re: Any ever hired a day-laborer from the Home Depot parking lot?

quote:

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I have a spinoff question. What do you do when you only need 2-3 out of the two dozen? Do they have a pecking order, first come first hired, or by task required?

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I'm sure you can choose whichever ones you want but when a car/truck pulls up there is a definite rush for them to get to the vehicle first.

When I had my sprinkler system installed a friend of mine who had done it a few times was going to be the supervisor so we hired a few to do the manual labor.

I got my day laborers at a bar parking lot before it opened. A suburban pulled in before we did and all the laborers made a dash for them. I got the slowest three who were just kind of walking towards the suburban.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As the installation was getting started my friend was explaining to Pedro how to do the funny pipe from the conduit to the sprinkler head. Pedro said "No-No this is better" and my friend's eyebrows raised and he got a look on his face like he had just heard fascinating news.

Turns out Pedro worked on a contract basis for a landscape company installing sprinkler systems and one of the other two - Ricardo worked with him doing all the pipe work. Ricardo's brother wound up digging all of the trenches.

We drank beer and watched Formula One racing in the garage all day while they put in my sprinkler system. No supervision needed although I did have to get them some Popeye's chicken for lunch. They did one hell of a job - six zones, 56 heads and going under the sidewalk three times (corner house). Started around 6:30 and they were done at 2:30.