People 'faffing' around

[warpig3]

I was decorating a flat at the weekend with another person, lets call him 'mrwarpig' to hide his identity!

We were going to paint the living room, so he goes around and removes all nails from the walls, by this time I have a wall and a half painted. Eventually he is finished and starts to help with the painting. When finished he goes around and puts all the nails etc back in again, this takes some time as the nails were different sizes and he had to find the correct holes. Personally I would have cut in around the nails but there you go.

Also it took him two hours to put up a curtain pole, two hours, unbelievable!!!!

So my question is do you think some people just faff around to avoid doing work?

warpig

[warpig3]

Oops, jno has just reminded me, I once stripped the wallpaper in the kitchen of my old house and didn't redecorate it for six years! The shame, the shame! It actually got to the stage that I didn't notice anymore.

I like the paint settling tactic, very clever.

[joko]

so, let him wobble and measure and check etc etc etc, so what?
doesn't stop you doing the job, just because he checks it afterwards.

just do a good job and he can't complain.


is there a word for people who make a job in itself of ''looking busy''?

i have had a number of assistants do this - spot it a mile off... jumping around like a scalded cat, looking stressed and hectic and deep in thought, but never actually getting anything done...but i always think that they probably expend more energy faking it than just doing the actual job!!

paul - the manager of 'the salon' ( that reality series) was an expert at this - i used to be astounded by his expertise at pretending to work harder than anyone else.

he would stand in the middle of the room, loudly talking about what needs tidying - ''right, this floor needs a sweep, get me the brush'', someone would fetch the broom, he'd sweep a moment, then pass it to a passing helper and say ''oh lets get this bit done'' he'd pick up a hairdryer, wrap the cord round it - then hand it to someone else to put away, then he would go around moving things, picking things up and handing them to other people, while they were all in the middle of doing something else, and all the while speaking loudly about what he was doing - just to show everyone how he was really getting ''stuck in'' - he could not perform simple tasks alone, he need 3 little satellites hovering round him taking up the slack.

why he couldn't just do one job thouroughly, instead of delving in and out of lots of little jobs and doing bits of them, i don't know
amazing.

i agree warpig, very irritating, especially when it mean you end up having to do more to make up for it.