Mall Meltdown
The Caguas Debacle.
Now to the ‘Caguas’ debacle. The structure of the mall, the steel beamed, cement walled, Q-Deck rooved, shell of the building was supposed to be all ready by mid- July, so the contractors could begin their build-outs and finish their stores and have them open for business well before the magical date of November 27th, when the Christmas buying frenzy began. This seemed all fine and dandy, as most store build-outs took between six and eight weeks. I had the house rented for August and was ready to jump in.
But one problem occurred in the structure and it was mid-August when it was supposed to be finished and the demising walls with their heavy, twenty foot high, six inch wide metal studs all set in place, the dividing walls between every store. I walked through the structure at this point with Victor, thinking everything looked fine, eleven weeks to build stores that took at most eight weeks, a tight schedule, but doable, as there were always a few unforeseen delays, especially in getting the finish parts shipped from the States.
A few days later they poured the four inches of concrete on the metal ‘Q-Deck’ covering of the roof, to finish it. But some engineer had made a serious miscalculation. All things sag under a heavy enough load. With the cement added on the entire roof buckled and sank about three inches. All the twenty foot long demising studs throughout the building now had an extreme bow to them, all the thousands of them.
Victor and I toured this curious scene a few days after it happened and we were told our construction start would have to be delayed another two weeks, as everyone of these studs had to be cut twice, with three inches removed and then patched to be straight and strong again. We saw one crew at work at this as we were walking, nodding our heads in disbelief, thinking there should have been ten crews on this job.
We moved into the house in Caguas the first week of September, Kim and I, straight from finishing the S.J. store, the others driving in from Rincon. It was a curious household. Tom and Paola fixed up the den to their taste, our landlady procuring them a bed. R.S. had the downstairs bedroom, Addison took the upstairs one beside mine, Kim down the hall, and a spare beside it for another electrician. Frank was happy with the long couch in the living room. He wasn’t there the first three weeks, being a wall finisher. He had no work till then. We all knew each other except for our one new arrival, Gomez, and we all got along perfectly.
While I was talking to Jean about the house rental, I asked if she’d come too. I needed the help. But she said she couldn’t leave her dog and garden that long. Irving had a new waif and also declined to come. But Jean told me she had an electrician friend in Montauk, Long Island, her hometown, and she’d give him a call. He showed up one night about a week into the project and was a great help, though, like almost everyone else there, he had a cocaine habit.
Gomez. iStock.com/ajr_images
His name was Craig but liked his nickname, Gomez, much better, so everyone called him that. He had long, shoulder length, black hair, tan skin, rough around the edges, (that is, a little vulgar in speech and thought) a woman lecher and also a magnet, being handsome with a moustache, thirty five and a very good electrician. We made fast friends and when he found out the price of cocaine in P.R. and saw all the pretty women there, he thought he’d been transported to Paradise. He got along with all of us, happy to be there, the only change being that Kim began to lock her bedroom door at night.
I had three stores close together, a four thousand square foot K.B. Toys, (which I knew perfectly, having built three already) a two thousand foot clothing store next to it and another four thousand foot clothing store right across the hall. I subbed out the two clothing stores at the far end to a reluctant, young Caguas electrician for a set price, (for the labor). He’d never taken on such a big contract before but said he had two good helpers. I told him I’d check on his progress daily, answer all questions and even do the panels and transformers for him, which I did. So he accepted. The last store was a little one thousand square foot, fake jewelry store down the hall from my others which I ignored till I could get to it.
Addison was the foreman for the K.B. store and the one across the hall. Everything went well the first few weeks though with slower progress than planned. The Mall contractor provided far less temporary power than was needed, which was his responsibility. He set up one panel with a dozen plugs in each long hallway, each one to cover some fifteen stores. I needed two or three for each of mine, with extension cords and power strips.
The framers, (three or four in each store) had their screw guns going all day, first for studs and then the sheetrock. Every time I’d plug in a cord down the hall some other contractor would unplug it within five minutes for a cord to their store. It became a ridiculous fight, like two biscuits for ten ravenous dogs. I’d post a helper by the panel to re-plug us in every few minutes but we’d be disconnected again by some bigger bully. Nobody wanted that job. So I had Victor rent us two generators, parked at the back doors of our stores in progress. That helped but cut into profits.
The other disaster was the congestion of so many workers in such a small area and all in a rush, tripping over each other in every delivery and unloading of trucks, parts getting mixed up and sent every wrong way in the confusion. I had two transformers delivered but missing for weeks, finally found in other people’s stores, all these mix-ups cost us hours of phone calls and searching around.
I finished the three stores in my group, barely on schedule, and my subs also, after many mistakes and much of my time in their two stores. I remember when I finished the panels in one of their stores and we flicked on the five light switches, two of the five rows of lights came on, and the two apprentices who’d hooked them up gave themselves ‘high-fives’ and cheered, as if this was a miraculous accomplishment. Perhaps a forty percent score on any test in P.R. was a cause for wild celebration. This was my typical day headache.
The last store was neglected. With two weeks to finish it and fines if he didn’t, Victor called in other electrical contractors. It was about thirty percent done. They all wanted exorbitant prices, smelling his desperation, like wolves smell blood. I was ready to quit and drive home and did one Saturday morning for an hour but stopped and called him at the office. The night before he grudgingly made payroll for me and my helpers.
Kim and I had to speed to a small bank in S.J., getting there just before it closed at six. When we arrived with his check the teller told us it was no good and we had six angry people waiting in Caguas for their week’s pay, mad they had to stand around waiting for it. I asked to see the bank manager, he called Victor and finally the check was cashed, at six-thirty and the teller furious she had to stay late. Victor had been juggling money between banks again, last minute transfers and he told me he was flush out, all the contract money had been spent and there were still two weeks to go.
One thing Kim and I did right on that forty minute drive back to Caguas was to stop at a project and score four twenty dollar bags of coke, (out of my pocket) and dole out lines to most of our waiting employees, as a sort of apology for their two hour wait. This worked miracles. We all parted with handshakes and smiles, ready to return Monday morning. Everyone did coke there, especially on a Friday night.
But that night, after a fine frenzy of lines and rum at the dining room table, I went to bed thinking the next week would be unpaid. I wasn’t about to be his scapegoat and disappoint all my friends so I started driving home alone the next morning. In Ponce I called and told him I quit. He’d been up with Manny late Friday night discussing the crisis and discovered, miraculously, that all the store contracts had failed to price-in the transformers. The clients thought the Mall provided them.
He called the clients that morning, renegotiated, and told me they now had an extra ten thousand in the electrical budget, so I could turn around and make payroll another two weeks. He was such a shifty character and liar I never believed half his stories. But I knew that if he promised two more weeks of payrolls he would come through. I turned around and drove back.
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