Show Your Appreciation For Your Fitters This Week

As has been well advertised for a week now, the Beast from the East, a blast of bitterly cold weather has now begun to sweep it’s way in from the continent. Sub-zero temperatures and snow for pretty much everyone at some point over the next week or so. You can almost guarantee some degree of transport and communications disruption.

But, it’s only weather, and life has to go on. That includes the installing of windows, doors and conservatories to people’s homes. It’s certainly far from ideal weather, but installers will have weeks of work booked in, and will be reluctant to cancel a whole week’s worth of fitting. It’s bad for the schedule and bad for cash flow.

It is also periods of time like this where we should appreciate the work that our industry’s fitters do. It’s often a thankless task, and puts a real strain on the body.

Hard, hard work

When it comes to a list of most difficult jobs in the industry to do, it has to be in installation. Yes selling has it’s own difficulties, as does fabrication. But installation is perhaps the most labour intensive, coupled with the added pressure of working in the person’s home. They can sometimes be literally the last face of the company and supply chain the home owner sees.

Then you add into the mix the weather they have to work in. In the middle of July, when it’s 26 degrees and it’s sunny, sweat and sun cream are the biggest annoyances. But it gets particularly difficult when we get they type of bitter weather that’s about to hit us.

When it’s minus 5, snowing sideways and you can’t get warm, the idea of fitting windows and doors, or installing a new conservatory really doesn’t sound appealing at all. Fitters get layered up with hats, gloves, thermals and all manner of warm clothing. But ask a fitter if they like it and they’ll tell you they just feel more restricted.

Then add in things like silicone not working properly because it’s too cold, health and safety issues because of the weather, home owners getting annoyed due to the poor weather and it becomes a thankless task.

That’s not to mention working for certain home owner’s who simply do not care.

Basic manners

As we know, manners cost nothing. And when we have work done in our own homes, most of us are polite enough to offer whoever comes to do that work at least a tea, coffee or cold drink. However, there is a small percentage of people out there who think nothing of manners. I remember two distinct cases where our fitting crews were on the other end of bad manners, and the weather conditions at the time meant that this was significant.

My first example was a couple of years ago when our lads were starting work on a house full of windows and doors replacements. It also happened to be the hottest week of the year. The sun was beating down, the temperatures were regularly 28 or 29 degrees every day. Perfect weather for a beach, not ideal for fitting windows. But, work is work and it had to go on. In most cases, most home owners would be quick to offer our guys a supply of cold drinks to help keep them refreshed. Not this time. Throughout that week they were not offered a single drink, despite the heat, sun and threat of dehydration. They had to resort to drinking from the outside tap whilst they sat in the back garden with their feet up drinking cordial all week. Unbelievable rudeness!

After the first day on site we bought them a ton of bottled water and other cold drinks so that they wouldn’t have to rely on the home owner to do the right thing and make them a cold drink!

The second example is right on the other end of the scale. It was the start of the previous year, and we were working on another big job, a house full of windows and doors, on a large property exposed to the weather. It was about three degrees all week. Rain on and off. Biting wind and grey cloud. About as grim as it could get. It was a very difficult job anyway, without the poor weather conditions. But, our hard working fitters ground on. So, as you would expect, any decent home owner that was at home watching the work being done would offer our crews a decent supply of hot drinks. Nope. Not a single hot drink all week on what was one of the toughest jobs that year. Unreal. They even had the cheek to comment on how wet they were, hot drink in hand.

I am sure that other installers will have come across these certain types of home owners. Please feel free to tell your stories via the comments section below!

This week is going to be a tough one for many installers, especially on the fitting side of things. Window and door installation is very hard work at the best of times, both physically and mentally. Perhaps this would be a good week to show them a bit of love and support and show some extra appreciate for the hard work they do.