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Accommodating the expectations of your client extends in to the industrial/institutional world too. At a facility of 50 or 10,000 people, if you show up messy [in appearance/scheduling/preparation] for a job, and leave things messy that are part of their daily domain, it will surely reflect poorly on you and your department. Remember, they are most often paying the bills that result from your work.

Say that physicist Mel needs a 480V/100A circuit for his prized new laser interferometer in his personal class-1000 cleanroom. Regardless of his preconceptions [and, occasionally, eccentricities] he has valid concerns about how the job should proceed. {Also, he might just happen to be good friends with a 15th-floor Deputy Associate Director. A disgruntled 2-minute phone call can shake things up fiercely—before you can begin to imagine what sort of story your immediate supervisor has heard.}


Specifically on appearance, during the 1980s employees of an electrical testing firm in the Northeast, like many others, were routinely scheduled to do fairly detailed maintenance on electrical equipment in large plants. A lot of the work involved crawling in and out of drawout switchgear and medium-voltage motor-control centers. To preserve their outward show of ‘professionalism’—suits, dress shirts and ties [with steel-toed boots] were required to be worn by the field guys on orders from the testing-company’s upper management. At that time, polyester “leisure suits” were in vogue, and of course became standard garb for field crews. Later, it was found polyester fabric has almost explosive flammability, so the upper tiers eased up on the ‘suit and tie’ requirement.




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 04-03-2004).]

I agree with most of what was said here: For commercial construction, how you carry yourself and how you do your job seems to be much more important than how you look.

Residential work, you don't have to be in a tux, but show up in clean clothes, tucked-in shirt, combed hair. When you're done with your installation the only evidence that you were ever there should be the changes you made to the electrical system: Everything should be at least broom clean.

And one thing that was hard for me about transitioning from commercial to residential was remembering to keep my language clean, but I think that's extremely important: Nothing creates a more unprofessional atmosphere than running around cursing up a storm.

-John

It's true, there are no vanity mirrors in the port-a-johns on the bigger construction sites, just handwritten exchanges of philosophical quotes and some erroneous payday math. Working safe IS the paramount priority, it's a dangerous environment for sure. In residential and commercial service work, good appearance is a big plus. When you charge customers by the hour with big numbers the crew should look professional. You don't want to have your lead guy walk into your new customer's establishment at $100. per manhour with his baseball hat on backwards and wearing a soiled tee shirt with a marijuana leaf displayed on the front from top to bottom, while his partner relieves himself on the truck tire over the newly striped parking lot...IMHO.

Some one told me, Look succesfully, you will be succesfull. I keep my van clean, dent free and rust free. I have uniforms, but they are clean jeans and my company t-shirt. I believe that if you look presentible, it will go a long way. But as far as at the end of the day, if you are dirty from the job, and you have to estimate a job in the evening, most people are understanding, and will not judge you on your cleanness. but on how you present your company. My van will look sharp, and everything matches(ladders on top are all the same color and free from paint), and my uniforms match my van (color). I've talked to a lot of customers, and if you show up on time or just return there calls, that is more than most companies do. And they love it.