September 10, 2026
It looks like people are starting to come around about designing, planning and building houses by counting number of nails they used. It’s probably for the best; people sure went crazy about it for a year or two, though.
It looked so intuitive, and what a great way to measure progress. If a house took about ten thousand nails to build, you knew that if you’d used a thousand nails the house was about ten percent done. You could schedule it down to the day. The idea made everything simple, planning, scheduling, all of it.
And it was so much easier to understand than the old systems. You could even tell who the real go-getters on your team were; if Bob could hammer in a hundred nails a day, but Alice was only getting in three or four, you could tell that Bob was on his way up in the world, get you thinking maybe he’d make a good foreman. Alice though, you could tell she needed maybe needed coaching, and after a while you’d think maybe she’d be a better fit at a different organization; a shame the people at the plumbing school really didn’t prepare her for life in the trades.
It was a wild time; getting things organized was so easy, and the best part was that nails were so cheap! We were getting houses built up and ready for sale on time, in record time.
Sure, in retrospect it all seems pretty crazy; these days I probably wouldn’t move into a house whose builders _only_ talked about how their trades used so many nails, how they were hammer-first homebuilders. How they were sure it was a great house because they used twice as many nails as their competition, how proud they were working with carpenters who could hammer ten times as many nails as any other company…. hindsight is 2020, sure, but you’d have questions, right? I mean, not saying I wouldn’t do it, but y’know, just not straightaway. I’d need to do my own research.
Luckily that seems to be dying out now that nails are getting pricier and some of our cannier project leaders are thinking hard about problems like “my feet are wet”, “the wind, the wind” and “stairs?” So you know, the zeitgeist seems to be shifting to “controlling nail costs”. Now that nails are getting more expensive by the day that seems like a good idea.
I have to admit it’s weird how empty this neighbourhood feels, though. Especially now that the season’s changing and the air’s getting cooler. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a customer in a while.
Must just be this economy, I guess.