I went out to Habitat for Humanity this weekend. Although the original plan had been for us to do some roofing, the shingles had been stolen the day before. We ended up putting up siding instead.

Now, I’ve put up siding before. Once. About 2 years ago. However, this filled the site supervisors with such confidence that not only did they not give us any instruction, they counted on me to teach the guy I was working with.

One thing I do know about putting up siding: you have to leave room at the end of the wall or along any doors, windows, what have you. (About ¼ inch, to allow for expansion.) When I was measuring, I was taking that into account.

Except that they guy cutting the siding? Was taking a half of an inch off of our measurement. His explanation? "That’s how I do it, to make sure you have space!" Except that since he was doing this based on my measurements, he didn’t need to. Nor did he ask me. He asked someone else on site if I was measuring tight or not.
He cut four lengths of siding. All were too short. He

1. threw a fit about wasted siding
   
2. told us if we screwed up again he was taking us off of the scaffolding
   
3. yelled across the entire site about how we didn’t know how to measure
   

1. you can probably find a place on the house to use 116” lengths of siding
   
2. right, because the whole reason we were hanging the siding that high was to play on the scaffolding
   
3. dude, you’d already messed up 3 measurements that you took.
   

1. Hey! I don’t have to be here. I’m volunteering, so, not really interested and getting yelled at and berated. I left.
   

I’m told that the carpenter was yelled at later himself for not measuring things correctly.