Stick with granite and you won't regret it. Quartz can look great in photos but it doesn't have the same depth or character as natural stone once you see it up close. Besides, heat from a hot pan sitting on quartz can leave a permanent burn mark for life.

Makes me think of the time I watched a guy try to pry open a paint can with a butter knife in a hardware store parking lot. The knife didn't make it either.

Wow, that's a huge area to cover. I saw a video once where a crew did something similar on a big slab, but they used a different setup with walk-behind machines. Your method with the ride-ons in a line sounds like it was the right call to keep it moving. Nice work pulling that off.

What outcomes did he want you to track instead?

Honestly, that reminds me of a weird click in my old car's front end. I chased it for like a year, replaced the sway bar links twice. Turned out it was just a single, totally loose bolt on the strut tower brace, the one thing I never checked. I mean, you look right at it, but you assume it's fine. Felt like such an idiot when I finally found it.