How I Sent My Crew to the Wrong Side of the County with the Wrong Truck

There's a particular tone a person uses when your standing somewhere you shouldn't be and your being polite about it.

Dale has that tone down to an art form. Twenty-two years I've known him, and I can tell you exactly what he sounds like at 8:15 when he's an hour from the shop, something has gone sideways, and he's decided not to say so directly.

"Morning, Gus. Quick question." Pause. "Are we supposed to be at Petrie today?"

I said yes. Confidently. The way you do right before your morning falls in on you.

Wednesday, And How Pleased I Was With Myself

Let's back up two days, because that's where I did the damage.

Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Petrie called. His lender was dragging, nothing was ready, no sense having a crew out there staring at a field. Could we push it a week?

Of course we could. I told him next Tuesday and he thanked me and we talked about his dog for a minute, because that's how those calls go.

Then, standing in a gas station parking lot with my phone still warm, I solved the whole thing in about four seconds. Petrie moves to Tuesday. Put the crew on Halverson instead, since that one's been waiting. Done.

I was genuinely pleased with myself. Twenty years running this outfit and I can still rearrange a week standing on one foot outside a Chevron.

I wrote down none of it.

I meant to. I always mean to. I fully intended to walk in Thursday morning and fix the board, and I'd like that intention noted, because it's the only part of this story where I did anything right.

Thursday, In Which Everybody Did Their Job Correctly

Here's the thing that makes this one sting.

Nobody made a mistake but me.

Dale and Tyler showed up at the yard at 6:30 like they always do. They looked at the board. The board said Petrie. Petrie is wide open ground, short grass, the kind of job where you're mostly worried about sunburn.

So they loaded like professionals for the job they'd been told about. Gun, tripod, a bag of lath, the good hammer. They left the brush hooks. They left the machete. Why would you bring a machete to a hayfield?

Then they drove an hour.

Halverson is not a hayfield. Halverson is fifty minutes the other direction, and it's the kind of brush where you spend two hours cutting line before you set up on anything. Every tool they'd have needed was sitting in my shop.

So when Dale called, my crew was in the wrong county, on a job that had been postponed, holding gear for a job nobody had mentioned.

And they were nice about it. That was the worst part.

The Part Where I Went Looking for Somebody to Blame

I'm not proud of the next thirty seconds.

First instinct: somebody changed the board. Second instinct: the office didn't pass the message along. Third instinct, arriving slower and much less welcome: standing outside a gas station on Wednesday, feeling clever.

You ever lose an argument you're having entirely inside your own skull? There's nobody to raise your voice at. There's just you, holding a phone, doing arithmetic you don't like.

I made the decision alone, stored it in the one place nobody else can get to, and went to bed.

Kayla, Who Simply Asked

Here's the part that really got me.

Back at the office, Kayla said, choosing her words kindly, "Oh, yeah. I heard Petrie moved."

I asked her how.

She'd called the office Wednesday afternoon to check her own week.

That's it. That's the whole trick. She asked, because it occurred to her that things change and she isn't psychic.

So by Thursday morning, my newest employee knew about my decision. My office knew about my decision. The one man who didn't know was the one who made it.

What I Actually Think About It

Somewhere in twenty years I got comfortable with the idea that I'm the one who knows what's going on. Nice feeling. Also how you end up on the phone at 8:15 apologizing to Dale.

A plan that lives in one man's head isn't a plan. It's a rumor. And it's a rumor with a bad memory, because that head goes home, sleeps poorly, and comes back Thursday still running Tuesday's version of the week.

The board was innocent, by the way. It was wrong because I didn't walk twelve feet and fix it, and I didn't fix it because when I made the change I was ninety miles away buying a coffee.

What I needed was for that decision to land somewhere the second I made it, where Dale could see it before he picked up a bag of lath. Which is all survey crew scheduling software really does. It just means the plan stops living in my head, where it's safe from everybody except me.

I complained for a solid week before I admitted that.

Dale still asks me, about once a month, whether we're supposed to be where we are today. He does it with a straight face. He'll do it until one of us retires.

Gus's rule: if the only copy of the schedule is behind your eyeballs, you don't have a schedule. You have a secret.

Want to poke at it yourself? You can start a 7 day free trial of Kudurru Stone right now. No credit card, no sales call, nobody's going to talk you into anything. If you'd rather have somebody show you around, book a demo and we'll do that instead.

Either way, tell somebody before you change the week. Preferably somebody who isn't you.