Old apprenticeship rules forced me to work for different contractors, and what an education that was.
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. We’ve all heard that old saying about raising children. It applies equally well to growing up in the trade.
You’ve heard me refer many times to “the blind leading the blind” in our industry. I’m referring to the same mistakes that get passed on generation after generation, pertaining both to trade practices and the business of contracting. Those of us who go into business for ourselves tend to learn how to do things from our old bosses, and those bosses learned from their old bosses. Unfortunately, if the original boss didn’t know what he was doing, this mode of education reinforces all of his bad habits. About 90 percent of the contractors in this industry have been thoroughly drilled with bad habits to the point where they can’t even conceive of different ways of doing things.