Mathew's First Task at Work!

 

Excited and looking forward to my new internship and assigned my first job into the internship, I walked into an office where the principal architects were missing - apparently they had gone traveling

The first task assigned to me sounded pretty straightforward - I had to supervise and get the tiling done for a small washbasin area in a residence. The tiles were already decided and was on site, all I had to do was figure out a pattern and get the tile layers to do it.

So I started doing the job - making patterns and sharing it with Sai on WhatsApp, who would ask me to make small corrections, it was a to and fro process, going very well for my first day at work.

And then he says, you need to execute this on site, Mathew, be ready to do that tomorrow.

I was nervous, but excited - ready to take on this first task I was given.

But that's when the constraints set in - I needed 12 tiles, but I only had 10 on site. Also, the client, didn't like any of the initial patterns I had shared with him and needed a crisscross pattern using the tiles, which included a lot of cutting of the tiles - sort of increased the difficulty of the exercise one level higher.

But I got through it, the pattern was decided, planned for using exactly the same amount of tiles which was available at site, not one more, not one less. We also planned to cut the usage of tiles by not using tiles where the mirror would come.

That was when another door just slammed in my face. Vastu wouldn't permit me to place a mirror on that wall but 2 tiles had already been cut. I started to panic. The tiles wouldn't last, Sai was about to board the plane back to India, he wouldn't be able to see or be updated with the work, I was freaking out like crazy, sending Sai message after message telling him each and every problem. The reply.. one message. " Mathew, just stop ". I heaved a sigh of relief. I told the masons to focus on some other work. Maybe Sai won't ask me to work on these tiles anymore.

Next day, Sai has finally reached back at the office and I finally meet my principal architects. First thing Sai says to me is that I will work on the pattern myself. He could see the anxiety creeping back up on my face. He reassured me that this is a task which I can do. He sat with me and started to tell me how to work with it. The approach to handle the task, the mindset I should have and how to deal with problems. The morning talk gave me the confidence to rework the tile pattern such that the wasted tiles don't

matter.
The next day I was back at site. The most confident I'd felt for the longest time. Small problems still kept popping up. The material was running low. The masons had doubts on how to apply the cement or treat the wall. But no matter what the problem was I had the confidence to think about it and deal with it, rather than just freak out and frantically spam Sai with messages. A few hours later and it was finally done.

- Done by Mathew

    How it looked when it started

How the final product looks like