have to use some 'Elbow Grease' to get that apart." The contractor found the wantabe at the truck and he ask him what he was doing. He said, "Looking for a can of 'Elbow Grease'.

Steamhead · July 23

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1900746#Comment_1900746

All steam guys need left-handed screwdrivers, for cranking pressuretrols down.

RayWohlfarth · July 24

Another one I heard was, "This aint brain surgery."

When I asked a journeyman how tight I should make a fitting, he smiled and "Tighten it to jest before cracking."

JohnNY · July 24

Me: "(my measurement) Is off by an inch. Is that alright?"

My father: "I don't know. What does the hangman say?"

Alluding to the fact that the hangman knows a man hanging by an inch or a mile off the ground has the same result.

ChrisJ · July 24

"Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."

There's another, I can't remember exactly but I'll try.

"All of our measurements are wrong but hopefully they're right enough".

RayWohlfarth · July 24

@JohnNY Youre dad was tough lol

@ChrisJ I never heard the second one but love it

RayWohlfarth · July 24

When I first started I had no mechanical ability. I bought a cheap pair of channels locks from a Kmart or something. My journeyman tried them and I watched as he tossed them into a trash can. He handed me his old channel locks and said, "You can't do good work with crap tools."

PC7060 · July 24

when the install team was fussy over some small detail my old boss would state “its fly poo in the pepper; doesn't matter and impossible to change, stop talking about it.”

😂

CLamb · July 25

I heard from one of my Dad's customers: "It better work as fine as a gnat's behind." Except that the word he used was a three letter one which this system won't display.

Steamhead · July 25

"You Can't Fix Stupid!"

Steve Minnich · July 25

The guy who taught me my first two years was twice the size of me and I was a decent size guy myself. The things he said to me aren’t repeatable on a respectable site like this. Even if I somewhat disguised the multitudes of expletives he would use in a single demand would be too much.
One day, we got into it, a physical alteration. I had had enough. I can’t say that I beat him but he couldn’t say the same either. After that, he treated me like an equal rather than a heavy bag with Everlast lettering. He became friends after that.

mattmia2 · July 25

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1900864#Comment_1900864

i keep telling people that you can't compell someone to do something that they don't know how to do. just because our contract says they have to do it doesn't mean they are capable of doing it…

EdTheHeaterMan · July 26

"You've gotta use your head in the big stuff"

This was usually after finding something really stupid or easy, like checking to see if the switch was turned on after testing for current/power with a meter for 20 minutes. Especially if that switch made the system operate normally

EBEBRATT-Ed · July 26

My old man's favorite was " Use your squash"

Intplm. · July 29

"That's using your head for something besides sticking food in!"

That's what my first boss exclaimed.

GroundUp · July 29

"You're not going to leave it like that, are you?"

RayWohlfarth · July 29

I love these sayings

MikeL_2 · July 29

" I forgot more than you'll ever know."

Our " good enough " far exceeds the other's perfect.

" You can't see it from my house."

EdTheHeaterMan · July 29

“Good Enough” Is Spelled P-E-R-F-E-C-T

One day, I was on a job with one of my installers. We were installing a boiler, and after completing an obviously difficult task, the technician exclaimed, “Good enough!” Unfortunately, he said it within earshot of the customer.

I took the employee aside and gave him the following instruction:

“Whenever you feel inclined to say ‘good enough,’ it is pronounced ‘perfect’ in this company.”

I then told everyone who worked for me that, at our company, “good enough” is spelled P-E-R-F-E-C-T. We would all know what the technician really meant, but the customer would hear that the job was being completed perfectly—not merely well enough to get by.

Employees come and go over the years.

One day, I was standing in line at a supply-house counter when I happened to see that same former employee—the installer from the “good enough” story. He was holding a replacement part from an obsolete heating system.

The counterman examined it and said, “They don’t make that part anymore, but this one should work. Will this do?”

The former employee replied, “Perfect!”

I had to laugh.

“At least you learned one thing during your time with my company!”

CTETeach · July 29

I have a few:

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken s@%@

If you worked any slower you'd be in reverse

Tighten it until it gets lose then back off 1/2 a turn

If you don't have the time to do it right where are you going to find the time to do it over

What do you have a rubber ruler? (when things were mismeasured)

Everyone has heard measure twice cut once or cut it three times and it's still to short

HVACNUT · July 30

I like how there are variants of the same thing. I've heard "That's using it for something other than a hat rack." And "You're slower than molasses going uphill in wintertime."

GroundUp · July 30

I had a foreman once who was a pretty notorious alcoholic (the good kind, not an a-hole. Everything was relative to drinking with him. When I'd take too long trying to make something perfect, he'd always say "we're not building a liquor store here, good enough!" as if the measure of perfection was a liquor store. I work alone now but still say that to myself 20 years later when I'm struggling with 1/16" out of plumb.

Intplm. · July 30

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1900736#Comment_1900736

The Italian screwdriver was a hammer.

What phrases did you hear as a newbie by the older techs

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“Good Enough” Is Spelled P-E-R-F-E-C-T

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