Very often in the maintenance and repair world, the easiest jobs become the most annoying. It's understandable when the pain is caused by some mechanical error. A bolt head sheers off, wires in a box are too short, or someone mushroomed a shaft and now the bearing is stuck. These are normal levels of annoyance that at some point become achievements for fixing, and a point of pride when others ask you to teach them how you've done it. Then we get to building shelves.
Wire rack shelves are not that difficult to build. On a scale of 1-10 on the skill required, I give it a 2 tops. Where they become not so easy, is having to build them for someone else with zero other information provided. If you stay at any job site long enough, it's almost guaranteed you will make these shelves. You may even have some in your basement, garage, or apartment.
Why does it matter that there is no information?
It doesn't matter if you enjoy working on the same thing pointlessly multiple times, that will always be easier the first time. If you like to get the job done right the first time you'll need the proper information. Everyone has different wants and needs. This is especially true when it comes to storage solutions. Some might think to just set them all the same height and it will be fine. That's usually the wrong answer. Since multiple items of different sizes and weights will be stored, they need great consideration.
A kitchen may have some very bulky pieces of equipment that are also heavy. Normally you want the heaviest items at the lowest point, so you want that shelf to have some extra space. However many of these heavy items get loaded onto carts for transport regularly. The added strain of lifting up means it makes more sense for them to be on a middle shelf, about level with the cart. The staff can now easily slide the equipment on and off without excessive strain. They still may have heavy items, such as bottles of sauces that can go on these lower shelves to provide overall stability, but those bottom shelves can be much lower to account for this. Now the heavy equipment can be on the next shelf, or even two shelves up.
Shelving for the housekeeping crew may have completely different needs. The bottom one or two shelves may be bulk liquid cleaning products. That second shelf may need to be set at a level where they can easily dispense the products into a bucket. Above them, you may need the largest gap in the shelves for light but bulky items such as toilet paper and tissues. A smaller shelf near the top can have gloves of various sizes and the very top will be something lightweight but slightly bulky, like boxes of trash bags.
Without the proper information on how these shelves are being utilized, it's really difficult to anticipate the proper setups. To add to this, the person requesting it will likely not be around if you end up building it without information. So you drop it off at their department for someone else to load it up. The next day you get yelled at for it being set up all wrong. Someone from their department has to go take all the freshly loaded items off and you have to redo the setup to their standards only for it to be reloaded again.
It's really a waste of time for all parties involved that could have been easily resolved with some basic communication. When you are tasked with building these, I hope you can get in touch with the people who request this build and make it easier for both of you.
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