My new job is VERY different from my old one, although there are a great many similarities. In an odd way, it was the skills I learned as a youth and young man working in “the Trades” that got me several Director titles, but the higher I went up the ladder, the further away I got from the very things that put me there in the first place!
When I took my first facility manager job, back in the late 90’s, the entire crew was me. Sure, I had HVAC contractors and electricians come in from time to time for big jobs, but the day to day work was very hands-on. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, drywall and painting, roof repairs, data systems – you name it, I did it. From there, every new place I worked had an in-house crew for me to manage and while I still did some actual hands-on “real” work, my time was spent more and more on accounting and payroll, HR issues, ordering materials, dealing with bureaucrats from all levels of government, permits and performance reviews… blah, blah, blah. I had no ambition, desire or frankly, talent for any of that stuff. No love for it, certainly. At my last job, I don’t think I picked up a tool more than once or twice in 6 YEARS!!
Now it’s a whole new world for me and I found that I had to re-gear. My new role is a big mix – I still “manage” and I do a lot of customer service type stuff – meeting with clients, working with the sales people and such, but I also get to be hands-on again, which has been fun. I’m not actually building, but I’m the guy to go in “after the fact” and take care of the little detail things that may have been missed during construction.
The tools are basic, BUT since I’m going into high end, finished homes, I need to be neat, organized and clean. At the same time, I need to be very mobile, and more-or-less self contained. And still be able to carry my laptop and some hard-copy files with me… An unusual situation for me!
I started with this bag as my foundation. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08SCP9112?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
This was the only tool bag I found that had a laptop sleeve in it, decent reviews and didn’t (completely) break the bank. I’ll run it for a few months to check it’s performance and do a product review down the road if warranted.
First, I did a necessary mod to the bag. I do this with just about everything – I don’t believe I was born to be a billboard… If companies started making QUALITY products with NO visible labels, I’d be a customer for life, but I digress…
Now that the bag was ready, I needed to get my tools easily identifiable, since I work with a dozen tradesmen and things tend to disappear in those type of environments. Not that they’re dishonest, tools just have a way of getting mixed up and disappearing on job sites – ask me how I know! I used to engrave my initials on all my tools, but this is hard to see from across the room, or if something gets dropped into the bottom of the wrong tool box…
Once the paint dried, it was time to get loaded up! The paint isn’t pretty, it’s for positive ID purposes only. I just made sure to mask off all moving parts and anything that might mar a finish if it rubbed up against something.
Now, as an aside, this here would make a pretty good “homeowners” tool kit. Nothing fancy or complicated or expensive. A few of these items I had lying around (and if I’m being honest, I could have filled out this entire kit from what I already had, but I didn’t want to spend half a day digging through my ministorage unit to find it all!) and there are a few items not yet in the bag (battery drill and bits and a few other odds & ends) but what you see in the pic will take care of the vast majority of “simple fixes” around the house and excluding the bag, I don’t think I spent more than $200… And honestly, I probably won’t use more than 50% of the contents the majority of the time. I believe in being prepared, but I also don’t want to lug 40 pounds of unnecessary tools around with me all day, so I may scale this back once I get into the swing of things.
In my old life I was used to having a large toolbox at my side or a fully loaded van and a massive tool bag of specialty tools for whatever trade I was in at the time, so this is a little weird to me!
But in this new life, I think this is gonna be just what I needed!
Now I just need to figure out the whole “mobile office” thing… While I never liked being “tied to a desk”, not having one at all (or power or wifi or the usual accouterments of office life) is another challenge in and of itself!
If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears!
Thanks for stopping by!
The Boring Old Man 