Meet A Local Customer – POPES Electrical and Data Supplies

We love supporting local businesses! Each issue, we have a chat with a customer from one of our wholesale members.

Meet James Knight from O’Brien Electrical Fyshwick who is a customer at POPES Electrical and Data Supplies in Fyshwick.

What do you like most about your local wholesaler?
They are very responsive and care a lot about being involved in the local community.

Is there a standout moment they’ve helped you out?
Last year we had a builder go under owing us $300k. This made it extremely hard to keep all of our accounts up to date. We spoke with the local owner of POPES and they were the only supplier to keep our account active at the time. Without their help we could not be trading today.

What’s the most difficult job you’ve ever had?
Wow, there have been a few! I would say a lot of times the difficulty has come from poor management from the client end, causing trade overlaps or variations that come in too late.

What has been your most memorable day at work?
When I was getting to the end of my apprenticeship, I rocked up to work in my Ugg boots
thinking my work boots were in the van. Luckily the job was rural as I spent the day working in my Ugg boots!

Who’s the worst apprentice/ colleague you’ve had?
We had a guy start who was in his early 50s. He told me he had enough money that he could retire and was working in order to entertain himself and give back to the trade. He was great for nearly a year or so – then he proceeded to undermine everything we were trying to achieve as a company, and within about four weeks, he had turned a staff of eight or nine people, and over half of them left before I could catch it and get rid of him.

What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened on a job?
We had an apprentice try to jump a temp fence. He slipped and got stuck on the fence like you see in the movies. Eventually he got down and no one was hurt.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever encountered?
We had to complete a defit/make safe of an old bikie clubhouse once they moved on. There were some really strange rooms under floors and behind bathrooms. You could tell some odd shit had gone down there.

What’s the biggest %&$* up that someone else made that you’ve had to make right?
We took an extremely high-end home over after half of it had been roughed in. The house was over 100 metres long, and the lights had been run in 1mm. We had to go through and do VD calcs to see what cables could stay and what needed to be replaced. The board and automation panel was down one end of the house so a large amount of the cables did need replacing.

What’s the best nickname you’ve ever heard a coworker have?
We have had a few. Junior. His real name is also James. Danger. He is the one from the
fence. That wasn’t his only incident. Squirt. Not sure why we call him squirt.