hey everybody adam savage uh in my cave answering uh some questions about my shop
and my shop infrastructure for tested patrons uh and today's question comes from jamie vs
who says in the past or present how do you deal with other people using your
shop who might not have the same affinity for order and proper tool use as you that is
that is i'm good i was i was going to say that it's luckily a
problem that i have not had to deal with
now i'm examining why i mean
that's a crazy sound out there
that's a far out sound anyway today's question comes from jamie vs and he
says in the pastor present how do you deal with other people using your shop
what the hell is going on out there who might not have the same affinity
for order and proper tool use as you um that's not really a problem that i have
i'm trying to figure out why i mean part of the reason is that i'm the boss right so like the
the people who come in here mostly are working with me and for me uh my shop assistants have
all been excellent that's why they've been my shop assistants they're all terrific at
tool management and care and feeding of a shop same thing goes for all my tested compatriots
who do come through here from time to time sean charlesworth or jen schachter you know
might need to use a tool and that is totally fine so in terms of that respect thing i don't
that would be difficult for me if someone was coming in and using the shop improperly
and leaving stuff in poor places i mean i do that but like you know i'm allowed
the other place that i've dealt with that is with my kids um just a little bit
right because there was this you know when they were really young there's no
way i'd let them in here alone right because they just cut their hand off on the bandsaw
and then there's a point at which they're like
12 13 14 they're starting to get more competent starting to you know be able to deal with stuff
and each boy screwed each of my sons screwed up here uh
and got caught by that i mean like both sons like had friends over in the cave
to play pool without telling me and i caught both of them just by accident and as a parent
it is a ca for me as a parent it has been a careful moment when i catch when i when when
that happens that kind of confrontation a rule has been broken i see it broken right in front of me
what do you do and in the past um i feel lucky that i have not hit the roof for
things like that i view it as like it's like a trust exercise and the way i treated both
kids when i caught each of them throwing parties and at this point they were like in
16 to 18 years old in that zone 17 to 19 right right around there um in both cases like i know
that they're not like hey we don't care like that's definitely not the thing that's going on
it was mostly just like they didn't want to bother me and maybe they just didn't want the mental
exercise of asking me to use the cave but in each case i caught them and in each case i was cool
about it i mean it was like you're gonna have to wrap this up but i wasn't like yeah or angry and
that is really i feel like one of that strikes me as potentially one of the
reasons that my sons both now treat this space with such great and loving respect
uh thing two was in here last week uh all evening with a couple of friends making um some some board
for uh practicing climbing techniques i use a rock climber and he left the shop just delightfully
lovely the other one has been in here playing pool and again they both demonstrate a respect
for the shop but that was something that i kind of engendered in them i didn't maybe that's the thing
that i'm saying with the story about catching them i didn't force them to respect the shop
i worked with them to see how important it was to me and thus they both treat this shop as like a
an important thing and that's that's delightful um i imagine that there are all sorts of different
circumstances around the world you may live in a building with a basement where a bunch of people
share a shop you may work in a collective artist space where the shop is cooperative
and that can be really difficult when somebody is does not have the same uh proclivities that
you do in terms of tool management and storage and neatness and cleanliness that is a rough one
um if you would be a maker it is a really good idea to pay careful attention to your
cleanliness when working around others it's really specific i know i say this having been so famously
shitty to work with for jamie on mythbusters i leave his shop a total mess and stuff like that
yeah now i know i get it like mia copa yeah mia maxima culpa but
you would be wise to cultivate your neatness and not necessary you don't have to be a neat freak
you just the goal is to not be so sloppy you're affecting somebody else's work that
that's it it's not about neatness it's about lack of sloppiness yeah um i had to do that
i imagine i would do the same thing i did with the boys which would be to work with that person to
express to them what is important about the space and how i want to collaborate using it
i would use my words thank you jbs for that lovely question i'm not positive that i answered
it but uh it's a it's an it's an important question to be asking uh and to look at how you
respond to that question from both sides of the equation yeah because we all have to work together
we all have to work together thank you guys thank you tested patrons for these awesome questions
uh keep submitting them i will keep answering them and i will see you guys next time