Jonathon Underly

At Duarte's Landscaping was tasked with the following responsibilities: making the mowing list for the day and week, taking care of the yards, and maintaining a good relationship with the customers.

Each week I was tasked with coming up with the most efficient schedule to make sure the routes and houses that got hit that day made the most sense. We wanted to make sure we were not wasting time and gas driving around town in a random order so placed all the houses that are near each other on the same day. Some houses did not cut weekly so I had to make sure to keep the schedule correct so no customers were getting the wrong treatment that week.

My daily routine would be showing up to the shop, loading up the equipment, making sure everything is working right, gassing everything up and then heading out to the jobs. I typically work alone so I try to stay as efficient as possible with keeping the quality of the job in mind, because at the end of the day I care most about how the job turned out and looks because that's my work and has my name on it. The equipment I operate would be a zero turn 60-inch mower, gas powered Steele brand weed whackers and blowers. My typical routine on a house is starting with weed whacking the house and trimming the edges and sidewalks, then I will move on to mowing the lawn, and then I end with blowing everything off and cleaning it up to make it look perfect.

For me it is really important to maintain a good relationship with the customer, without them you have no work. Whenever I have a chance to meet or speak with the customer I try to give them the most confidence in me and my work. I take pride in my work so whenever I get a chance to meet who I am working for I get excited to do the best work I can so I can show them they hired the right people.

As an Installer Technician at the Communication Company of South Bend I was tasked with installing low voltage devices and cables for systems such as: Fire Alarm, Security Systems, Nurse Call, Data, Door Locks and Key Card Scanners, and Communication systems/ Speakers/ Amps. At the Communication Company we worked in many fields so I was able to experience and learn lots of the different low voltage devices and how to install them.

One of the fields we worked in was Fire Alarm, and what we would do for Fire Alarm was the following: install and run the cables, install and wire up the Fire Alarm panel/ panels, install Co2 devices, smoke heads, pull stations, strobe lights, tamper switches, and horns. One job I had down at Valparaiso University in one of the dorms replacing old smoke heads, strobes, and pull stations with new one and testing it all worked. Another job was over in East Chicago at a few schools adding new smoke heads and rewiring the panel. I have had jobs where I had to pull cable to new devices being added and even worked with tamper switches once. I was able to learn how to wire devices up and how to tie devices together and how to read a panel for faults and errors.
Security Systems are another system that we install but too frequently. Lots of the security systems we install are tied to the door lock system we are installing. The security system job I have been on was a small job at a electrical shop and the system we installed was a simple one. We fed a cable from the door lock systems we had installed and ran it down the wall the box and tied the cables into the security box and it was done on our end. With this particular job I was tasked by my journeyman to figure out how to install and wire up the security box myself and I was able to get the job done for us.
A system that we work on a lot at the Communication Company and that I worked on a lot too was the Nurse call. Nurse call is the communication system patients and nurses use to communicate to each other throughout the hospitals or medical facility. Some of the systems include: the call lights outside each patient room/ and or bed, the remote at each bed for patients to use to contact nurses, code blues, fall pull cords in bathrooms, bed plugins, equipment plugins, nurse trackers in the ceilings to track the nurses, etc. There are lots of systems in nurse call and I was tasked with them all, even installing and wiring up the panels. Lots of nurse call is done over Cat cable and we go in and strip it back and put the right colored cable in its spot to make the system work. I did everything from pulling the cable to installing the devices. There are lots of jobs I can mention as examples but I will talk about the two biggest jobs I did, the two hospitals I helped build in Crown Point. At the Franciscan Health hospital in Crown Point I helped install nurse trackers, wall devices, bathroom pull cords, and wire up panels on seven floors for over six months. Just down the road from there at the same time I was also helping to build the cancer hospital for the University of Chicago, where I pulled cable, installed speakers, TVs, nurse call devices, and communication devices. With these projects I was given responsibility over tasks so I had to make sure they got done right and in a timely manner since we were on a deadline. With jobs like these I learned to really pull cable properly and how to hang it, how to manage my workload with my timeline, and how to handle the pressure of having solo jobs for a massive project and get them done right.

The other systems we do include: data, communication systems, and door lock systems. Each system is different from the next but they all are the same in that you need to pull cable from the panel or previous device to the next device, and then from there it's learning how to wire up the device. With each system I listed I was able to wire up a device for it, some systems more than others but I was able to experience them all. Some of the things I really learned from the job besides learning all the devices and how to wire them up was how to pull cable and hang it, and how to take care of it and do a good job that is up to code and standard. I have a love and passion for installing electrical devices and working with my hands and getting a whole system to work together so doing this job and learning all these devices and trades and skills was something I cherished and loved.

My work experience at Lawn Order, LLC is very similar to the work I did at Duarte's Landscaping, I learned most of my skills for landscaping here at Lawn Order and took them over to Duarte's Landscaping. At Lawn Order I did have more responsibilities and more of a workload because of the amount of clients we had compared to at Duarte's Landscaping. I was tasked with coming up with the routes for the day, handing out tasks to co-workers, making sure the equipment was operating right, and making sure the week's workload got done. At Lawn Order I was trusted with lots of responsibility and I took that with pride and made sure all the work got done and done right.
One of my responsibilities was to make the most efficient routes for the day so we could be as efficient as possible and to make sure we got every customer done that day. We had clients all the way in Elkhart and the same day would have clients on the opposite side of town in South Bend so coordinating how to get all that done in a timely manner was key. Throughout my time working at Lawn Order it would fluctuate if I worked with someone at a job or had help for the day going to other properties. When these times came for help I was trusted with handing out the tasks and route sheet to make sure every job gets done. If I was working with someone or multiple people on the same job I would scout the job out first and then assign different tasks to everyone to get the job done. If I had help for the day but wasn't working with them on my jobs then I would spend time breaking the days jobs up to get the most efficient work done between the different crews.
Working with heavy equipment isn't always easy and fun; you tend to run into lots of problems with the equipment, where I would be tasked to either fix or figure out a way to get it fixed. Some examples could include on the job, a zero turn mower's movement belt snaps in the middle of the lawn and you have to figure out how to fix it. In most cases if this happened I would either go see if I had extra belts and if not go buy one, and then go and try to replace it on the mower to get the job done but worst-case scenario I would have to see if I can push it up onto the trailer and take it to a shop to get fixed. You can have blowers not work, weed whackers not want to hold string properly, etc., so when these things happen you have to learn how to fix them or resolve the issue for that job so it can be completed, because you can never leave a job incomplete just because your equipment malfunctions; that is not the customer's fault.
My boss had lots of clients but not of a lot help to get the work done, so many times the responsibility fell on me for the week to get it done, working longer days or weeks to get it done. I didn't mind this because I felt prideful in knowing I got all the properties done when they should be and they were done properly and looked good. Having lots of responsibility on me really helped build character where I want to do the best job I can and take pride in the work that I do.

When working at Tippecanoe Restaurant I was tasked with getting rooms prepped and ready for the day or an event, making salads and desserts, helping the servers and chefs, and cleaning up at the end of the night. If I was morning shift I would start with getting tables moved and set up, get the napkins silverware ready for the day, and get my salad and dessert station ready for the day. During working hours I would bring food up and down from the kitchen to the ground floors and would help clear tables away. Whenever a salad or dessert order came in I was tasked with making it. At Tippecanoe it could get busy with massive wedding parties or celebrations so I would be tasked with taking care of a huge crowd of customers at once. During this rush you could be stuck with making up to 50 or more salads on crunch time so this helped get me used to working under the pressure working tight under a deadline. At the end of the nights I would be tasked with cleaning up: clearing tables and putting chairs up, vacuuming and getting the kitchen clean, and making sure everything is ready for the next day.