Alun_evans
New member
Build out for cafes. Really I have to ask myself why I still do this for a living. I am onto my 11th cafe fitout at present (11th I have owned and therefore been responsible for- umpenth other buildouts with some other idiot taking thecabinets pressure!). Hours are insane. Over the last 3 weeks its been 5am starts, midnight finishes. I have had to deal with doors being put where no doors should be, floor traps in the wrong place (big issue when it takes 8 hours to core through solid reinforced concrete), various wrong sizes for partitioning, benches, tiling mishaps, workers asleep inside cabinets, wiring misadventures, fist-fights, floor laying problems...the list goes on. The dust, the heat (its about 98F inside), the noise, the beuracracy...all of this so I can get roasting, start getting food and coffee out to the hungary hoards of Central Kuala Lumpur.
One thing they never teach you, or prepare you for in most schools- and most jobs (except maybe the armed forces) is sleep deprevation. Granted this is self imposed, but I know for sure if I turn up at 10am many things would have already passed to be- hard to say why contractors struggle to follow plans.
On the plus side things are getting there now. The feature ceiling, the feature bar, the beature long bench- all completed or close to completion. By next Wednesday we should be 80% done, but behind schedule. Looks like Antipodean 2 will now open first week of January.
So why would anyone be so crazy as to work in this line of business? The answer is I simply do not know. Coffee, a caffeinated pleasure drives most of us in weird and sometimes illogical ways. As I sit here and watch the suits all filing out of the office block where we are opening- I honestly wouldnt want it any other way. The hard yards, the dusty tears are worth it when we ultimatley pull that first shot. Looking forward to that, cause in the case of my Jakarta cafes the "pull" will indeed be a pull 'cause we have a 3 group lever arriving day after tomorrow. I hope that once plugged, plumbed in- I will feel much better!
One thing they never teach you, or prepare you for in most schools- and most jobs (except maybe the armed forces) is sleep deprevation. Granted this is self imposed, but I know for sure if I turn up at 10am many things would have already passed to be- hard to say why contractors struggle to follow plans.
On the plus side things are getting there now. The feature ceiling, the feature bar, the beature long bench- all completed or close to completion. By next Wednesday we should be 80% done, but behind schedule. Looks like Antipodean 2 will now open first week of January.
So why would anyone be so crazy as to work in this line of business? The answer is I simply do not know. Coffee, a caffeinated pleasure drives most of us in weird and sometimes illogical ways. As I sit here and watch the suits all filing out of the office block where we are opening- I honestly wouldnt want it any other way. The hard yards, the dusty tears are worth it when we ultimatley pull that first shot. Looking forward to that, cause in the case of my Jakarta cafes the "pull" will indeed be a pull 'cause we have a 3 group lever arriving day after tomorrow. I hope that once plugged, plumbed in- I will feel much better!
