What I like about working with Gigi is that she's not afraid of getting her hands dirty, even with her french manicure. To be honest, it's difficult for me to hold a 10lb sledgehammer all day, especially when I have to hammer with the side I had a stroke with. Can't get a firm grip and feels like it weighs 50 pounds. Anyway, I'm on the phone with our client, she takes over, and while I'm watching her trying to get at a weird angle, bam, she hits her hand. Don't think it's stupid, lame, silly or dumb, stuff like that happens all the time on a job site. Now I could have sent a young dude to pound the stakes, but we were still responsible for marking off the area to stay behind the property line... imagine installing 8 monument signs in the wrong place, that would be 10 hours of driving, and extra hours with no assurance that it would be correct, so use old folks had to do it.
She actually is adept at using tools. Otherwise she would't have tried it. Just one of those things... she still kept working after she sat down for a while. She tuff'd out the rest of the day and drove 2 1/2 hours back to the office. Anyway, when I was fabricating and installing, I practically grinded my finger off trying to remove mounting bolts, slipped into a deep footing after being nudged by another worker and was almost impaled by re-bar, fell off a ladder 20 feet when my co-worker let go of the ladder cuz my boss was to cheap to rent a lift... it happens.
I don't question anyones abilities, especially at our age. It's not that hard to pound stakes. When we go shopping for tools and she picks up a huge wrench with that devilish grin, I'm thinking, how can make use of a big a$$ pipe wrench to install a sign... she's probably going to be the one to tighten the bolt down (with the proper tool) but she'll walk around with the big wrench or sledgehammer because she likes big wrenches and sledgehammers. (she'll have a hard hat and construction boots on)
