Hit 1,000,000 bricks laid and it got me thinking about quantity vs quality

I hit a million bricks laid last month on a 14 story job in Columbus, Ohio. The crew took me out for drinks and everything, but I keep going back and forth on whether that number means anything real. On one hand, it's a solid milestone that shows I can show up and grind, but on the other, I've seen guys who laid half that amount do way cleaner work on curved walls. My foreman said "a million bricks is just a million chances to mess up" and that stuck with me. So which matters more, hitting big numbers or the finished product looking perfect from 10 feet away? I'm curious if anyone else has tracked their totals or if you just let the job speak for itself.

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lucast811mo ago

Track your own numbers but keep them in your head, not on your shirt. I've had guys brag about volume then walk the line with the foreman and hear about all the chipped corners and lippage nobody caught while they were flying. A million bricks means you can work fast, sure, but it also means you've had a million chances to cut a corner on a head joint or trust a level that was off by a hair. The cleanest wall I ever saw took a crew three weeks on a span most guys would've done in ten days, but nobody walks into that building and asks how fast it went up. Quantity gets you the next job, quality gets you the next referral, and you need both to actually eat. So go buy your crew another round, then spend a week doing punch list work on your own time and see if that number feels different.

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spencer_gonzalez11mo ago

Read somewhere that the best bricklayers leave no trace of effort, just perfect joints, and that stuck with me.

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