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Old timer told me to "pull the tape twice" and I thought he was just being slow | Drafters - Talk Freely

Old timer told me to "pull the tape twice" and I thought he was just being slow

I had this guy, must have been 65, training me on my first CAD job at a small shop in Indianapolis. He kept telling me to measure every single dimension twice before I put it in the drawing. I thought he was just old and slow, you know, stuck in his ways from the board drafting days. One Friday the boss rushed me on a set of plans for a custom kitchen job, told me to just get it done quick. I skipped the double check on one wall dimension and it ended up being 3/8 of an inch off the actual field measurement. The cabinets came in and the whole island had to be cut down because I trusted my first read on the tape. Has anyone else had to learn that lesson the hard way after ignoring advice from an older drafter?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_black315mo ago

Nodded along reading this because I was the same way. First job out of school I had this crusty old guy who made me triple check everything and I rolled my eyes every time. Took me exactly one messed up set of plans before I realized he was saving my butt, not wasting my time. Now I'm the one telling every new person to pull the tape twice and they probably think I'm just slow too. Funny how that works out.

hart.cora3mo ago

And @uma685, you basically paid for that guy's retirement party with your drywall mistake, huh?

uma6855mo ago

Oh man that hurts just reading it. I did the exact same thing on a commercial job a few years back. My mentor told me to always check my field measurements against the steel stud layout before committing to anything and I figured I had it down. I was off by a half inch on a whole row of mechanical chases and we had to rip out and rehang like 80 linear feet of drywall. That old timer just looked at me and said "told you so" and walked away.