Friday, June 29, 2007

When Hiring an "Expert," Make Sure He's Really an Expert

A few days ago, my company had a hot water pipe burst, and we've been without hot water in the building ever since. This is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but my co-workers are understandably anxious for the restoration of our hot water service. Part of the delay is due to a backlog on our contractor's end. Despite the fact that my company is a factory, we apparently lack enough on-site expertise to fix the problem ourselves; hence our decision to contract out the repair.

The contractors have been diligently working on the problem since yesterday or so. Seeing the size of the old pipes they've been yanking, I figured this was a big job with a complex set of problems. As of this morning, I'm not quite so sure. As I was walking by the destruction zone, I saw the two contractors sitting on the floor, reading the instructions for a simple pipe fitting. "Measure the pipe to the correct length..." I heard one of the workers reading as I walked by. As you can imagine, I was a little underwhelmed by this revelation. Here we are, completely without hot water, we wait several days for the experts to arrive, and based on what I saw, I'm as competent as they are when it comes to the actual repair procedure. Heck, I could have read the instructions and done the repair. I thought we were hiring professionals!

Folks, if you've come to the conclusion that you need a professional to do a job, cool. But when you decide who to hire, make sure they're really qualified to do the job.

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