From 2005 to 2008 in South Florida I created and ran a permit expediting company. It came from my mom managing a construction company, them having too many contracts, and not enough contractors to run their own permits. I saw a need and got together with a couple of friends to incorporate.
We pitched it to the owner of the company my mom managed and got a contract from them. We eventually picked up other companies as well.
So the job went like this: one of us be assigned to a specific geographic area or company for the day, we would stop by the office, pick up the paperwork for whatever permits had to be filed, retrieved, delivered.
We would visit the city building department and depending on the city (each ran things in drastically different ways with no consistency) we would be there for 15 minutes or all day. Some permits would be a quick, single day turnaround or could be in bureaucratic hell for a month or two. We’d charge based on the complexity and time involved in getting permits approved. Then we would either deliver the permits to the contractor or the job site. On occasion we would deliver liens to customers who didn’t pay their bills which could sometimes get dangerous.
The only people I’ve ever met that did this exact type of work were people I met within city building departments. It’s a relatively boring, but uncommon profession.
The job came with all kinds of weird knowledge that I’ve never had to use again, like how many palm trees on the property equal a shade tree for the purpose of landscaping requirements. Than answer back then was 3.
The company was born out of a construction boom after Hurricane Katrina and died during the housing market crash of 2008.
Edited for spelling and sentence structure.
Also edit: sometimes getting permits approved would involve meeting with city engineers, making corrections on engineering documents, and just having a good rapport with the city.
Also, currently I am a change control analyst for a telecom company. My job description literally says “protect the network”. Essentially network engineers submit projects to me, I check the projects for accuracy, impact risk, importance, etc. A lot of the time, I reject work because of errors, cutting corners, not enough preparation, etc.
My job is to balance the projects being done VS how many customers I want to piss off because their services get taken down. My engineers either absolutely love me, or would like to have the opportunity to stab me in a dark alley, there really is no in between. Generally the ones I reject often for crap work are the ones that also want to stab me.
Hola. For me, I started getting a cough and feeling under the weather. I came home from work on that Friday and I hadn’t eaten at all that day, was super hungry. It was Friday! I’m going to treat myself to some Mediterranean from this delish local place. Got my food, took a bite, bland af. Couldn’t taste anything. Finished eating and fell asleep watching the simpsons on the couch like I tend to do when I’m not feeling well.
Woke up the next day and couldn’t smell or taste anything. Immediately took a home test which came back positive. Made a appointment for a test through my doc on Monday which of course came back positive.
Things got worse, brutal cough for at least a month. Complete brain fog for over a week, couldn’t put thoughts together, which made it so i struggled to complete regular day to day things. Super fatigue for a could of weeks. After maybe 10 days my sense of smell and taste came back.