01
"What time is this crew here until today?"
The manager asks on LINE, the crew says they don't know, then calls the designer to check. The schedule lives in Excel — no one looks at it, no one updates it.
02
"What's the number for that tile vendor?"
It's saved in a former colleague's phone. Thirty LINE messages scrolled and still nothing — you can't find it when it's urgent, and won't save it when it's not.
03
"Where are the inspection photos?"
A crew member sent them in some group chat that holds four hundred other photos. Halfway through finding them, the chat app says the photo has expired.
04
"Did that to-do get done?"
Kept in your head, on sticky notes, in phone memos. With three sites running at once, whatever slips through is usually spotted by the client first.
05
"This project — are we actually making money on it?"
Payments received, materials paid for, wages handed out — all scattered across Excel and chat logs. To work out one project's P&L at month-end, you rebuild the whole sheet.
06
"The client's final payment — has it come in yet?"
Deposit, mid-term, final — each its own line, and which installment is still outstanding lives only in your memory. Miss one reminder and you're the one out of pocket.
07
"This wall — how many boxes of tile do I order?"
Punching it into a phone calculator on site, never quite nailing the waste factor. Order too much and it sits until it's ruined; order too little and the crew stalls, waiting on material.
08
"We need an auspicious date to break ground — but the old master has retired."
Groundbreaking, bed-setting, moving in — all need a chosen date. The almanac is hard to read, and the elders aren't always around to ask.