What is the craziest/funniest thing you have seen on a job

[patty]

Thought I would throw this one up considering their is alot of sparks out there who are interested in how other electricians do it in other states but I was interested to know what was the funniest or serious situations that people have witnessed on the job site!

My one is of a more serious nature thank god no one got hurt I was working Down the central coast and I had installed the Consumer mains "running to a "point of Attachment Bracket mounted obviously on the barge board i ran 2 x 16mm sdi mains one red one black also i has to bond a 16mm neutral bond on a lug on a a 12mm bolt that was attached to the colorbond fascia i did all my work on the P.O.A Bracket then i terminated the sw board mounted the fuses and did the metering waiting for the local supply authority to come and do the aerial service as we were not accredited at the time i calmly awaited the arrival of the lies crew they connected up all went well until they "livened" up the aerial service the stupid "liney connected a phase to the neutral and the neut to the Active so effectively the whole barge board fascia was live including the downpipes he went in at a hundred miles an hour screaming at everyone to get out of the house then calmly dis-connected re-connected then drove away as fast as he could I thought about reporting him to the local authority but I understand people have bad days but this guy had a shocker!

[Barry_White]

When I was installing air conditioners I was working with my mate who was the sparky we had to do some work on the compressor unit. My mate reached up and turned the power off and the the switch mounted on the floor joist was facing away from him. He took the cover of the unit and reached in and got a belt.

The apprentice had mounted the switch upside down and he had actually turned the power on.

[pawnhead]

Wow that sounds serious guys.

Mines more on the funny side.
We'd sarked up a house and installed Ecoply on the outside. The engineer didn't specify any bracing board since the Ecoply would do the job if we nailed it at 50mm centres. A couple of days later the plumber came back and finished his rough in and charged the line. Water everywhere as the ground floor started flooding.
It turned out that one of his pipes was on a horizontal joint of a sheet of Ecoply, and we'd put about fifty nails right through it.
We didn't notice that we were nailing into it because we were using a gun, and we couldn't have moved the sheets because of the cover batten layout. I suppose we should have checked out where the pipes were before we sarked up, then could have shifted the pipe before we'd started.

And on a more serious note, the very same job, we had a neighbour who was a stubby short of a six pack, and a cranky old bugger to boot. Non stop complaints about the noise we were making, and watching the clock all the time to make sure we weren't working beyond the hours set by the council.
Anyhow, one morning the painters decided to start half an hour early. At six thirty in the morning, they're painting the Ecoply facing the neighbours place. You know how much noise painting makes, but the old goat wasn't happy, and I'm sure that he was just itching for a chance to take a pot shot. The painters couldn't work out what that noise was until they saw the old bugger taking aim with his air rifle. Of course they ran for cover and the builder called the wallopers when he got on site.

I can't get over how batshyte crazy some people are.

[elkangorito]

Place - Bayswater & Liddel Power Stations, 1983-84.
Company - Roberts Constructions.

The company hired a mob of Irish subcontractors to do jobs such as concrete footings, carpentry, labouring etc. We nick-named these guys the "Irish Rovers". Fair dingkum, their names were Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Mick & Paddy. They were given a Ford Econovan as their general site vehicle & get this...everyday, that vehicle had a flat tyre. But everyday, it was a different flat tyre. Huh!!??


Job No 1.
One morning, I witnessed one of the Irish Rovers get a drop saw from the site store & put it on the back of a large flatbed truck, without securing it. He then proceeded to drive away down the unpaved & very bumpy "track". After about 50m, the saw fell off the truck & smashed into a million pieces. Sure enough, Jerry was back at the store getting another dropsaw. He then proceeded to do exactly the same thing - smash saw No 2 into a million pieces. At this stage, Ray the foreman had turned up, gave Jerry a good reeming & then told him to secure the saw to the back of the truck, which Jerry did.

Well, saw No 3 was also destroyed but not as a result of falling from the truck. It "died" as a result of being used to cut concrete with a timber blade.

The Irish Rovers were quickly moved to another job.


Job No 2.
I was commissioning PLC's in the main switchroom of the coal handling plant when all the lights & power disappeared. Within seconds, I had Ray the foreman screaming at me on the 2-way. He & I had to get the power back on ASAP so we both worked out a strategy & began. After about an hour of checking, we were still scratching our heads (large switchroom with hundreds of breakers etc) but I did manage to find 1 CB that would "trip through" if I tried to turn it on. The circuit wasn't labelled so I had to trace the rather large orange circular for about 300m. It ended up supplying a temp power board at the bottom of a crane bay. When I found this board, it was hanging off the wall & in very bad shape. What the hell could have done this? Anyway, I fixed up the board, got the juice back on & went for lunch.

From talking with the guys at lunch, one of them had witnessed (from a distance) the Irish Rovers having trouble trying to drive a 4 tonne Dyna out of the crane bay. From the witness account, the Rovers stalled the truck on the 1st, 2nd & 3rd attempt, & kept increasing the revs until they did actually "break free" from this crane bay. Not once did it occur to any of them to see what was stopping them from moving. If they did, they would have noticed that the rubbish piled in the back of the truck was getting caught on the temp power board.

The Irish Rovers were then bannished to Liddel Power Station.


Job No 3 - Liddel Power Station.
We were doing the control cabling for some new conveyor drive houses & noticed that the Irish Rovers were marking many chalk "x"es on the ground where they were going to drill the holes for the new conveyor footings. They spent hours with theodolites & drawings, marking "x"es everywhere. Just after lunch, they were ready to drill the first hole. In comes the posthole digger & down she goes. All of a sudden, flames & smoke started coming out of the hole. They knew something was wrong & so quickly got lost. They had drilled through the main supply cable for one of the main conveyors. This conveyor supplied coal to both Liddel & Bayswater power stations. Immediately, a "round the clock" crew was placed to dig up & repair the cable, which took almost 24 hours. In the meantime, hundreds of coal trucks had to be called in to start hauling coal.

While all this was going on, the Irish Rovers were busy drilling another hole. This time, they chopped through a 256 quad telephone cable. All telephone communications between both power stations & several coal mines was lost. The cable took 2 days to repair.


One of the "Jerrys" was working with me once. I had to get some cables through a rather muddy cable pit & into a drive house. While we were working, some hornets were busy gathering mud for nests. Even though they were quite close to me, I was not bothered by them but Jerry started swatting at them. I told him to stop this because they sting. He said to me, "What are these pretty flies?" I said, "Keep swatting & you'll find out." You guessed it, he was badly stung.


Job No 4 - about 3 years later, BP Clutha.
At this time, I was working for a Newcastle electrical company & was sent to BP Clutha to check out a problem with a PLC. To get onto the site, you drive under the main conveyor gantry, which at that time, was old & about to be replaced. Upon entry to site, I notived - you guessed it - the bloody Irish Rovers! I couldn't bloody believe it! What were they doing? They were busy getting ready to dig a trench for some reason. I saw the Telecom Australia guy putting a big chalk line on the ground to indicate where his cable was, so that the Rovers wouldn't cut it.

After a couple of hours in the PLC room, a rather large & aggitated man burst in & asked me if the telephone had rang. I told him it hadn't. He looked puzzled & frantic, & then left. He returned some 30 minutes later, now very aggitated, & asked me what I was doing. I told him & he asked me if I was doing something with the telephone system. After I satisfied him that I was not the cause of any possible telephone problems, I did tell him to check for a cut cable at the site entry (a guess). Within 10 minutes, he came back & said that there was a cut cable & HOW DID I KNOW? I told him about the Irish Rovers...& yes, they did cut through the phone cable.

But that's not all folks.

After the Rovers cut the phone cable, they quickly moved to another spot to commence more digging. This time they cut through the power cable supplying the main conveyor (the one at the site entry).
The part of the gantry that you drove under as you entered site, had the rain cover removed for maintenance reasons. When the power got cut & the conveyor stopped (fully loaded with coal), it began to rain. After an hour or so, the added weight of the water with the coal was too much for the old gantry. It fell to the ground.

I don't know what happened after that.

[Pete F]

Ha ha ha, classic! No ...wait, I think these guys did some work at my place!

[pawnhead]

Fair dingkum, their names were Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Mick & Paddy.

Are you sure that their names weren’t ‘Larry, Curly, Moe, Abbott, Costello, Laurel & Hardy’?
And are they the same guys you got to drive this truck at your mines?;

They were given a Ford Econovan,,,,

I had one of those that I used to commute 150km each way per day to work and back at Sydney from the Central Coast. They were notorious for leaky back door seals, and a guy lost his wife and kids in one once. It was tragic. He thought they were asleep, but they’d died from monoxide poisoning.
Mine was no exception, and I used to start nodding off a bit on the way to and from work sometimes. I’d have my head out the window to try to get some fresh air, and on the way home I’d sometimes have to pull over to take a nap (yeh, I know I was an idiot, but I was broke trying to support a family whilst paying a huge mortgage at astronomical interest rates).
I fixed my problem anyway; I cut a metre off my garden hose, poked it through the quarter glass, and used it as a snorkel to breath through.

I’d get some funny looks from other motorists, but I didn’t give a hoot since it solved my problem.
Just call me Mr Snorkel I'd say.

as their general site vehicle & get this...everyday, that vehicle had a flat tyre. But everyday, it was a different flat tyre. Huh!!??

Which brings up the story of another car I had after the old Econovan died. An old Falcon, I think it was an XC.

They had the spare tyre in the boot, in a tyre well inside the fuel tank. I’d been smelling petrol, and one day on my commute to Sydney I heard this gurgling bubbling sound coming from the boot so I pulled over to check it out. I had to unload all of my tools at the side of the road, and lift up the tyre cover to see what was going on. There was a hole in the fuel tank, and the spare was being dissolved in a bath of petrol swishing around in the tyre well.

Oh well. I loaded up the tools, rolled all the windows right down, lit up a fag and kept driving. I suppose I might have got to Sydney in double quick time with a rocket in the boot if anything had gone awry. It was a couple of weeks until I got it fixed, but it would have been sooner if I’d realized that another tank only cost fifteen bills at the wreckers.

Flame away boys. I've got my flame proof suit on.

[elkangorito]

Are you sure that their names weren’t ‘Larry, Curly, Moe, Abbott, Costello, Laurel & Hardy’?
And are they the same guys you got to drive this truck at your mines?;



Only the Irish Rovers could've done this .

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

I did a stint in the SECV open cuts, pushing 'dozers, etc around.

For some reason, most of the site engineers seemed to be the "wet behind the ears, fresh out of U" types. On The Job training, I guess... although it'd be more appropriate to call it In The Bloody Way training.

One morning I travelled an excavator down a level, which took most of the morning. On the way I passed our site engineer of the week, standing next to a mobile generator (the ol' yellow box trailer type) puttering around inside the access panel. Around arvo brew, I'd finished what I was doing and started to travel back to where I'd started the morning (dontcha just love organisation? ) and he was still standing there, still poking around inside. So I pulled up and asked him if he needed a hand.

His reply was along the lines of "I'll be OK once I can work out how the air lines hook up."

That's when I noticed that in the back of his 4x4 was a couple of jack-hammers and rolls of hose...

[pawnhead]

Only the Irish Rovers could've done this

I'm in the process of posting up a lot of amazing mining pics in my blog.
Mining Mayhem.

[journeyman Mick]

Worked on a large commercial job years ago, was sent to the other end of the site to attend to a defect. When I inspected it I relaised I needed an electric planer and rather than walk all the way back to where I was working I went to see one of the (new) blokes nearby who was working for the same company as me. He passed me his worse for wear Makita. The power plug was totally gone, the end of the cord ended in a pair of wires with the plug lugs still attached!

I asked the bloke if he seriously still used it like this. He said he turned off the power, plugged in the lugs and then turned the power back on.
I whipped out my chisel and Estwing and calmly chopped the end off the lead and gave him back his planer.

The really stupid thing was that the electrical contractor company onsite was fixing, testing and tagging all tools on site for free.

Mick

[rrich]

I was working at my first computer job with RCA, EDP in Plam Beach Gardens, Florida. I was working second trick and had just got the acceptance test to run on the Spectra 70/25 that I was working with.

The union blokes had to use the pallet jack to move the system and get me a new system to work on from manufacturing. I was going to be idle, probably for the rest of the shift.

The foreman asked me if I wanted to work on some prototype equipment in the "fish bowl". The fish bowl was the demonstration area with the systems behind glass and seats for potential customers to "be sold" a computer system.

I go in to the fish bowl and meet the programmer working the equipment. First he shows me his program and where it is having a problem and claims that it is the hardware. Next he points to the logic diagrams for the hardware. Then I asked where is the equipment that I need to fix. The programmer replies, "Unh you're leaning on it." Then he said that he was going back to his hotel to get some sleep. He asked me to leave word as to my progress with the hotel.

If nothing else I did dig through the logic and found a hardware failure, a wiring error and a couple of logic design errors that I patched with tagged wires. I messed with the program and made some changes but still couldn't get the thing working correctly. As I was chasing signals with the O-scope I kept winding up back at the modem interface. I called the local telco test board and with the help of a very knowledgable gentleman we determined that the modem was optioned incorrectly for this application. (The modem was set to manual dial and the programer was trying to auto dial.) The gentleman at the test board scheduled a repair person to be on site the next morning. As it was close to the end of my shift, I documented everything in the log, reported the progress to the programmers hotel and informed the foreman of everything. I went home to sleep.

The next afternoon when I get to work the foreman and his boss have just had their rear ends chewed around until they fell off. The engineer was furious that I had fixed so many issues in the hardware and went absolutely ballistic over the modem optioning thing. Later I found out that the engineer had several sections left to design in the hardware and was using the modem option thing to stall the programmer.

The engineer was gone in about two months.

[Koala-Man]

About 25 years ago I had a labouring job in a factory helping an old fitter and turner called Stan and he used to tell me endless hilarious stories.

My favourite was about when he was an apprentice and doing a lot of welding. The fashion among the apprentives was to roll a cigarette and stick it in a bakelite cigarette holder, do your weld then light the smoke with the glowing tip of the welding rod. One day it was hot and he'd been sweating as he welded, so his rollie ended up covered in sweat. So when he went to light it the current travelled up the rollie and through him to whatever he was leaning on. He said the shock made his jaw spasm shut so hard his teeth chomped right through the cigaratte holder so the tip ended in the back of his throat and the rest flew across the room and hit the wall. True? No idea, but still a nice mental image.

He had another story about a bunch of them welding in the bottom of a ship ankle deep in bilge water until someone dropped their welding rod and though all had to make a dash for for the exit ladder jerking and shuddering like a bunch of robots as the current went through them.

Gaz.

[wonderplumb]

I know this was intended for the spark fraternity, but yesterday I spent 7 1/2 hrs clearing a blocked sewer at the hospital, without going into too much detail there is some pretty knarly things you see coming out of 35m of blocked 6" drainage at a hospital. The best part was I spent most of the time in a man-hole. Choice.

[bugsy]

I was working at my first computer job with RCA, EDP in Plam Beach Gardens, Florida. I was working second trick and had just got the acceptance test to run on the Spectra 70/25 that I was working with.

The union blokes had to use the pallet jack to move the system and get me a new system to work on from manufacturing. I was going to be idle, probably for the rest of the shift.

The foreman asked me if I wanted to work on some prototype equipment in the "fish bowl". The fish bowl was the demonstration area with the systems behind glass and seats for potential customers to "be sold" a computer system.

I go in to the fish bowl and meet the programmer working the equipment. First he shows me his program and where it is having a problem and claims that it is the hardware. Next he points to the logic diagrams for the hardware. Then I asked where is the equipment that I need to fix. The programmer replies, "Unh you're leaning on it." Then he said that he was going back to his hotel to get some sleep. He asked me to leave word as to my progress with the hotel.

If nothing else I did dig through the logic and found a hardware failure, a wiring error and a couple of logic design errors that I patched with tagged wires. I messed with the program and made some changes but still couldn't get the thing working correctly. As I was chasing signals with the O-scope I kept winding up back at the modem interface. I called the local telco test board and with the help of a very knowledgable gentleman we determined that the modem was optioned incorrectly for this application. (The modem was set to manual dial and the programer was trying to auto dial.) The gentleman at the test board scheduled a repair person to be on site the next morning. As it was close to the end of my shift, I documented everything in the log, reported the progress to the programmers hotel and informed the foreman of everything. I went home to sleep.

The next afternoon when I get to work the foreman and his boss have just had their rear ends chewed around until they fell off. The engineer was furious that I had fixed so many issues in the hardware and went absolutely ballistic over the modem optioning thing. Later I found out that the engineer had several sections left to design in the hardware and was using the modem option thing to stall the programmer.

The engineer was gone in about two months.

I bet that was funny but i didnt understand a word you said!

[Sideshow]

As an apprentice in the early eighties, I was assigned to work with a qualified electrician who is one of the dodgiest people you're ever likely to meet.

We (sparky, apprentice and two linesmen) had just finished installing a street light in a new subdivision (no complete houses yet, a few in progress) and had to use a template and can of spray paint to mark the street light with its assigned number. The sparky was in a foul mood and this wasn't helped by only having an empty can of paint. He threw the can into the gutter and was going to leave it there. One of the lineys chipped him about this and Sparky replied - I'll show you how to get rid of it - pulled a hatchet out of the truck and proceeded to smash the can.

Funny thing was, the can wasn't totally empty, just had a blocked nozzle. The can detonated and sparky ended up with black paint from head to waist. When he took off his glasses, there were three guys rolling on the ground with laughter and one guy who looked like a reverse raccoon. His wife went absolutely ballistic because he was wearing a new handknitted jumper.

Same sparky ended up getting the sack for trying to change a three phase meter live because he was in a hurry and couldn't wait for the linesman to disconnect the service fuses. The linesman in the bucket truck had a 100 amp service fuse blow in his face when the sparky shorted a couple of the wires.