Couldn't help but to laugh.

Today was absolutely ridiculous. I can't go into detail because of privacy issues, but for anyone who reads this with any regularity at all, I'm pretty outspoken about prints being all fucked up. It's more than a pet-peeve for me. Sometimes I'm told I big-deal discrepancies but this was beyond that.

For over a year, we've been using the same style of prints. They were updated, of course (we're on ASI 47 for now) but the prints themselves were always in the same format. I knew where to look for lighting, for power, for data and surveillance, for mounting heights...no issues there. Then for some reason, suddenly, we got a new set of "combined" prints. Supposedly these were superiour: in any given area of any given floor, turning to to appropriate page would give all that information at one time. Sounds great in theory, I guess. However, when there's a wall unit with two duplex receptacles, a box for phone and data, a few switches and a card reader all squished into a small area, it's a little difficult to read exactly where they're supposed to be mounted. Even if the power, data and phones are mounted at 18" and the switches and card reader are supposed to be at 48", it makes you sit and think when the wall unit only allows a foot of space to fit it all in. I had to ask for clarification from the foreman, who had to ask for clarification from the general foreman, who had to ask...yeah well anyway, it went up the ranks and in the meantime, I had plenty of time to try and read these new prints. I noticed some issues, so I took the old ones out to compare.

Somehow, the new prints added tons of changes compared to the old prints, but with no addendum bubbles to signify the changes. At the same time, things on the old prints weren't included in the new prints. I know that when something's deleted it won't show after the initial change, but according to the dates, they were released at the same time, same ASI number. If I went strictly by the new prints, I'd have to remove half of what was installed and then install about as much as I'd just removed. This, after we passed inspection yesterday.

So I brought it up to my foreman once he came back from trying to find out exactly how to read these supposedly-easier-but-totally-fucked prints. He looked at them after I insisted I really wasn't misreading them. He laughed, I laughed, everyone who came by and realised how ridiculous it all was also laughed. We wasted so much time trying to figure out which to use, it was crazy. Turns out, the new prints are flawed and we need to go back to the old ones. More laughter.

On a side note, it irritates the fuck out of me when a journeyman will scan prints to get a basic idea about what to do, but miss the important things, like "branch circuits to be run in #10 AWG" and in their haste they run everything in #12, so that when I try to be nice and let them know that it needs to be one size larger they flip out at me and try to blame it on everyone but their own inattention. Man up, guys, and accept responsibility.