Construction Foreman Quotes

My mother claims she didn’t raise her son to settle down with a construction foreman who operates his own hardware chain. Even with the M.B.A. from Harvard. But it’s not really the blue-collar thing that crawled up her ass. She and Clayton haven’t agreed on anything since she found out he makes more money than she does.

In a real road-construction situation, I would never get out of my car when traffic is backed up, walk over to the foreman of the crew, and ask if I can help make the road so that it all moves more quickly. Yet I found myself doing just that with God in my past when He was trying to repair me. Construction sites have caution cones and broken pavement and heavy equipment I'm not qualified to operate. I must have looked just as out of place trying to make repairs on myself all those years. When I put my trust in Him and have patience in Him as the foreman of my life--the One who is repairing a broken relationship with my mom, building me a stronger and healthier body and assembling healthier friendships and a marriage with a solid foundation--I live a life with much fewer obstructions on my ultimate commute to becoming fearless. And I trust that God has made the plans to finish the good work He has already begun. He will continue constructing the life He knows I'm meant to lead as I travel freely in my journey of "becoming.

Paul was coursing at fantastic speed towards the area where the little twin stars Rhium and Antirhium revolved around each other. “Hurry,” were his instructions; “they seem of no consequence, but they are the governor of the universe. Somebody is tampering with them.” Paul continued at his impossible speed and arrived at the area. He saw something that nobody had ever seen before, for nobody had ever been so close to them. The two small stars that revolved around each other were, joined together by a long steel chain. It was that which held them in their tight rapid orbits; it was that which made them the governor of the universe. Paul quickly located the trouble. There was a small green creature, with the body of .a monkey and the head of a gargoyle, cutting the chain with a hack-saw, and he had it near cut in two. “Pray that I be not too late!” Paul prayed, and he believed he had made it when the sawyer-broke a blade. But he quickly replaced it with another, stuck his green tongue out at Paul, took three more strokes with the hack-saw, and the chain broke. Then Rhium and Antirhium swung out of their tight orbits, and the whole universe was out of control with its governor broken. Fifty billion billion stars went nova, and then blacked out to nothing. The universe had eaten itself and was gone forever. “I told you to hurry!” the space captain told Paul furiously as he came barreling up. Then the space captain’s face melted like wax and he was gone. “I did hurry,” Paul said. Then his own face melted like wax and he was gone also. “Is it quite finished?” came the voice of old hawk-face Fabian Foreman. “If it is quite finished, then perhaps we can begin to construct a new universe. It’s all right. It worked out well. I meant you to be too late.

Though time management seems a problem as old as time itself, the science of scheduling began in the machine shops of the industrial revolution. In 1874, Frederick Taylor, the son of a wealthy lawyer, turned down his acceptance at Harvard to become an apprentice machinist at Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. Four years later, he completed his apprenticeship and began working at the Midvale Steel Works, where he rose through the ranks from lathe operator to machine shop foreman and ultimately to chief engineer. In the process, he came to believe that the time of the machines (and people) he oversaw was not being used very well, leading him to develop a discipline he called “Scientific Management.” Taylor created a planning office, at the heart of which was a bulletin board displaying the shop’s schedule for all to see. The board depicted every machine in the shop, showing the task currently being carried out by that machine and all the tasks waiting for it. This practice would be built upon by Taylor’s colleague Henry Gantt, who in the 1910s developed the Gantt charts that would help organize many of the twentieth century’s most ambitious construction projects, from the Hoover Dam to the Interstate Highway System. A century later, Gantt charts still adorn the walls and screens of project managers at firms like Amazon, IKEA, and SpaceX.

Human beings can apparently endure an amazing amount of misery as long as there is hope; but neurotic entanglements invariably generate a measure of hopelessness, and the more severe the entanglements the greater the hopelessness. It may be deeply buried: superficially the neurotic may be preoccupied with imagining or planning conditions that would make things better. If only he were married, had a larger apartment, a different foreman, a different wife; if only she were a man, a little older or younger, a little taller or not so tall—then everything would be all right. And sometimes the elimination of certain disquieting factors really does prove helpful. More often, however, such hopes merely externalize inner difficulties and are doomed to disappointment. The neurotic expects a world of good from external changes, but inevitably carries himself and his neurosis into each new situation.

How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should add to the treasury of the rich. But that seems to be the fate that the present authorities have in store for us. Taxes are now due to be raised as high as the colonnades on the villas that they are constructing. The only taxes which are due to be rescinded are those imposed by Caesar upon certain luxury goods I have heard. One should be a friend to business, but not to corruption …We must cleanse the augean stables.

but if your job site looks like a disaster zone, your visitors will not think twice about making judgments about you and your abilities. Subconscious or not, these judgment will have a negative affect on how you are perceived. On the other hand, if your visitors “catch you” with your prints, your trailer, your tools, your material, and even your crew organized and neat, they will be sure to go away feeling that you take pride in your work and that you have high standards. They will leave confident that you are doing your best to turn out a quality product.

The majority of the Phone Booth clientele was probably straight, yet somehow the atmosphere was predominantly gay. This was an advantageous situation; the straight boys respectfully gave the impression they might capitulate. Ostensibly straight boys whom I kissed there included a construction site foreman, a professional skateboarder and an acrobat. Somebody would always put ‘Family Affair’ by Mary J. Blige on the jukebox, with its message about leaving one’s situations behind at the door.

It’s like…a construction worker making a new road while sleepwalking. The foreman would have a fit. How in the world does one make a sleepwalker take a union-mandated break? Do you wake them up?