Learning to Bid & Schedule Projects

One set of lessons every apprentice must master is how to price and schedule work. This is rarely easy in a business where every project is custom work that is custom priced. If we owned a movie theater these particular issues would surely be much easier—ten bucks for the regular feature and six bucks for the matinee. But when every little job must be individually priced and scheduled the process can be a little daunting. We have to make money but we do not want to rip people off. And either way, we have to meet a reasonable, defined schedule.

Learning the Business Not Just the Trade

The day my apprentice took in his first project I coached him afterward on some better ideas; the reason being that I consider a true apprenticeship to be one where the master craftsman is training the apprentice in all aspects of the business including the management of it. In a small business, sales, estimating, and bidding are skills the business owner must have in order to survive. I want my apprentice to survive and thrive when he leaves my service.

Explaining the Mysteries

A good apprenticeship contract ought to stipulate that the master will teach the whole trade not just portions. The old, medieval contracts often specified this very precept. The master had to teach all the “mystryies” of the trade as a part of his agreement with the apprentice. That was the Christian and moral way to handle the relationship. The master agrees to teach the secrets of the trade and the apprentice agrees to work diligently for low pay for an extended time. Everybody wins. But we employers have to behave rightly toward that apprentice who has in good faith contracted to help us for little immediate financial benefit.

I watched and listened (and cringed a bit) as Tim told the customer he would have the cabinet repaired and refinished this very week, just four days hence. I wanted to step right in and tell everybody that there was no way that piece was going to be ready by Friday. But, I let it go and talked to Tim afterward. I explained to him that it is much better to tell the customer a longer period till delivery than you think the project will take. Typically, projects do take longer than we think they will anyway. So why end up being perpetually late on deliveries?

Mastering Fear & Timing

There is a moral dilemma here that is difficult to precisely address. Christians ought not lie to their customers about anything, including schedules. Yet, we often do not know exactly how long it will take to complete work. The fear of man always drives us to give dates that are too soon. We want to please the customer with a promise for prompt delivery. Our sin (fearing man), or a just plain lack of knowing how our trade works, gets in the way of wiser judgment. So my faithful apprentice promised delivery in half the time the project would reasonably take. This was not a disaster but it provided a good opportunity to talk about these issues. I will do what I can to train him to be a better planner and manager as well as learning necessary trade skills.

Slivers & Saws: Maintaining Shop Safety

One good thing about bringing on my apprentice when I did is that there is an interesting project under way. I do not build as much new furniture as I used to so having a custom walnut library to build is a good change up.

The shop smells wonderful. We have big stacks of walnut parked all around, much of it in various stages of processing. I am 64 years old so it is a blessing to have a young guy around the shop to assist in lifting heavy lumber and moving large cabinets around. Everything is new to my new-found worker so I have to explain everything. Uninitiated hands can do huge damage in zero time if not instructed at every point.

Safety is the Craftsman’s Duty

I also have to think about safety for him. I have never gotten hurt at work beyond ordinary events like slivers, small cuts and such. Even when I had small (or large) construction crews the biggest injury to anyone on my carpentry crews was a broken toe one time. Allowing a countertop to slip from your hands has consequences after all. But here, in my closely guarded domain, I have my ways of doing things. Safety requires vigilance but still, if you work alone every day for a while—well, you have ways of doing things. This is a small shop.

Don’t Put Other People in Danger, Duh

I have a moral duty to train this apprentice to work safely. I have to. If the golden rule means anything I cannot simply use people up and throw them away. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a mirror with razor sharp edges. I can hold it up and look but I better wear gloves. I am trying to remember 40 years back now. It is a fair distance to roam mentally. I remember crawling out on a scaffold angling up three stories to the underside of a bat wing soffit. Below me was a pit with a stack of concrete block. The scaffold planks were fir, four wide, resting on ‘T’ braces my bosses had set up when I was not around. My work was to scoot along on that scaffold and nail up soffit panels from underneath the eave. I was alone for it was Saturday.

The only reason I still remember that Saturday is due to the awful feeling when I heard a crash, saw fir planks raining unto those concrete blocks, and wondered how I remained aloft. There I was, my left foot (the one with my weight on it) resting on a plank still hanging by a breath to that ‘T’ brace and my right foot resting on, perhaps, the shoulder of an angel? Nothing I could see anyway. My boss walked up a while later when I was nailing those planks in place as they should have been from the beginning and it was his comments that locked that event in my memory forever. My boss and ‘friend’ Bob told me to stop nailing those planks to the braces and just get back up there.

A Christian Craftsman is Responsible for His Apprentice

I learned a couple of things that day. One is how to tell a boss a big fat NO. Another is that I am, ultimately, responsible for my own safety. A third is the need for employers to have a moral conscience. Christian employers can be great but they can also be immoral and send you to your death just to save a few dollars. I do not want to be that guy (either one). I do not want to be the Christian boss who fails to defend his worker’s safety and knowingly lets that uninitiated worker get bad hurt just because I was lazy or greedy. Christ expects better of us than that. And I know the temptation. Let it not be so among you.

Here I am preaching while unordained. Nevertheless, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” applies directly to employers and worker safety—These kinds of concerns shape Christian culture and makes Christendom operate within a different morality than any other. One of our distinctives is that we care about our workers enough to defend their health as much as we are able. The world of work is an imperfect environment, but still, we can genuinely care about our apprentices and all workers and try to protect them.

I guess I got distracted. Next report we can get back to those piles of walnut.

A Craftsman/Apprentice Relationship Begins

Well, having plotted and planned for a goodly while I now have my first apprentice. But let me go backtracking a bit and tell you some history of this momentous occasion.

Choosing an apprentice isn’t random

My apprentice is not a random character grabbed to fill a ‘slot’ in the business. My family has known Tim’s family for well over a decade. His older brother used to be one of my best helpers around the land with firewood cutting and other chores. He came from a fine Christian homeschooling family and was a great worker. He was morally upright, kept his word, and I knew I could trust him with anything. So, when Tim took over his older brother’s labors around the property I was pretty happy, thrilled even. Tim was a good help to me on occasion.

Take your time

For several months before Tim began as an official apprentice in my furniture building and refinishing shop I was talking first to his father and then to Tim about possibly working with me. I did not get an immediate answer. But after a few months Tim gave me a firm “yes” that he wanted to try it. I assured him that if he did not like the work (or his boss) he could quit and there would be no hard feelings. Tim assured me he was truly interested in learning this trade and wanted to take a try at making this apprenticeship arrangement work.

My most important point here might be that this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision for either of us. I needed help and he wanted to learn how to do the work. So here we are—master craftsman and apprentice traveling together in this new relationship. I told Tim that if he was willing to work cheap for some time I would teach him how to do everything I do and that he should be able to support a family from what I taught him. So that is what I am striving to do every day he is here. As for his part—Tim is a willing and happy worker. He does not complain. This has possibilities.

An Apprenticeship Experiment

Time to Stop Thinking & Start Doing

I have to get it out. This whole idea of finding an apprentice has been going around in my head and conversation for years.

It is one thing to have an employee who fills your labor needs for so much an hour. But an apprentice is a whole different consideration. Having an apprentice carries a moral element that makes me a little introspective. After all, once I say a person is an apprentice I take a certain amount of responsibility for his/her future success. After all, if you build a tower and it falls down the responsibility is yours, at least in part. So there is a real sense in which hiring an apprentice carries risk for the employer—for the master craftsman.

But there is the positive side as well. If I hire an apprentice I will have the special pleasure of training another person to do what I do and to earn a living doing honest work. I have a person I am (I believe) called to pray for, encourage, teach, and eventually set free to fulfill their own calling before God. Another family can be supported and children reared. Biblical morality, goals, and hope can be taught all in the same setting and, essentially, at the same time. For a Christian business owner this is an attractive arrangement—too good to pass by in my case. Just give me a chance Lord. I will make an honest effort at not mucking it up.