I have been working on a construction project at work for the past two years. It’s been long and drawn out due to the location of the project – on the remote northern border of the U.S. and Canada in Montana and North Dakota. We are managing the project mainly from Denver, so I have not met many of the people who are on the project team.
The hired contractors who are working the project are absolute characters. They’re cheerful and funny and say the darndest things on our conference calls.
They are a brother/sister team and it’s definitely a family affair in their office, which we’ve deduced is located in their home. We’ve also figured their mom is involved in the business as well.
On one of the first conference calls we had, the brother contractor, let’s call him Ronnie, was talking about getting estimates for some gates we are installing at one of the sites. Mid-sentence, he stopped what he was saying, covered the receiver with his hand (we imagined) and asked his mom to save him some of the sandwich she was eating. The project manager and I made wide-eye contact with each other and smiled at each other.
Soon after that, on another call, Ronnie was not on mute and yelled to someone in the room with him, “Can someone get this dog off ‘a me? I’m on an important call here!” More smiles across the meeting table. Hilarious.
Our third Ronnie story comes from last week. Unfortunately, he was unable to join the call when we started. One of the fencing contractors was on the line as well as Ronnie’s sister [we'll call her] Jenny.
The project manager on my team asked if Ronnie was able to give a status update and the fencing contractor said, “Uh, got some bad news, Denver team. Ronnie’s not here. He’s at the vet with his dear dog. Seems the dog swallowed a razor blade.”*
It is absolutely not funny. Of course. But we could not help but put the phone on mute and laugh anyway. “Only Ronnie!”
*The happy end to this story is that the dog did indeed swallow the razor blade which happened to be attached to a disposable plastic shaver. But he’s a big dog and he’ll be just fine.