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base. The builder at the time owed us a huge amount of
money, promising month-to-month to pay us, as he had
not been paid. Eventually, when he did get paid, we were
expecting the payment the following day; instead, we got
a call from a liquidator to say the builder is in liquidation
and we are welcome to put in a claim. I was devastated.
It was definitely one of the unforgettable dark days of my
life,” Burgess says.
Fortunately, suppliers with whom they had established
good partnerships were lenient, which allowed the
company to get back on its feet, but this monumental
moment prompted Burgess to make a shift in how the
company was operating. “We toned down the contract
plumbing and decided to focus on the service arena,
which is a completely different ball game,” he says.
It was also at this time that some of the familiar faces at
modern Burgess joined the company. Retlabona ‘Robbie’
Letsholo remembers his first days on the job in 1988 as
being simply a scrabble for survival.
“I started as a casual, digging channels on a building site.
During that time, I saw the plumbers and what they were
doing, and asked them all questions. When they moved to
the next project in Germiston, I went with them. Soon after,
I was training as a plumber,” says the man most know for
his role in the office in the Creditors department.
Another new signing from that era was MD Craig
Preston. “I started in 1989 as an apprentice plumber,
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November 2018 Volume 24 I Number 9