STAPLES!

Back in 1989 there was a new employee that was hired on at Coachmen.  His forman, a busy man with many demands on him, takes the new employee out to help build his first motorhome.  Now the employee, being a green hand, had to start somewhere so the forman hands him a stapler and starts to instruct him on the installation of the carpet around the entry steps.  Suddenly one of the leadmen walks up and demands the formans attention, seems that on the next house over they have run out of plumbing fixtures, so the foreman takes off to the next house to solve that issue.  While there he gets side tracked again and off to another issue and so on and so forth.  About 11 oclock he remembers the new employee and goes back to check on him.  He's impressed with the workmanship, the carpet installation looks excellent and is not really concerned at this point that it took 3 hours for the new hand to get this job finished.  Since he done such a good job he hands him a new box of staples and instructs him on the installation of the remainder of the carpet in the unit, then he goes off to see to his other duties.  The new employee moves right along with this new chore and does an excellent job.  About 3 oclock he's finished, but it's 30 minutes till quiting time and he don't want the new boss to catch him doing nothing so he bussies himself until the end of the shift by hiding in the dinet area and regularly shooting a staple here and there just incase the boss happens to walk up. 

How do I know all of this? 

No, I wasn't the new employee.  No, I wasn't the foreman.  It's just obvious to me that this is the only reasonable way that someone would have shot that many staples in those two small places.  By the time they were finsihed, they had to be looking for an open area to shoot antoher one! 

Ok, I'll get off my soap box now and go back and pull some more STAPLES!

I've often thought the same, wildthang.  For what its worth, the same guy did the stapling in our manufactured home. And why did they ever think they needed 1.5" staples to mount 3/16" wall paneling? One size fits all, I guess. Or maybe the foreman did not get around to showing the guy how to change staples during hs shift?

Are you using a staple puller? I didn't know such a thing existed and was using screw drivers.

When we pulled all of our carpet to put laminate down I found so many staples that your guy's brother must have done mine.

Haha, makes me want to go buy a staple puller for our carpet replacement I plan on doing eventually. 

An old roomate of mine had a mobile home. He decided to refurbish the small dining area and pulled the paneling off the wall. Under that was plywood. You could see where the guy running the large staple gun kept firing until he hit a stud. 50+ staples in just one of the cases.

too many staples= too little installation knowledge

too many staples= too little installation knowledge

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Ain't that the truth. Some of the guys and gals working the assembly lines are experienced in what they were taught to do on the line, but lack any real expertise in woodworking, electricity or plumbing. They just assemble things by rote and as quickly as possible. Assembly line work is not really a skilled trade.

RV Roamer said:

Assembly line work is not really a skilled trade.

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If it were, the average citizen laborer wouldn't be able to get a factory job without years of training first.  And consumer costs would be much higher with skilled craftsman fashioning every detail, as they are with custom built RV's.  I'm ok with lots of staples I guess, as long they're not hurting the overall quality of my RV.  Although I'm not looking forward to removing all of them when I swap carpet. 

That's too funny.. I guess this guys cousin worked on mine... he was hiding from the boss up by the drivers seat in mine though... I'm still trying to get the carpet off of the dog box.. I've never seen so many staples in one area!!

Just remember - back in the early 20th century, one of the advantages of the assembly line was that you could train someone quickly to do one task well, then pass the product to someone else for the next task, instead of requiring a craftsman that knew the whole process, or even a specific trade (i.e. carpet installation) to produce something.  This meant that you didn't have to pay as much to the lower skilled employees, which meant you could sell your product for less, sell more and make a greater overall profit.  The down side is that the employees then didn't feel the need for the craftsmanship that would come out of a custom shop.
If you want true craftsmanship, you are going to pay for it, and pay dearly.
          Ralph