Finger lifting fee

Ubbquittious

A week or two ago I was sent to pull a sign out of the ground for work. Since the sign wasn't that far out of the way and it was combined with another job it probably cost the company no more than 10 quid for the sign to be removed.

But what if it was an outsider who approached the company and paid for the job of having a sign removed? He'd probably end up getting charged close to 100 quid. A margin would have to be put on, VAT added on, tax on the VAT, VAT on the full amount including TAX and VAT on everything again plus excise plus vat. By the time I have been dispatched to remove the sign the time taken up by everyone involved in taking this outsider's sign removal order and billing him would be substantial a well. So 100 quid seems quite reasonable considering the hassle involved.

How about if instead of a small company it was a megacorp like Apple and some lad approached Tim Cook to say he really needs this sign somewhere in Ireland removed. If Tim is feeling generous and doesn't tell him to feck off what is the cheapest he could reasonably do it for given that he has to steer his massive behemoth of a company in the direction of this silly sign beside the road some place? €1,000 , maybe more?

What about if that Leo fella was off to see Phil Hogan in Portugal and a lad approached him to remove a sign in Ireland. If he goes through the proper government channels instead of just calling someone he knows to remove it how much will end up being spent on it before the sign is out of the ground? Maybe €10,000? Does a steering committee need to be established first? Will it have to go onto public tenders? Something tells me that Leo wouldn't be the lad to approach if you wanted the sign removed quickly but maybe I'm just being cynical.

Is it possible for a very big organisation to complete a menial but non-standard task quickly and cheaply?

Birneybau

TF?

Kristopherus

How much drink or funny stuff have you on/in you to write that gibberish?:D

jaxxx

I... I... I'm confused. I'm reading what appears to be perfect English yet for the life of me I cannot comprehend it?!

Mrs OBumble

Is manual stuff part of your regular job?

If not, then your employer's liability insurance probably doesn't cover you doing that kind of task. So if you'd gotten injured while doing it, then it could have turned into the most costly sign-pull your company ever did.

SuperSean11

I’ll pull a sign out of the ground for half that. Pm me 😇

Badly Drunk Boy

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Is it possible for a very big organisation to complete a menial but non-standard task quickly and cheaply?

It's simple for a big organisation to get that sort of job done. I work for a very big multi-national, and if that sort of job had to be done, the building maintenance manager in the Irish plant would usually get one of the people that do handyman-type jobs to do it, or somebody in maintenance.

Usually, the CEO in head office in America wouldn't get involved.

diomed

The suspense is killing me.
What did the sign say?

Your Face

Water?
Was it water?
I'm nearly sure it was water that killed the aliens in Signs.

McMurphy

diomed wrote: »

The suspense is killing me.
What did the sign say?

Avatar MIA

diomed wrote: »

What did the sign say?

"Move along. Nothing to see here."

I think it was a sign in Leitrim, which is of course impossible because Leitrim doesn't exist.

Odyssey 2005

My head hurts

The Backwards Man

Years ago, I know of a guy called in to fix a furnace in a factory one cold wintry Friday morning. Walks in, straight up to an overhead pipe and hits it a whallop with a lump hammer. That's you sorted he says, that will be £51 please (big money at the time). 'Is that not a bit on the dear side?', asks the boss. 'Well', says he, 'it's one pound for the bang of the hammer, and fifty for knowing where to bang it.'

dr.fuzzenstein

For the government to pull out the sign there would have to be a steering committee which would commission a report.
By the time all the cronies and nephews are paid the cost would probably be in the region of €10 million. The report will be (as usual) scribbled on a napkin in the pub and bulked up to 10000 pages by copy and paste from Wikipedia.
After that it has to go out to tender.
Usually there are 3 main contenders and the one that is picked costs twice as much as the cheapest guy. The cheapest guy then gets hired as a subcontractor with the difference split between the guy in charge of awarding the contract and the expensive builder.
Except that as a cost saving measure, funding gets pulled and the project shelved for 5 years.
After 5 years the original report is out of date and the whole process has to start again.
When the sign finally does get pulled, there will have to be a 100 meter exclusion zone for health and safety reasons.
So I'd say it could cost around €250 million for the government to pull a sign. Except it doesn't get pulled because the structural engineer has concerns about the building next to it.

Or if you want the sign actually pulled, you go to the job bridge slave and tell him to do it on his lunch break. And get him to bring his own shovel.

wexandproud

Ubbquittious wrote: »

A week or two ago I was sent to pull a sign out of the ground for work. Since the sign wasn't that far out of the way and it was combined with another job it probably cost the company no more than 10 quid for the sign to be removed.

But what if it was an outsider who approached the company and paid for the job of having a sign removed? He'd probably end up getting charged close to 100 quid. A margin would have to be put on, VAT added on, tax on the VAT, VAT on the full amount including TAX and VAT on everything again plus excise plus vat. By the time I have been dispatched to remove the sign the time taken up by everyone involved in taking this outsider's sign removal order and billing him would be substantial a well. So 100 quid seems quite reasonable considering the hassle involved.

How about if instead of a small company it was a megacorp like Apple and some lad approached Tim Cook to say he really needs this sign somewhere in Ireland removed. If Tim is feeling generous and doesn't tell him to feck off what is the cheapest he could reasonably do it for given that he has to steer his massive behemoth of a company in the direction of this silly sign beside the road some place? €1,000 , maybe more?

What about if that Leo fella was off to see Phil Hogan in Portugal and a lad approached him to remove a sign in Ireland. If he goes through the proper government channels instead of just calling someone he knows to remove it how much will end up being spent on it before the sign is out of the ground? Maybe €10,000? Does a steering committee need to be established first? Will it have to go onto public tenders? Something tells me that Leo wouldn't be the lad to approach if you wanted the sign removed quickly but maybe I'm just being cynical.

Is it possible for a very big organisation to complete a menial but non-standard task quickly and cheaply?

if your out of the bed and sobered up a bit , any chance you can you can rewrite that so i can understand it . especially the bit about charging 100 plus a margin and then the vat , then tax and tax on the vat and tax on the total or what ever it was .

kneemos

diomed wrote: »

The suspense is killing me.
What did the sign say?

Do Not Remove.

Mrcaramelchoc

I tried to look up the definition of AFTER HOURS online and my pc just burst into flames.
Seeing this thread i now know why.

RoboRat

I think the answer you're looking for is delegation. No, a CEO doesn't put a sign up, their hourly rate is too high for that kind of job and a waste of them as a resource. There is also the fundamental difference between a large corporation and small business... sometimes in a small business, one person occupies many roles and has to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in irrespective of their position, as long as the means justifies the ends and the greater goals of the company.

maudgonner

Ubbquittious wrote: »

How about if instead of a small company it was a megacorp like Apple and some lad approached Tim Cook to say he really needs this sign somewhere in Ireland removed. If Tim is feeling generous and doesn't tell him to feck off what is the cheapest he could reasonably do it for given that he has to steer his massive behemoth of a company in the direction of this silly sign beside the road some place? €1,000 , maybe more?

Tim Cook wouldn't really get involved with handy-man-type tasks. You're confusing him with his predecessor...

...the fella that died...

(...wait for it...)

...that odd Jobs man.

Birneybau

diomed wrote: »

The suspense is killing me.
What did the sign say?

The sign says, stay away fool, because love rules, at the luh-huh-hove shack.

s7ryf3925pivug

The only government contract I know the details of ended up being done at a loss off the backs of people putting in 60 hour weeks. People underestimate the cost of large scale projects.

Capt'n Midnight

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Years ago, I know of a guy called in to fix a furnace in a factory one cold wintry Friday morning. Walks in, straight up to an overhead pipe and hits it a whallop with a lump hammer. That's you sorted he says, that will be £51 please (big money at the time). 'Is that not a bit on the dear side?', asks the boss. 'Well', says he, 'it's one pound for the bang of the hammer, and fifty for knowing where to bang it.'

Henry Ford paid $10,000 back when it was real money for something similar.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/

Ford, whose electrical engineers couldn’t solve some problems they were having with a gigantic generator, called Steinmetz in to the plant. Upon arriving, Steinmetz rejected all assistance and asked only for a notebook, pencil and cot.

According to Scott, Steinmetz listened to the generator and scribbled computations on the notepad for two straight days and nights. On the second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up the generator and made a chalk mark on its side.

Then he told Ford’s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection.

Guess how it pans out ?

Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice from General Electric in the amount of $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.

Steinmetz, Scott wrote, responded personally to Ford’s request with the following:

Making chalk mark on generator $1.

Knowing where to make mark $9,999.

Ford paid the bill.

Capt'n Midnight

Look at the Ryanair model. You break even on the normal prices, but the extras is where you make your profit.


Including travel time at minimum wage from base and back to base , and overheads for transport costs and PRSI and VAT did really only cost a tenner to remove the sign ? Now include the admin cost and overheads like paying for the rent of the base.

If you had removed 10 signs on one journey then it's a lot more efficient.