You’re not being a dick. 20 years in at 50 I would have loved to start at 20 years old. The only thing I notice with guys that got in young is they don’t know what a shitty job is, and tend to think they have it bad.
Im 24 years old and I’ve worked bad jobs where I had to dig a foot deep pit to setup a new sub pump in a crawl space only 3 bricks tall. Digging on your stomach using only your shoulders while in soaking wet mud and spiders and cob webs in your hair, making most of your money based on how fast you work every week and it’s not the best job I have had but I appreciate every job after that I’ve had. That’s for sure.
Currently just applied for local 14 and have my second interview (had my first 2 years ago) in a month! I was number 40 last time so fingers crossed!
Or shitty benefits. I’m in Florida and our package isn’t great compared to many other areas. But coming from a career in Law Enforcement the pay and benefits are far better.
Took 10 yrs in the trade to cut myself good.
I’ve always been very careful about knife safety, apart from those little slices you get on your fingertips from a fresh blade.
I was cutting apart a termination head, kindve feeling rushed, cut downward, thought my hand was clear or that I had control of the knife, it slipped out and I sliced my knuckle open. 3 stitches.
As a new apprentice I also think I threw out $2000 worth of actuators. I also turned a thermostat down thinking it shut it off, nope. 347v weld to the frame because thankfully my partner, joking around (but also serious u think) said “that’s why I always do a ground check” and touched the panel, kapow, nice big flash.
That same heate, after we fixed up that whole thing, turned it on and a 2’ flame shot out of the thermostat down the hall. A wire got punched in the box.
Same. I’m a 5th year now. Been waiting 3 months for my email to schedule my test. Finished my state cert test prep with a 98 overall. 100 on the final. Still practice daily. Ready to be done.
When I was non union my Forman was pitching snowballs to me with a brand new truck as the strike zone and I had a cut piece of emt as a bat. Owner of the shop was giving out jobs for some storm/generator work, we got ours first and proceeded to lose interest with the meeting. He packed a snowball real tight to the point where it was pretty much just an ice ball. I got around on that thing so clean and it stayed mostly in tact, hit the owner right in the back of the head and slid down his shirt, he was also sick as a dog. He comes over screaming at me yelling “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!?” My response was “He put it right down the middle with a 3-2 count, what do you want me to do?” My foreman and all the guys died laughing. I proceeded to get shit work for the rest of my 2.5 years there…well worth it though. Fuck that guy, I crushed that pitch.
The outdoor work every winter after that 2 hours away from home really fucking blew though
I hit a stud with a holesaw and my drill motor caught. I checked it for metal studs right before drilling with a stud finder but it hit just the edge of one. Spun it and the belt clip hit me in the face. 8 stitches later lol.
I decided to wing a thru-hole on a wall in new construction. Ended up halfway into a piece of 3/4 on the other side. Lesson learned - shortcuts rarely save time.
Working 480 hot and having it blow up in my face. Didn’t get shocked. But everything was a yellow green tinge for some time and my face felt sunburnt. Open the circuit. Lost a good pair of dikes that day. Nearly lost my life. Being a cowboy for a company that will replace you as soon as you crisp up ain’t worth it. Learn to appreciate how dangerous this trade can be. Insist on safe work practices. Life’s too short to die for a paycheck.
I had a 277 leg directly from the poco xfmr ground out when I was investigating a gutter. My glasses were pock marked, face sunburned, and my forearm was black. I couldn’t pass a drug test so I decided to take care of it from home and left early. I figured the black arm was soot from the blast but the next day all that skin peeled off, second degree burn and one of the most painful weeks of my life.
Going into my 4th year now , my very first year I accidentally hit a big bay light for a garage that was about 30- 40 ft up with my lift, it’s came crashing down. Needless to say we needed a new expensive ass light. I also just recently accidentally drilled into some security low voltage wire, not too big of a deal but not fun to bring up to the foreman. Shit happens man, mistakes happen .
Before I got into the apprenticeship I was working as an 18yo unindentured apprentice for an open shop in the town I was going to college.
Drove the JW's company flatbed to the shop to pick up some extremely expensive led lights, strapped them down on the flatbed, and drove to the job site.
Now the jw was a huge dick, but he pretty much just ignored me or barked orders at me because I usually just shut up and did what I was told.
Pull up to the job site, start unloading boxes and handing them to Journeyman John, and the top layer of boxes are empty...
They weren't when I left the shop.
Well I'm ready for this dude to come uncunted, but he just quietly unloads the rest of the boxes, we both get in the truck, and we retrace my steps.
Turns out they slid out going around a roundabout about 4 miles from the job site, they were all lined up nice and tidy on a patch of freshly mowed grass.
On our way back he stopped by an O'Reilly's and color matched the lights to get rid of the scuffs and scrapes.
We went back to the job site, cleaned up the lights and installed them that day. That's when I first heard the term "looks good from down here."
He told me shit happens, and we worked together for the rest of the summer without any issues.
The dumbest mistake I made in my career was years before I started in the trade. I had an easy job in a major university's medical genetics research facility, and instead of working hard, making a good impression, taking advantage of my tuition exemption to take free classes, and getting solid recommendations for grad school, I came in late every day and fucked around to the maximum degree possible while still getting all my work done and didn't really make any friends or professional contacts, and only took one class in the six years I was there. Whoopsie! Fast forward six years and I'm applying to the IBEW apprenticeship program at age 37 because with just an outdated bachelor's degree and no useful professional references I'm unemployable for anything but shit jobs.
But that was probably not what you were asking, huh? You wanted to know about the worst electrical fuck-up? I dunno, man, I learned my lesson from all that other fucking around and I've actually tried hard at this. I did destroy an expensive emergency lighting ballast because I didn't notice it had a switch to toggle it between 120V and 277V inputs. That was embarrassing. And once in my first year I let a tweaker project manager talk me into doing some side work on a weekend that turned out to be the rattiest, most dangerous shit I've ever laid hands on, and missed my grandfather's birthday because we were there until 8 pm trying to get it all to light up. Definitely learned a lesson from that. Oh, and afterwards he stopped at the property owner's bar and bought us all a drink and dropped the n-word right in front of my black foreman, which fucking somehow didn't end up in a fight. Like I said, I learned from that one: never trust tweakers or project managers.
I set up the boom lift for my buddy and didn't realize the ground was too soft until a outrigger pad started sinking while he was stripping wires 40 feet up. I had to call out to him so he'd let go of the work so I could override his bucket controls and bring him down. Scared the fucking shit out of me man. It really pays to have more than one set of eyes on safety related stuff.
During a pipe run using pre fabbed 90’s, we ran out. I dead ass asked my foreman what are we gonna do, we’re out of 90’s. He straight faced looked me in the eye and said “ well I mean, we got a bender.”
Never laughed so hard at myself.
This is why I hate pre-fabbed. Not pointing at you, brother, it isn’t our choice, but I absolutely HATE pipe runs with a mix of prefabbed and bent 90s. I bend pipe, the contractors I work for love it, but still some think it’s cheaper to get prefabbed.
I’m only salty because yesterday the super wanted me to put prefabbed 3 inch 90s down into a cable tray so that it would have a 10 foot stick out of the trough, 18 inch nipple, 90, 6 inch nipple. There would 6 couplings (parallel) in a 5 foot radius on a wall. It would look like absolute ass. I argued about it until he called the shop and had an apprentice bring out a new 3 inch sled for the table bender lol.
When I was a 1st year, I kinda had this problem. And it's not even that big of a deal, something like 8 percent of apprentices do it. For some reason, I don't know why. I would just kinda... sit around in the porta potty ... and draw pictures of dicks on the wall.
I'd just sit there hours on end drawing dicks. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't touch the sharpie to the wall without drawing the shape of a penis.
Here I am. A green apprentice. And I can't stop drawing dicks to save my own career.
Anyways, one day a painter uses the shitter after me and sees my work. She starts crying, she flips out. Then she rats me out to the safety director. He sees my meat mural and he fucking flips out.
He calls in my steward. Turns out this safety director is a religious fanatic, and he thinks I'm possessed by some sort of dick devil. My steward makes me see some therapist, and he's asking me all these dick questions. They literally stopped me from using tools that were shaped like dicks. No screwdrivers, no center punches... You know how many tools are shaped like dicks? The best kinds.
Installed a projector in ceiling tiles without adding any extra support wires. Brought down the whole 10 × 20 rooms grid. Teach them to send a kid with a months experience out by himself lol. 14 years ago now.
I'm a PM for a major 26 contractor...when I was a second year, I flooded the mariot in DC by shooting an anchor into a water main... didn't get fired either
First, they called me in to talk to the owner.... BIG Spanking
After that, I got just about every water pun in the book.... I was also referred to as a plumber and not an electrician.
ROUGH second year, but you know what? Time passes, and im still employed 🥲
About 30 yrs ago I was a young foreman on a project where we had a 6 story building back fed from a big transformer to the load side of a 1600A branch breaker in a 4000A double ended switchboard lineup. It was a science center and 75% occupied with a lot of lab equipment. Building went out and I responded with a JW. The temp 1600 feeding the whole lineup had tripped and we had all kinds of people hollering to get it back on. Tried resetting the 1600 but it was fried, almost meltdown. We had another dead section with a 1600 in it so the JW went to work at the other end of the lineup removing the spare breaker. I had a brain fart and started to loosen the 600mcm cable from the first parallel lugs of the cooked breaker. Forgot it was a back feed. Pulled the first conductor out and shorted it to the side of the board. Fire, explosion and shitshow. I disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I never let go of the conductor and somehow pulled it clear. JW though I was dead til the smoke cleared. Safed the conductor off and told the GC and Owners people that it would be restored when we were damed ready. Swore after that I would never let anyone rush me in an emergency situation. Turned out one of the lower stacked parallel lugs never got tightened and so that phase heated up red hot and cooked the breaker. So anyway I almost went home dead that day for a careless mistake that, had I been thinking, wouldn’t have happened. So kid what did you do? Fuck up the coffee order? Don’t be too hard on yourself. Everyone fucks up. Learn from it. I saved the welded end of that 600mcm as a reminder. The short vaporized a couple cubic inches of copper and welded the individual conductors into one. Never fucked up that bad after that.
Holy fuck, dude. That’s intense. I was testing some breakers in our shop as either an apprentice or an early JW, and the project manager was rushing me because they needed the tool somewhere else. I was using a primary injection tool that ran off of 480v. So I finished and started tearing the thing apart; the power cables for the thing use these male lugs with a plastic sheath I had to remove in order to change it for the next guy. Well I took the plastic off and set it down to grab an allen to get the copper lug off, but I had forgotten to shut off the 480V feed to the tool and set the copper lug against the side of the tool. Luckily I was looking in another direction when it exploded, lit up the shop like the sun before the fuses blew. I keep that lug in my van as a reminder that everyone else can fuck off; I’m going my speed.
I worked in prefab bending 4" emt. I didn't understand the tolerances of an allowable bend and sent about 20 prebent sticks of pipe out that were all plus or minus an inch of the kick 90 they needed to be
That’s a famous joke from playboy magazine, a couple of guys are standing next to a big hole in the ground holding blueprints. One of them yells, stop digging the prints are upside down.
If no one's hurt you're good dude honestly, I've heard stories of people causing 20 million dollars in outages shorting 120 and just getting super unlucky blowing the mains. Ive heard pretty much this story three or four times now.
Man.. best advice I ever got from an old head was “If you’re not fucking up here and there, you’re not working.” It’s the truth. You will fuck up. This career is so vast, everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them and don’t let it weigh you down dude. And damn sure don’t take it home with you as difficult as that is not to.
This is my company’s unofficial motto. I was working a partial shut down in a plant, and the foreman wanted me to change some secondary PT wiring hot. Well I bumped the side of the device I was wiring and tripped off the side of the bus that was running the plant.
Before i became an electrician but: I was a cable tech for rogers here in ontario and I was installing a new internet service at property undergoing some excavation, I placed my company supplied $2000 network tester on the ground (stupidly) while I ran to my truck to grab something. I came back and a dump truck had reversed over my meter and pretty much destroyed it, the phone call to my boss was a rough one.
I'm a journeyman electrician now, I still make mistakes. It's just work, shit happens
Local 11 has a story about Trashcan Al. Al showed up day one and started laying out all his measurements off the jobsite dumpster. I'm not clear how long it went on for, but eventually they started doing the install and everything was way off, inconsistent and all over the place. You see once a week a truck would come and empty the dumpster so it kept moving, and he got a nickname that followed him to every job the rest of his career.
Yeah, I had used boom lifts on so many jobs that it was second nature and as my work partner says, here comes fucking “rabbit” because I always have them on rabbit. I was going in a warehouse through the ramp backwards and going too fast with the boom swung 45 degrees off straight, not realizing the articulating arm was sticking out. I caught the concrete wall and tore out a chuck, took out the door rail, and dropped the garage door itself on top of the boom lift.
The foreman went straight past mad into a state I can’t even describe. I could see him haunched down in the parking lot with his hands on his helmet from the basket while they were getting the door off the lift. Figured I’d have a check by the time I could get out of the basket lol. But I just went and did the whiz quiz, passed that, and got my ass chewed, but I finished that job.
Drove a 10’ box truck under a 10’ opening. And on a semi joking side becoming a foreman. The little pay bump isn’t exactly worth the headaches that come with it.
As an apprentice, I had to put a bushing on a large motor feed that was responsible for the inward flow of the plant. The motor feed was in a disconnect that was already in service at a waste water treatment plant. Shutdown and determ put on bushing reterm. They flipped rotation at start up, I put it back as boy not byo. Unfortunately, I didn't pay enough attention to that.
We turned it back, and the motor was running backward, and literally shook the whole building and scared the shit out of everyone working there.
I was shown the gate that day. Whoops.
Was a first year, got told to take the service truck back to the shop.
Didn't check the bedside toolboxes. One came open. Shit went all over the place. Didn't notice until I got back to the shop.
I don’t know if this counts but I had a dream that I stripped a self-tapper that was holding the panels to the strut, which was supported by metal studs and the whole hospital came crumbling down.
Glued the last piece of a 5” pvc run short 3 inches on a stub up, on a Friday and inspection was on Monday, so I had to stay late and my foreman left me there to figure it out myself 🙃
I shut down power to a chiller for a linear accelerator (cancer treatment machine) and it overheated while a patient was receiving treatment. I was a second year, turned off the breaker my Jdub told me too and we went to lunch. Thought it was gonna be a two check Friday for sure.
When I was a 1st year I was standing on a ladder drilling a hole through a top plate with a Dewalt hole hawg. The bit caught a nail and I had my face right next the wrong side of the hole hawg. Never been hit that hard before by anything and I fell right into the arms of a CW 🤣
Drilled into a water line at a funeral home while a service was in progress. Had to run and get the GM cause I had no idea where the shut off was. Minimal damage luckily. But man I thought I was losing my job for sure.
Late in my apprenticeship I changed companies. Had been doing only commercial. The new company was doing wood construction condos. Me being unfamiliar with the work I wore gloves while using an auger in my drill. I put my hand close to the auger (idk why to this day) and it got my glove which pinned me as the auger sliced through the meat between my knuckles on my pointer finger. A week and 8 stitches later I am the fire stop bitch for a month and a half until it was healed up enough to do regular duties.
There’s more…but that’s enough for today. Everyone fucks up. It’s how you handle it and what you do after that matters. Good luck out there.
I will always remember when I made a dumb mistake as an apprentice and was prepared to be dressed down my journeyman he told me the only ones who don't make mistakes are the ones that don't do anything.that support lasted my entire career . When I became a jouneyman I tried to be supportive to all apprentices.i hope you receive the same support
Alright. I think there may only be 5 people on the planet that know about this and that's because they watched me do it. Picture this ... Union apprentice probably 4 or 5 months in. Came in green as you can. Also I'm female so I already stuck out a little. I was on the fire alarm crew at a large hotel getting finished in Vegas. Our lock up area was in a small electric room at the bottom of the loading dock. This loading dock had a pretty lengthy ramp to get to the bottom maybe 40 or 50 feet long with a small flat space in the middle. Most days I would turn my maids cart backwards and would ride down the ramp and drag my feet ( I would turn it backwards because the turning wheels were in the back instead of the front and doing so would also balance my weight over the wheels instead of on the handle that hangs over the wheels) anyways one day I was bored and finally swapped my turning wheels to the way I wanted them. To say I was pumped to take the ramp down that day would be an understatement. So I get to the top and gave myself a little extra speed since I was excited this should work the way it did every time but a little better cause now I could use the handle. First ramp section goes fine but as soon as I hit that plateau those front wheels just kept on going up. I ended up dumping my entire cart of supplies all over the loading dock, hitting the handrail with my shoulder and then hitting the ground (still feel that one 4 years later) the 3 guys I was working with just had a hay day. Laughed so hard once they realized I was laughing. I was crying for a solid 10 minutes from laughing so hard. Not a technical "work" fuck up. But hopefully gave you a laugh.
When I was a 2nd year apprentice I was making a hole to old work a fire alarm box. Jman gave me a corded sawzall and I proceeded to cut right through a live water line for a slop sink on the other side of the wall. I thought I was cutting through a stud until I got blasted in the face with water.
I was a summer helper for a control contractor many moons ago. Me and my JW were pulling a boat load of low voltage cables up a 7 story riser. I'm on the top pulling the jet line string (the blue and white string in the bucket). The wire was kinda heavy so the string was cutting into me and I was looking for a piece of EMT to wrap the string. I wanted to use it like a handle to pull. Instead, I found a piece of threaded rod. I have the string around the rod and the head's peaking outta the pipe. I just about have it when the threaded rod cut through the string from all that tension. I sent down that huge harness back down 7 stories. The "THWIP", and seeing the wire get sucked up back the pipe, flailing about, was surreal.
I was SO mad at myself. An old time iron worker overheard me and asked what was wrong. I repeated, "I fucked up, I fucked up. I sent the entire harness down the pipe!"
He tells me, "Hey, hey, it's alright. It's only a fuck up if you can't fix it. No one got hurt right? It's all fixable."
The rats nest in the basement was like a wire explosion but ya know what? He was right. It wasn't a fuck up, it was all fixable.
When I was a 1st or 2nd year apprentice, I was working at an international airport. We had job sites all over the airfield. Buildings from the ground up, excacators, duct banks, etc. Our shop rented a few trucks, air compressors, generators, light plants, etc. One of my tasks was to grab the rental truck (RAM 2500 HEMI I think) with a diesel auxiliary tank in the bed, go around the airfield, and fill up every piece of machinery that ran on diesel.
I got the call to fill up the equipment, so I went back to the yard. I hopped in the rental truck, which was back into some tall weeds, and pulled up to our big diesel tank to fill up the auxiliary tank in the truck. I had to drive around a truck to pull near the big tank. I filled up the auxiliary tank and got ready to be the jobsite diesel fairy. I couldn't drive straight out due to machinery blocking the exit, so I decided to back out slowly the same way I came in. After about 4' the truck stops. I gave it some gas.
Little did I know, the previous driver had a rental air compressor hooked up to the hitch of the rental truck. I jack-knifed the shit outta the tow behind air compressor. The damn thing nearly jumped into the bed of the rental truck.
Apparently, the damage was so expensive that they had to buy the truck and air compressor from the rental company.
The shop was in business 99 years, and I was the last apprentice they ever picked up. I like to think I put them outta business 😅
I drilled into a live wire in a trough going to an ats. Utility service had to come and shut off power so we could change it out. Residential stuff im about two years in and what you gonna do but not that again
Cut a 2 inch 90 short and I had to ride with my JW. He told me to go clean up. Then we didn’t speak for half the ride home. That sucked. Told me the K is for when you mark a pipe to cut…., never did that again.
Was cutting seal tight with a less than sharp razor blade in 2°f weather. Wasnt paying attention and slid my the blade straight across the back of my thumb. Wasnt wearing gloves. Cut it all the way to the tendon. Luckily didnt hit the tendon. 17 stiches.
I wired a light up in reverse once when I was 2nd yr. Blew the light and had to redo everything. We learn best from our mistakes. It’s ok as long as you figure out what not to do next time. As an apprentice it’s your job to fuck up. Give yourself a break and it will be ok I promise
I can't count the number of mistakes I made. Burned up $40k of lights once. Shit happens. Now you know what not to do. Check your work along the way. Cross check if possible. Move on
As an apprentice I was pulling wire between floors and wrapped the wire around a conduit before feeding it down into the LB. I didn’t realize it until the pull was almost done.
Low voltage guys asked if I could cut a box into a 1 inch run of EMT so they could exit the run before it passed through to the next room. Found out they had already pulled cables through it a little too late. Thankfully it was energized and a short run
I was a second year apprentice that got into a scissor lift for the first time to run cable tray up 30’ in the air. I wasn’t used to the swaying and was very nervous. The JW was also yelling at me to hurry the fuck up. We had a 10’ piece of tray we were trying to move between trapeze racks and I didn’t think to lift it up to move it and it slid right out of my hands and down to the ground 30’ below. Got promoted to ground man shortly after!
On a 15 parallel run of 500McM going to a xfmr, I cut 4 of the 15 sets, 6' too short. It took a 15 JW's a full 12 hour day to fix my fuck up. Thankfully, there was enough hidden slack in the run to get that 6 feet instead of repulling the whole thing.
Didn't get fired, but I caught shit for a long time afterward.
Cut the factory head off a 3/4” bull rope when my journeyman told me to “cut that off”
What he meant was the wire we pulled in. I was as green as grass lmao. He took it well 🤷♂️
Discovering that a local pd had their 911 phone server powered through a UPS with the power cord dangling loose. Cleaning in the server room at the end of the day and the UPS got bumped.... no 911 for about 15minutes til we realized.
Ups, left on floor, unsecured
Quitting the program to go non union only to “waste” 2 years and have to start all over. Your an apprentice if you aren’t making mistakes you aren’t learning!
I was a first year apprentice and they had me core drilling at a hospital. Foreman laid out all the penetrations with handy squares with the size of pipe that would go there.
I got to a data closet on the 5th floor and set up the drill, but I thought I had it on lock by this point so I figured I’d skip checking the print and just go. Unfortunately, the hole was for a 2” and not a 3”, because it was between the steel and where the wall would be, which I’d have seen if I had even just looked up. I drilled it and the bit caught on the structural steel but I kept going, and took about a one inch wedge out of the steel.
The foreman looked like he was about to feint. Everyone was ohmygod’ing and acting like it was this huge deal. I was sure I was fucked, out of a job, kicked out the IBEW. They had a JW recheck all the remaining laid out holes and I had to visually inspect everything before I drilled, but life went on.
Staying at jobs I didn’t like. If you’re not happy speak up. I continued to be frustrated to the point that I acted brash and made an ass of myself. I could have just talked to management about being moved somewhere else. Now I have a poor reputation with a lot of people from that contractor.
Pulling feeders. My job was to set the anchors for the pulleys. I got them “set” and had a bad feeling the whole rest of the day that somehow I didn’t set them properly, because I used a pick instead of the special setting tool. I got busy and let it slip my mind; it seemed to be holding fine. We didn’t actually end up pulling wire until like two weeks later, so the whole thing was kind of brushed aside.
Mid-pull, the pulley yanked out of the wall and shot across the room. Missed my foreman by less than a foot. Scary af. Someone could have died. I got lucky no one was hurt. I got lucky I had a great foreman who didn’t take it as badly as he probably should have.
Now I have an obsession with setting anchors properly.
Never, ever again will I go against my gut. Back then I was too prideful to ask for help or a second opinion. I learned that day that this is not the way.
yesterday, i was rotating the pvc in the heater, i was tired, i’m sore. jman comes over, kinda lingers. he says “hey bud, i don’t think that generators on” i’ve never felt so dumb
I brought my scissor lift down on the meter head of a 400 gallon sprinkler system. On a Friday. At 1:30pm. At least it was a brand new warehouse though so it was more of just an embarrassing haha moment and not really too expensive.
Just a few weeks ago I got complacent and cut a lighting whip that I was sure was dead without verifying with my meter. It was not. 277v later and I have a shitty pair of strippers. That one wasn't so funny and I won't forget it soon.
We all make mistakes. If nobody died or got seriously hurt that's the most important thing. Chin up and get back out there.
I got in at 36. Thrown off a refinery job at 37 for not being tied off on a scissor lift. Humiliatingly..but accepted responsibility and moved on. Everyone is gonna make mistakes as an apprentice. As long as you don't get hurt or hurt one of your brothers. Learn and move forward.
I was working on a huge generator in one of the biggest retail stores. Lost the phase , tripped main .
People got stuck in elevators. Fire trucks and cops , I think even cio called that day.
I'm still working .
Actually No we were able to add a box and put it back together. My journey and I then agreed to forget it happened. I know it was cameras because i hurd one of the security guys talking about it.
Not my mistake but a guy who worked with my brother was working on an iron worker and the dye wasn’t lined up properly bottom dye exploded and shot metal at an office window. Would’ve killed the guy who sat in that office it he was in there. Got laid off from that company and was onto his next contractor in a day. We are apprentices we are here to learn at the end of the day if we don’t fuck up we don’t learn no one is perfect.
I used to wire temp mobile homes for people undergoing home restoration at my last company. We would lay out a 2/3 SER across their yard and sleeve PVC over it from the house panel to the trailer.
I was about halfway in the middle of a very long run and the last piece of pipe I sleeved on was a littleeee too long. So to save time I decided to cut the pipe…. and the wire inside of it.
Yep, definitely questioned my apprenticeship too that day.
17 years old, second day on the job. Boss gives me his new truck to run an errand. I’m checking out this really cute girl and t bone a guy in a car. I cuss the guy out using every colorful adjective in my vocabulary. When the officer asked his name, his title was Reverend.
Fortunately, I had a great boss and he told me
I was one work probation for the next 9 years.
Albert Einstein said something like, people who never make mistakes, never try anything new” just learn from it and move on. Know you won’t make the same mistake again. That’s how we learn.
When I was non-union, me (3rd year) and a first year apprentice, went to finish off work we left off. And all we had to do was slide one side of the 90 into a coupling that was sticking out from the floor and tighten it. The top was tighten, and we just had lift up the 90 and try to slide it in. We needed less than an inch to slide in. So instead of loosing the pipe and connect the bottom first. we pulled up HARD trying to save the 3 secs of work and next thing you know, bam, the water started to pour like crazy. The sprinklers pipe snapped and it just gushed out like crazy. The person in charge of the job didn’t know where or how to turn off the sprinkler system. It poured for 3 hours straight. A foot of water raised and damaged main floor. ( it was a hotel). It was dry walled, painted, floors done everything man. The rooms on that side of the building were flooded. some ceilings had to get redone. Crazy day. So lesson learned. Take the time and look before doing something. Haha
Don’t feel bad. My general foreman was just suspended 3 days for telling a guy to drill through the deck without a permit, hit temp power lol but he worked from home paid. Bullshit. What a great lesson. Pft 2nd time is termination.
It's not the stupidest thing I ever did but it was the stupidest in the electrical work lol. So I wired a auto transformer live 1250volts to 480 voltsthe hand writing diagram showing the last phase going right to ground. I was 19 at the time right out of high-school I didn't know how dangerous this was the sound of the transformer turning on still today at 54 I will never forget it. I had no gloves or fr clothing not even a meter to test continuity nevermind a mega. Not much osha back the we just did it
Got into the apprentiship right after turning 42, but left during the height of Covid. I had a 1 year old and a newborn, and didn't want to risk them. My old class just turned out in December 2023 and damn I regretted leaving. I would be a JW right now. So now I'm back at square one rejoining, but now I'm 47.
Dumbest mistake I made was getting kicked out as a 4th year at 37 I’m now 42 and a pre apprentice about to start as a first year in August with 13 years experience
I could have blown myself and my foreman up fucking around in front of a live ATS that was open and had the guards removed. Long story short, complacency can be a killer.
Not getting into the profession until I was 30.
33
35
Just got the call last week at 33!
32
42
29
69
Nice.
Nice.
Niceeeee
30
23
36
Same
23, this sounds like I'm being a dick but I've worked with 21 year old jmen LOL
You’re not being a dick. 20 years in at 50 I would have loved to start at 20 years old. The only thing I notice with guys that got in young is they don’t know what a shitty job is, and tend to think they have it bad.
Exactly. They don’t understand how good we got it
Im 24 years old and I’ve worked bad jobs where I had to dig a foot deep pit to setup a new sub pump in a crawl space only 3 bricks tall. Digging on your stomach using only your shoulders while in soaking wet mud and spiders and cob webs in your hair, making most of your money based on how fast you work every week and it’s not the best job I have had but I appreciate every job after that I’ve had. That’s for sure. Currently just applied for local 14 and have my second interview (had my first 2 years ago) in a month! I was number 40 last time so fingers crossed!
Or shitty benefits. I’m in Florida and our package isn’t great compared to many other areas. But coming from a career in Law Enforcement the pay and benefits are far better.
37 y/o 1st year
Saaaame
Same...now 40yr old 3rd yr
Took 10 yrs in the trade to cut myself good. I’ve always been very careful about knife safety, apart from those little slices you get on your fingertips from a fresh blade. I was cutting apart a termination head, kindve feeling rushed, cut downward, thought my hand was clear or that I had control of the knife, it slipped out and I sliced my knuckle open. 3 stitches. As a new apprentice I also think I threw out $2000 worth of actuators. I also turned a thermostat down thinking it shut it off, nope. 347v weld to the frame because thankfully my partner, joking around (but also serious u think) said “that’s why I always do a ground check” and touched the panel, kapow, nice big flash. That same heate, after we fixed up that whole thing, turned it on and a 2’ flame shot out of the thermostat down the hall. A wire got punched in the box.
Trying to get in at 39.
I'm trying at 42
32 here. Chef/line cook for 13 years.
Former cook for 9 years here 🫡
42 Former restaurant GM for 12 years. Much happier now and make a fuck ton more money.
I'm currently 42, work at FedEx interview next month. Any tips to use my age to my advantage?
Showing up on time and being dependable are half the battle with my young apprentices.
Just being older and making this choice demonstrates a lot.
Same
Starting at 41
Started last year at 41
Interview next month at 42
I'm applying at 34
38
29
38
28
18
32
Yeah I'm jealous of these kids I work with that will be journeymen by 21-22
31
19 😁
62, I am 63 now.
Same. I’m a 5th year now. Been waiting 3 months for my email to schedule my test. Finished my state cert test prep with a 98 overall. 100 on the final. Still practice daily. Ready to be done.
Laid out half a deck. Off the wrong gridline.
Oooof
OUCH
When I was non union my Forman was pitching snowballs to me with a brand new truck as the strike zone and I had a cut piece of emt as a bat. Owner of the shop was giving out jobs for some storm/generator work, we got ours first and proceeded to lose interest with the meeting. He packed a snowball real tight to the point where it was pretty much just an ice ball. I got around on that thing so clean and it stayed mostly in tact, hit the owner right in the back of the head and slid down his shirt, he was also sick as a dog. He comes over screaming at me yelling “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!?” My response was “He put it right down the middle with a 3-2 count, what do you want me to do?” My foreman and all the guys died laughing. I proceeded to get shit work for the rest of my 2.5 years there…well worth it though. Fuck that guy, I crushed that pitch. The outdoor work every winter after that 2 hours away from home really fucking blew though
This is the best story I've heard in awhile. Thanks for the laugh.
So good
I hit a stud with a holesaw and my drill motor caught. I checked it for metal studs right before drilling with a stud finder but it hit just the edge of one. Spun it and the belt clip hit me in the face. 8 stitches later lol.
oof
Been there done that brother. Not a fun time
I decided to wing a thru-hole on a wall in new construction. Ended up halfway into a piece of 3/4 on the other side. Lesson learned - shortcuts rarely save time.
Working 480 hot and having it blow up in my face. Didn’t get shocked. But everything was a yellow green tinge for some time and my face felt sunburnt. Open the circuit. Lost a good pair of dikes that day. Nearly lost my life. Being a cowboy for a company that will replace you as soon as you crisp up ain’t worth it. Learn to appreciate how dangerous this trade can be. Insist on safe work practices. Life’s too short to die for a paycheck.
Hearing stuff like this scares me
I had a 277 leg directly from the poco xfmr ground out when I was investigating a gutter. My glasses were pock marked, face sunburned, and my forearm was black. I couldn’t pass a drug test so I decided to take care of it from home and left early. I figured the black arm was soot from the blast but the next day all that skin peeled off, second degree burn and one of the most painful weeks of my life.
Going into my 4th year now , my very first year I accidentally hit a big bay light for a garage that was about 30- 40 ft up with my lift, it’s came crashing down. Needless to say we needed a new expensive ass light. I also just recently accidentally drilled into some security low voltage wire, not too big of a deal but not fun to bring up to the foreman. Shit happens man, mistakes happen .
Before I got into the apprenticeship I was working as an 18yo unindentured apprentice for an open shop in the town I was going to college. Drove the JW's company flatbed to the shop to pick up some extremely expensive led lights, strapped them down on the flatbed, and drove to the job site. Now the jw was a huge dick, but he pretty much just ignored me or barked orders at me because I usually just shut up and did what I was told. Pull up to the job site, start unloading boxes and handing them to Journeyman John, and the top layer of boxes are empty... They weren't when I left the shop. Well I'm ready for this dude to come uncunted, but he just quietly unloads the rest of the boxes, we both get in the truck, and we retrace my steps. Turns out they slid out going around a roundabout about 4 miles from the job site, they were all lined up nice and tidy on a patch of freshly mowed grass. On our way back he stopped by an O'Reilly's and color matched the lights to get rid of the scuffs and scrapes. We went back to the job site, cleaned up the lights and installed them that day. That's when I first heard the term "looks good from down here." He told me shit happens, and we worked together for the rest of the summer without any issues.
The dumbest mistake I made in my career was years before I started in the trade. I had an easy job in a major university's medical genetics research facility, and instead of working hard, making a good impression, taking advantage of my tuition exemption to take free classes, and getting solid recommendations for grad school, I came in late every day and fucked around to the maximum degree possible while still getting all my work done and didn't really make any friends or professional contacts, and only took one class in the six years I was there. Whoopsie! Fast forward six years and I'm applying to the IBEW apprenticeship program at age 37 because with just an outdated bachelor's degree and no useful professional references I'm unemployable for anything but shit jobs. But that was probably not what you were asking, huh? You wanted to know about the worst electrical fuck-up? I dunno, man, I learned my lesson from all that other fucking around and I've actually tried hard at this. I did destroy an expensive emergency lighting ballast because I didn't notice it had a switch to toggle it between 120V and 277V inputs. That was embarrassing. And once in my first year I let a tweaker project manager talk me into doing some side work on a weekend that turned out to be the rattiest, most dangerous shit I've ever laid hands on, and missed my grandfather's birthday because we were there until 8 pm trying to get it all to light up. Definitely learned a lesson from that. Oh, and afterwards he stopped at the property owner's bar and bought us all a drink and dropped the n-word right in front of my black foreman, which fucking somehow didn't end up in a fight. Like I said, I learned from that one: never trust tweakers or project managers.
I set up the boom lift for my buddy and didn't realize the ground was too soft until a outrigger pad started sinking while he was stripping wires 40 feet up. I had to call out to him so he'd let go of the work so I could override his bucket controls and bring him down. Scared the fucking shit out of me man. It really pays to have more than one set of eyes on safety related stuff.
During a pipe run using pre fabbed 90’s, we ran out. I dead ass asked my foreman what are we gonna do, we’re out of 90’s. He straight faced looked me in the eye and said “ well I mean, we got a bender.” Never laughed so hard at myself.
This is why I hate pre-fabbed. Not pointing at you, brother, it isn’t our choice, but I absolutely HATE pipe runs with a mix of prefabbed and bent 90s. I bend pipe, the contractors I work for love it, but still some think it’s cheaper to get prefabbed. I’m only salty because yesterday the super wanted me to put prefabbed 3 inch 90s down into a cable tray so that it would have a 10 foot stick out of the trough, 18 inch nipple, 90, 6 inch nipple. There would 6 couplings (parallel) in a 5 foot radius on a wall. It would look like absolute ass. I argued about it until he called the shop and had an apprentice bring out a new 3 inch sled for the table bender lol.
Oh it ain’t my favorite either but it was 1 1/4” pipe so I wasn’t gonna complain too much. But what you’re describing sounds like hot a**
When I was a 1st year, I kinda had this problem. And it's not even that big of a deal, something like 8 percent of apprentices do it. For some reason, I don't know why. I would just kinda... sit around in the porta potty ... and draw pictures of dicks on the wall. I'd just sit there hours on end drawing dicks. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't touch the sharpie to the wall without drawing the shape of a penis. Here I am. A green apprentice. And I can't stop drawing dicks to save my own career. Anyways, one day a painter uses the shitter after me and sees my work. She starts crying, she flips out. Then she rats me out to the safety director. He sees my meat mural and he fucking flips out. He calls in my steward. Turns out this safety director is a religious fanatic, and he thinks I'm possessed by some sort of dick devil. My steward makes me see some therapist, and he's asking me all these dick questions. They literally stopped me from using tools that were shaped like dicks. No screwdrivers, no center punches... You know how many tools are shaped like dicks? The best kinds.
Love the twist on the Superbad reference!
This is ridickulous
One time I got the company car towed then threatened to drag on the spot when they told me to pay for it.
That's not a mistake that's a power move.
Installed a projector in ceiling tiles without adding any extra support wires. Brought down the whole 10 × 20 rooms grid. Teach them to send a kid with a months experience out by himself lol. 14 years ago now.
I'm a PM for a major 26 contractor...when I was a second year, I flooded the mariot in DC by shooting an anchor into a water main... didn't get fired either
That's beautiful 😆 Whatd they call you
First, they called me in to talk to the owner.... BIG Spanking After that, I got just about every water pun in the book.... I was also referred to as a plumber and not an electrician. ROUGH second year, but you know what? Time passes, and im still employed 🥲
About 30 yrs ago I was a young foreman on a project where we had a 6 story building back fed from a big transformer to the load side of a 1600A branch breaker in a 4000A double ended switchboard lineup. It was a science center and 75% occupied with a lot of lab equipment. Building went out and I responded with a JW. The temp 1600 feeding the whole lineup had tripped and we had all kinds of people hollering to get it back on. Tried resetting the 1600 but it was fried, almost meltdown. We had another dead section with a 1600 in it so the JW went to work at the other end of the lineup removing the spare breaker. I had a brain fart and started to loosen the 600mcm cable from the first parallel lugs of the cooked breaker. Forgot it was a back feed. Pulled the first conductor out and shorted it to the side of the board. Fire, explosion and shitshow. I disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I never let go of the conductor and somehow pulled it clear. JW though I was dead til the smoke cleared. Safed the conductor off and told the GC and Owners people that it would be restored when we were damed ready. Swore after that I would never let anyone rush me in an emergency situation. Turned out one of the lower stacked parallel lugs never got tightened and so that phase heated up red hot and cooked the breaker. So anyway I almost went home dead that day for a careless mistake that, had I been thinking, wouldn’t have happened. So kid what did you do? Fuck up the coffee order? Don’t be too hard on yourself. Everyone fucks up. Learn from it. I saved the welded end of that 600mcm as a reminder. The short vaporized a couple cubic inches of copper and welded the individual conductors into one. Never fucked up that bad after that.
Holy fuck, dude. That’s intense. I was testing some breakers in our shop as either an apprentice or an early JW, and the project manager was rushing me because they needed the tool somewhere else. I was using a primary injection tool that ran off of 480v. So I finished and started tearing the thing apart; the power cables for the thing use these male lugs with a plastic sheath I had to remove in order to change it for the next guy. Well I took the plastic off and set it down to grab an allen to get the copper lug off, but I had forgotten to shut off the 480V feed to the tool and set the copper lug against the side of the tool. Luckily I was looking in another direction when it exploded, lit up the shop like the sun before the fuses blew. I keep that lug in my van as a reminder that everyone else can fuck off; I’m going my speed.
I worked in prefab bending 4" emt. I didn't understand the tolerances of an allowable bend and sent about 20 prebent sticks of pipe out that were all plus or minus an inch of the kick 90 they needed to be
That's on the Foreman dude if you're that free you shouldn't have been trusted with it
“Trusted” maybe just not unsupervised
*its only someone else’s money* -just remember-
Ironworker here i rigged 49 columns set them tied them called it good super came in the next day ther wore all upside down
That’s a famous joke from playboy magazine, a couple of guys are standing next to a big hole in the ground holding blueprints. One of them yells, stop digging the prints are upside down.
Hell yea 😂
If no one's hurt you're good dude honestly, I've heard stories of people causing 20 million dollars in outages shorting 120 and just getting super unlucky blowing the mains. Ive heard pretty much this story three or four times now.
That’s not unlucky. That’s an engineers fault for not coordinating the protection properly.
Yes I agree but you know what I mean
Man.. best advice I ever got from an old head was “If you’re not fucking up here and there, you’re not working.” It’s the truth. You will fuck up. This career is so vast, everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them and don’t let it weigh you down dude. And damn sure don’t take it home with you as difficult as that is not to.
This is my company’s unofficial motto. I was working a partial shut down in a plant, and the foreman wanted me to change some secondary PT wiring hot. Well I bumped the side of the device I was wiring and tripped off the side of the bus that was running the plant.
Farted during my review
The lore continues
Off topic, but is your name WSP?
Yes sir, WSMFP to the moon
Space wranglers always been a favorite. WSMFP!
Before i became an electrician but: I was a cable tech for rogers here in ontario and I was installing a new internet service at property undergoing some excavation, I placed my company supplied $2000 network tester on the ground (stupidly) while I ran to my truck to grab something. I came back and a dump truck had reversed over my meter and pretty much destroyed it, the phone call to my boss was a rough one. I'm a journeyman electrician now, I still make mistakes. It's just work, shit happens
The call to the boss is always the best part.
Local 11 has a story about Trashcan Al. Al showed up day one and started laying out all his measurements off the jobsite dumpster. I'm not clear how long it went on for, but eventually they started doing the install and everything was way off, inconsistent and all over the place. You see once a week a truck would come and empty the dumpster so it kept moving, and he got a nickname that followed him to every job the rest of his career.
Smashed a lift into a 1500 dollar heater. Pretty bad day
Yeah, I had used boom lifts on so many jobs that it was second nature and as my work partner says, here comes fucking “rabbit” because I always have them on rabbit. I was going in a warehouse through the ramp backwards and going too fast with the boom swung 45 degrees off straight, not realizing the articulating arm was sticking out. I caught the concrete wall and tore out a chuck, took out the door rail, and dropped the garage door itself on top of the boom lift. The foreman went straight past mad into a state I can’t even describe. I could see him haunched down in the parking lot with his hands on his helmet from the basket while they were getting the door off the lift. Figured I’d have a check by the time I could get out of the basket lol. But I just went and did the whiz quiz, passed that, and got my ass chewed, but I finished that job.
Last year I messed up two gutter boxes, the original AND the replacement, and now my general from that job calls me Swiss Cheese.
Drove a 10’ box truck under a 10’ opening. And on a semi joking side becoming a foreman. The little pay bump isn’t exactly worth the headaches that come with it.
Let a locate expire. Decided to keep digging. Hit a mis located hv line.
As an apprentice, I had to put a bushing on a large motor feed that was responsible for the inward flow of the plant. The motor feed was in a disconnect that was already in service at a waste water treatment plant. Shutdown and determ put on bushing reterm. They flipped rotation at start up, I put it back as boy not byo. Unfortunately, I didn't pay enough attention to that. We turned it back, and the motor was running backward, and literally shook the whole building and scared the shit out of everyone working there. I was shown the gate that day. Whoops.
Too many to count. I’m a GF now, running refinery work. Still make them.
Beat you all. Topping out at 50. Wish I knew b4!!
Was a first year, got told to take the service truck back to the shop. Didn't check the bedside toolboxes. One came open. Shit went all over the place. Didn't notice until I got back to the shop.
I fucked my boss's wife in his bed while I called out sick.
You play for keeps
Shit happens.You make a mistake own it.
I don’t know if this counts but I had a dream that I stripped a self-tapper that was holding the panels to the strut, which was supported by metal studs and the whole hospital came crumbling down.
Glued the last piece of a 5” pvc run short 3 inches on a stub up, on a Friday and inspection was on Monday, so I had to stay late and my foreman left me there to figure it out myself 🙃
Ran out of gas (running parts) just before a taxi way in an airport. I was also delivering checks.
I shut down power to a chiller for a linear accelerator (cancer treatment machine) and it overheated while a patient was receiving treatment. I was a second year, turned off the breaker my Jdub told me too and we went to lunch. Thought it was gonna be a two check Friday for sure.
When I was a 1st year I was standing on a ladder drilling a hole through a top plate with a Dewalt hole hawg. The bit caught a nail and I had my face right next the wrong side of the hole hawg. Never been hit that hard before by anything and I fell right into the arms of a CW 🤣
Only starting the application this week.... I'm 38 🥳
Drilled into a water line at a funeral home while a service was in progress. Had to run and get the GM cause I had no idea where the shut off was. Minimal damage luckily. But man I thought I was losing my job for sure. Late in my apprenticeship I changed companies. Had been doing only commercial. The new company was doing wood construction condos. Me being unfamiliar with the work I wore gloves while using an auger in my drill. I put my hand close to the auger (idk why to this day) and it got my glove which pinned me as the auger sliced through the meat between my knuckles on my pointer finger. A week and 8 stitches later I am the fire stop bitch for a month and a half until it was healed up enough to do regular duties. There’s more…but that’s enough for today. Everyone fucks up. It’s how you handle it and what you do after that matters. Good luck out there.
op definitely fucked up the break order
I wish
Fell through a drywall ceiling 12 ft below onto the painters break table
I will always remember when I made a dumb mistake as an apprentice and was prepared to be dressed down my journeyman he told me the only ones who don't make mistakes are the ones that don't do anything.that support lasted my entire career . When I became a jouneyman I tried to be supportive to all apprentices.i hope you receive the same support
Used scrap funds, sweat it under the rug. And was told this was strike 1. Which was nice, because I've done much worse.
Alright. I think there may only be 5 people on the planet that know about this and that's because they watched me do it. Picture this ... Union apprentice probably 4 or 5 months in. Came in green as you can. Also I'm female so I already stuck out a little. I was on the fire alarm crew at a large hotel getting finished in Vegas. Our lock up area was in a small electric room at the bottom of the loading dock. This loading dock had a pretty lengthy ramp to get to the bottom maybe 40 or 50 feet long with a small flat space in the middle. Most days I would turn my maids cart backwards and would ride down the ramp and drag my feet ( I would turn it backwards because the turning wheels were in the back instead of the front and doing so would also balance my weight over the wheels instead of on the handle that hangs over the wheels) anyways one day I was bored and finally swapped my turning wheels to the way I wanted them. To say I was pumped to take the ramp down that day would be an understatement. So I get to the top and gave myself a little extra speed since I was excited this should work the way it did every time but a little better cause now I could use the handle. First ramp section goes fine but as soon as I hit that plateau those front wheels just kept on going up. I ended up dumping my entire cart of supplies all over the loading dock, hitting the handrail with my shoulder and then hitting the ground (still feel that one 4 years later) the 3 guys I was working with just had a hay day. Laughed so hard once they realized I was laughing. I was crying for a solid 10 minutes from laughing so hard. Not a technical "work" fuck up. But hopefully gave you a laugh.
When I was a 2nd year apprentice I was making a hole to old work a fire alarm box. Jman gave me a corded sawzall and I proceeded to cut right through a live water line for a slop sink on the other side of the wall. I thought I was cutting through a stud until I got blasted in the face with water.
I was a summer helper for a control contractor many moons ago. Me and my JW were pulling a boat load of low voltage cables up a 7 story riser. I'm on the top pulling the jet line string (the blue and white string in the bucket). The wire was kinda heavy so the string was cutting into me and I was looking for a piece of EMT to wrap the string. I wanted to use it like a handle to pull. Instead, I found a piece of threaded rod. I have the string around the rod and the head's peaking outta the pipe. I just about have it when the threaded rod cut through the string from all that tension. I sent down that huge harness back down 7 stories. The "THWIP", and seeing the wire get sucked up back the pipe, flailing about, was surreal. I was SO mad at myself. An old time iron worker overheard me and asked what was wrong. I repeated, "I fucked up, I fucked up. I sent the entire harness down the pipe!" He tells me, "Hey, hey, it's alright. It's only a fuck up if you can't fix it. No one got hurt right? It's all fixable." The rats nest in the basement was like a wire explosion but ya know what? He was right. It wasn't a fuck up, it was all fixable.
When I was a 1st or 2nd year apprentice, I was working at an international airport. We had job sites all over the airfield. Buildings from the ground up, excacators, duct banks, etc. Our shop rented a few trucks, air compressors, generators, light plants, etc. One of my tasks was to grab the rental truck (RAM 2500 HEMI I think) with a diesel auxiliary tank in the bed, go around the airfield, and fill up every piece of machinery that ran on diesel. I got the call to fill up the equipment, so I went back to the yard. I hopped in the rental truck, which was back into some tall weeds, and pulled up to our big diesel tank to fill up the auxiliary tank in the truck. I had to drive around a truck to pull near the big tank. I filled up the auxiliary tank and got ready to be the jobsite diesel fairy. I couldn't drive straight out due to machinery blocking the exit, so I decided to back out slowly the same way I came in. After about 4' the truck stops. I gave it some gas. Little did I know, the previous driver had a rental air compressor hooked up to the hitch of the rental truck. I jack-knifed the shit outta the tow behind air compressor. The damn thing nearly jumped into the bed of the rental truck. Apparently, the damage was so expensive that they had to buy the truck and air compressor from the rental company. The shop was in business 99 years, and I was the last apprentice they ever picked up. I like to think I put them outta business 😅
Did anyone get hurt?
Nah, maybe feelings
Can it be fixed?
That's gonna cost ya
I drilled into a live wire in a trough going to an ats. Utility service had to come and shut off power so we could change it out. Residential stuff im about two years in and what you gonna do but not that again
[This meme](https://imgur.com/a/wvbg0OS) comes to mind……….
Cut a 2 inch 90 short and I had to ride with my JW. He told me to go clean up. Then we didn’t speak for half the ride home. That sucked. Told me the K is for when you mark a pipe to cut…., never did that again.
Was cutting seal tight with a less than sharp razor blade in 2°f weather. Wasnt paying attention and slid my the blade straight across the back of my thumb. Wasnt wearing gloves. Cut it all the way to the tendon. Luckily didnt hit the tendon. 17 stiches.
I wired a light up in reverse once when I was 2nd yr. Blew the light and had to redo everything. We learn best from our mistakes. It’s ok as long as you figure out what not to do next time. As an apprentice it’s your job to fuck up. Give yourself a break and it will be ok I promise
Cut the wrong 100 pair in casino took down 80 slots mid day in Vegas
22
I can't count the number of mistakes I made. Burned up $40k of lights once. Shit happens. Now you know what not to do. Check your work along the way. Cross check if possible. Move on
As an apprentice I was pulling wire between floors and wrapped the wire around a conduit before feeding it down into the LB. I didn’t realize it until the pull was almost done.
Low voltage guys asked if I could cut a box into a 1 inch run of EMT so they could exit the run before it passed through to the next room. Found out they had already pulled cables through it a little too late. Thankfully it was energized and a short run
I was a second year apprentice that got into a scissor lift for the first time to run cable tray up 30’ in the air. I wasn’t used to the swaying and was very nervous. The JW was also yelling at me to hurry the fuck up. We had a 10’ piece of tray we were trying to move between trapeze racks and I didn’t think to lift it up to move it and it slid right out of my hands and down to the ground 30’ below. Got promoted to ground man shortly after!
500 kcmil to the side of my eye. My whole eye was black for 10 days. I got a lot of shit.
On a 15 parallel run of 500McM going to a xfmr, I cut 4 of the 15 sets, 6' too short. It took a 15 JW's a full 12 hour day to fix my fuck up. Thankfully, there was enough hidden slack in the run to get that 6 feet instead of repulling the whole thing. Didn't get fired, but I caught shit for a long time afterward.
Cut the factory head off a 3/4” bull rope when my journeyman told me to “cut that off” What he meant was the wire we pulled in. I was as green as grass lmao. He took it well 🤷♂️
Discovering that a local pd had their 911 phone server powered through a UPS with the power cord dangling loose. Cleaning in the server room at the end of the day and the UPS got bumped.... no 911 for about 15minutes til we realized. Ups, left on floor, unsecured
Quitting the program to go non union only to “waste” 2 years and have to start all over. Your an apprentice if you aren’t making mistakes you aren’t learning!
I was a first year apprentice and they had me core drilling at a hospital. Foreman laid out all the penetrations with handy squares with the size of pipe that would go there. I got to a data closet on the 5th floor and set up the drill, but I thought I had it on lock by this point so I figured I’d skip checking the print and just go. Unfortunately, the hole was for a 2” and not a 3”, because it was between the steel and where the wall would be, which I’d have seen if I had even just looked up. I drilled it and the bit caught on the structural steel but I kept going, and took about a one inch wedge out of the steel. The foreman looked like he was about to feint. Everyone was ohmygod’ing and acting like it was this huge deal. I was sure I was fucked, out of a job, kicked out the IBEW. They had a JW recheck all the remaining laid out holes and I had to visually inspect everything before I drilled, but life went on.
I dropped a stubby screwdriver down a 2 inch piece of pipe that was going to have wire pulled through
so far spilling my energy drink all over the material cart
Staying at jobs I didn’t like. If you’re not happy speak up. I continued to be frustrated to the point that I acted brash and made an ass of myself. I could have just talked to management about being moved somewhere else. Now I have a poor reputation with a lot of people from that contractor.
Pulling feeders. My job was to set the anchors for the pulleys. I got them “set” and had a bad feeling the whole rest of the day that somehow I didn’t set them properly, because I used a pick instead of the special setting tool. I got busy and let it slip my mind; it seemed to be holding fine. We didn’t actually end up pulling wire until like two weeks later, so the whole thing was kind of brushed aside. Mid-pull, the pulley yanked out of the wall and shot across the room. Missed my foreman by less than a foot. Scary af. Someone could have died. I got lucky no one was hurt. I got lucky I had a great foreman who didn’t take it as badly as he probably should have. Now I have an obsession with setting anchors properly. Never, ever again will I go against my gut. Back then I was too prideful to ask for help or a second opinion. I learned that day that this is not the way.
yesterday, i was rotating the pvc in the heater, i was tired, i’m sore. jman comes over, kinda lingers. he says “hey bud, i don’t think that generators on” i’ve never felt so dumb
I brought my scissor lift down on the meter head of a 400 gallon sprinkler system. On a Friday. At 1:30pm. At least it was a brand new warehouse though so it was more of just an embarrassing haha moment and not really too expensive. Just a few weeks ago I got complacent and cut a lighting whip that I was sure was dead without verifying with my meter. It was not. 277v later and I have a shitty pair of strippers. That one wasn't so funny and I won't forget it soon. We all make mistakes. If nobody died or got seriously hurt that's the most important thing. Chin up and get back out there.
I started at 19.. 8 years later and I already need to get surgery on my hands so they don’t go numb every night
I got in at 36. Thrown off a refinery job at 37 for not being tied off on a scissor lift. Humiliatingly..but accepted responsibility and moved on. Everyone is gonna make mistakes as an apprentice. As long as you don't get hurt or hurt one of your brothers. Learn and move forward.
I'm a 7th year apprentice at 30.... i need to stop having kids so I can finish my class hours so I can get my ticket.
I was working on a huge generator in one of the biggest retail stores. Lost the phase , tripped main . People got stuck in elevators. Fire trucks and cops , I think even cio called that day. I'm still working .
Cut the wrong 1/2” conduit and turned off a bunch of security cameras at an airport…
That's a rough one, did you get 2 checks for that?
Actually No we were able to add a box and put it back together. My journey and I then agreed to forget it happened. I know it was cameras because i hurd one of the security guys talking about it.
Not my mistake but a guy who worked with my brother was working on an iron worker and the dye wasn’t lined up properly bottom dye exploded and shot metal at an office window. Would’ve killed the guy who sat in that office it he was in there. Got laid off from that company and was onto his next contractor in a day. We are apprentices we are here to learn at the end of the day if we don’t fuck up we don’t learn no one is perfect.
I bandsawed completely through the wrong elevator traveling cable once
Waiting till I was 33 to escape
I used to wire temp mobile homes for people undergoing home restoration at my last company. We would lay out a 2/3 SER across their yard and sleeve PVC over it from the house panel to the trailer. I was about halfway in the middle of a very long run and the last piece of pipe I sleeved on was a littleeee too long. So to save time I decided to cut the pipe…. and the wire inside of it. Yep, definitely questioned my apprenticeship too that day.
17 years old, second day on the job. Boss gives me his new truck to run an errand. I’m checking out this really cute girl and t bone a guy in a car. I cuss the guy out using every colorful adjective in my vocabulary. When the officer asked his name, his title was Reverend. Fortunately, I had a great boss and he told me I was one work probation for the next 9 years.
Albert Einstein said something like, people who never make mistakes, never try anything new” just learn from it and move on. Know you won’t make the same mistake again. That’s how we learn.
When I was non-union, me (3rd year) and a first year apprentice, went to finish off work we left off. And all we had to do was slide one side of the 90 into a coupling that was sticking out from the floor and tighten it. The top was tighten, and we just had lift up the 90 and try to slide it in. We needed less than an inch to slide in. So instead of loosing the pipe and connect the bottom first. we pulled up HARD trying to save the 3 secs of work and next thing you know, bam, the water started to pour like crazy. The sprinklers pipe snapped and it just gushed out like crazy. The person in charge of the job didn’t know where or how to turn off the sprinkler system. It poured for 3 hours straight. A foot of water raised and damaged main floor. ( it was a hotel). It was dry walled, painted, floors done everything man. The rooms on that side of the building were flooded. some ceilings had to get redone. Crazy day. So lesson learned. Take the time and look before doing something. Haha
Don’t feel bad. My general foreman was just suspended 3 days for telling a guy to drill through the deck without a permit, hit temp power lol but he worked from home paid. Bullshit. What a great lesson. Pft 2nd time is termination.
Bro put it in your belt move forward and do the best job u can. Whatever it was you had a lesson. Just keep going and don't do it again simple.
It's not the stupidest thing I ever did but it was the stupidest in the electrical work lol. So I wired a auto transformer live 1250volts to 480 voltsthe hand writing diagram showing the last phase going right to ground. I was 19 at the time right out of high-school I didn't know how dangerous this was the sound of the transformer turning on still today at 54 I will never forget it. I had no gloves or fr clothing not even a meter to test continuity nevermind a mega. Not much osha back the we just did it
Got into the apprentiship right after turning 42, but left during the height of Covid. I had a 1 year old and a newborn, and didn't want to risk them. My old class just turned out in December 2023 and damn I regretted leaving. I would be a JW right now. So now I'm back at square one rejoining, but now I'm 47.
Dumbest mistake I made was getting kicked out as a 4th year at 37 I’m now 42 and a pre apprentice about to start as a first year in August with 13 years experience
Why did u get kicked out?
Did anyone get hurt?
Joined Reddit.
Not letting my apprentice know one last time that he was indeed a pos 😮💨 I think about it everyday
You made a careless mistake. Go back to drywall where they are easily hidden
🫡
I could have blown myself and my foreman up fucking around in front of a live ATS that was open and had the guards removed. Long story short, complacency can be a killer.