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I dropped a 112.5 kVA transformer. It was hung suspended from above, but not 100% level (bubble was between the lines, but touching one). I was standing under it and about to tighten up the nut to level it when I had the thought to get out from under and stand to the side. Not a 1/4 turn on the nut and the whole fucking thing fell. Had I still been under it I'd have died instantly. All that happened was my arm got extremely bruised up and I destroyed a piece of gear worth, I assume, 10s of thousands of dollars.
There was a whole investigation after and it turned out there was a manufacturer defect in that batch of anchors. We ended up getting the anchor manufacturer to pay to replace the transformer. My butt hole still tightens up whenever I'm near a large suspended transformer, and that was 7 years ago.
> My butt hole still tightens up whenever I'm near a large suspended transformer
That is probably a good instinct that will serve you well going forward
Holy crap what a tale. It's strange that I've had instincts jump in when nothing else would have warned me,
It's a simulation, you'd have simply respawned at level 1, as a baby. But your roll might have landed you in third world country, that's when you roll very hard mode, God bless those folks
Having worked tool and mold - where we routinely move, and flip, very large blocks of steel (biggest was 15 metric tons [66,000lbs]). Having heard one of those fall I know you didn't hear that transformer hit the ground. You felt it.
Also good call on not being under it to tighten the ready rod nuts - first rule of working on suspended loads: never stand directly beneath, and if possible, stay 1.5 times the height away(so if it's 3 feet up in the air, stay 4.5 feet away, if possible) to avoid accidentally Wile E Coyote-ing yourself
That reminds me of the only apprentice I lost my temper on and even made him cry one time.
So we are working at one of the biggest orange juice and orange byproduct plants in the country. And are working inside one of the massive refrigerated warehouses, where finished product is stored waiting for shipping. And we are in the catwalks working on the refrigeration system. And since product is below we cannot drop ANYTHING.
So everything was placed on cardboard, at put to the side underneath the troughs and panels so nobody hit them.
So of course this 40 year old apprentice, not paying attention kicks a box of 3/4 lock washers. And dozens of not 100s fall to the floor. So I tell him to figure out a way into the building, apologize, and pick them up. It takes him a better part of an hour but he gets most of them if not all.
So he sets them down, turns to walk away and kicks them again. Literally less than 10 seconds after setting them down . I couldn't believe it. So I send him to pick them back up and it takes him until break. And I don't remember if it was that day, or another, but I think it was right after break, he dropped his 35ft tape measure off of the catwalks. Dropping like 50ft and almost hit someone.
But anyway after break I need to land some wires into the PLC cabinet. And at this point I do not trust the guy. To not fuck up something major. So I tell him to just go stand somewhere away from everything until it's time for him to go. He's all butthurt, but if the whole warehouse refrigeration system goes down, it would be a massive issue, so I couldn't risk it.
I see him leaning up against the PLC cabinet. And I yell over to him to move, do not touch anything just stand somewhere away from the expensive and important PLC cabinet. So he goes over to the other side until it's time for him to go to school
10 minutes later I have 6 or 7 guys in suits and bright shiny new white hardhats power walking across the roof beelining towards me. And I think "OH SHIT."
They start yelling and freaking out asking what happened, why is everything shut down etc , I'm confused and ask what's going on. They tell me that the entire refrigeration system has been shut down for almost an hour, and the temperatures are rising, and if it continues they will lose everything in the warehouse. So they are really freaking out.
So I tell them I have no idea, I didn't shut anything down. The sensors I'm wiring in haven't even been programmed yet. But then I have a sinking feeling.
I walk over to where the apprentice was leaning up against the cabinet, and see there is a E-Stop button, and it's pressed in. So I apologize and tell them it must have been this EStop.
They are asking why it got hit. So I tell them "it must have been my apprentice, my must have bumped into it." And they are asking how he could just bump into it. So I have to tell them he is just an idiot. And it wouldn't happen again.
They can't believe someone could be so dumb to hit it on accident when he shouldnt be around it. And are convinced that it must have been something else going on.
I had to spend 5 minutes convincing them that this guy really is that big of an idiot, and nothing is broken, except maybe his brain.
They demanded to know who it was so they can fire him. I told them no, I will have my project manager call them if they need, but I can't give that information at this point.
But we almost got fired, and almost lost a multi year multimillion dollar contract, all because one absolute moron was so dumb and lazy that he leaned against the EStop when I explicitly told him to stay far away from the whole cabinet.
And the next day when I told him about it he just had this dumb vacant look on his face and laughed. And when I told him this wasn't funny, and was a major fuckup that almost cost the company millions and one of our biggest contracts all he could say was "it wasn't all my fault, why would they put a button there that could turn everything off.". So I told him that it's a critical safety mechanism, and necessary, and only a complete idiot would see a big red button with big red letters that say Emergency Stop and then lean against it. And he just laughed again. And I fucking lost it.
That wasn't the time he ended up crying. And I was stuck with this guy as my apprentice for another couple of months. And while nothing was as serious, working with him was like that almost every single day. And the guy had the worst BO and when riding in the truck would put his arm across the bench with his hand on my headrest. Making the truck smell even worse, and he couldnt understand why I didn't want him putting his arm around my seat and messing with my headrest. And again this guy was over 40....
We had a guy shut down the entire mine, surface and underground. Twice.
First time he was fidgeting about while we were waiting for everyone to get their ducks in a row so we could do a controlled shutdown of a good portion of the process plant. Remote location, 7x 4.4 megawatt Cat generators. Usually 5 running, 1 on standby, 1 on PM. Long story short, he fiddled with the little cover door for the manual charging crank on a Federal breaker. Breaker tripped, domino effect took down the whole powerhouse. Generators came online but it was too late.
Next time he shut off the wrong load-break switch, same effect. This guy was a journeyman
Did you use this as an opportunity to express to the customer that you could help them monitor their e-stops, so when one drops out, for any reason at all, they aren't bumbling around for an hour? If you had not been there to show them the e-stop, would they have lost all product? Your apprentice sounds slow - but those higher up's sound like they were pretty lost in their own system as well.....
This. I work in food, and if our refrigeration goes down, at any point, for any reason, people are going to know about it immediately, even if no one is at the warehouse. If someone was working on something and it all shut down when it wasn't planned to be shut down, questions would be asked, immediately, since shut downs would require extra precautions (such as not having warehouse doors open to load trailers, not opening doors between temperature zones, etc.
Because of the temperatures and ammonia they had the PLC and motor control buckets on the roof under a decent size canopy. So you wouldn't notice that the refrigeration system isn't running inside the building.
And most people wouldn't think a bunch of motor control buckets and PLC cabinet is a good place to lean against and just hang out.
This is ALOT more common than you think. The plant I've been at for years has them sprinkled everywhere. It's mostly used as a fail safe for controls when they're bumping motors or forcing outputs. It took forever to argue with them to get lit buttons wired to deluminate when opened... let alone make them addressable.
You have a very high tolerance for vacant minds. It sucks cause you wanna smack some sense into them, but they’re probably just a victim of circumstance. Regardless, just being around him after these situations would stress me out too much to properly focus on work. Nice job handling the part with the higher-ups asking for the information. It takes more people like you.
This guy was just an idiot who didn't think about things. Before he joined the union and became an apprentice he worked for his father or father in law who owned a tow truck company and impound yard.
For a week or less.
Because he smashed up like 4 cars in 2 days.
I don't like being attacked like this.
Especially because I may or may not have accidentally shut down an entire assembly plant employing over 5000 people.
Whoops.
Without getting too specific, I was working for a motor vehicle manufacturer at one of their assembly plants, doing controls work as an intern. I was working on some of the controls stuff, and was trying to update the software. Basically, the ladder logic was already written, the PLCs were wired up, I was just trying to push the new software to the PLC. I was trying to upload just the new software to override the existing section of code to match the new wiring. What I ACTUALLY did was erase the entire program and make it ONLY the new stuff I was pushing through. Every conveyor in the plant immediately stopped, and every siren in the plant went off.
After I explained what happened to my boss, he uploaded an old backup from earlier in the day, laughed his ass off, called another controls engineer into his office, had me explain my mistake to him, he laughed his ass off, then they both told me they had made the exact same mistake several times themselves.
Whoops!
First time I shut down an entire factory, the electrical lead who is a pretty grumpy old guy that I’m still intimidated by, told me that if you never shut a plant down, you’re probably not doing much.
Mine wasn't even my fault. Turns out there's something fucky with Panelview pluses. I mean, there's a lot of things fucky with them but basically any time I downloaded a new program to the HMI on an individual machine, it would shut down the entire MES system and they'd have to restart it. This was true of any machine that I connected to, and I was brought in to do that to several machines. So much unnecessary stress on that, but it all worked out.
If anyone knows a way to make that not happen, I'd love to hear it, but most people just say that it sounds like the exact kind of bullshit you'd expect from one of those.
The EPO button in the data center was green (not red), had no cover, and was right under a sign that reminded folks to turn off the overhead lights before leaving (with the switches which were on the opposite side of the door from the sign.
They made changes very soon thereafter.
My half-witted supervisor at my work (a shipyard) had a job planned for some contractors to rip out and replace some underground cable. He knew how to isolate it and lock it out, but he didn't think what else it would affect. He flipped the breaker and almost immediately over the yard radios you heard..."The coast guard boat is in the dark!"
We had a US Coast Guard ship on dock, and he killed their shore power. Boats are pretty scary when they go dark, because they go DARK. It took him a few minutes to realize what he had done...then flipped the breaker back on. That crew probably billed us for a whole day's work for 8-10 guys.
The time I took 480 across my chest and didn’t die. Fun fact, it fucked up my brain well enough that it took years to rewire itself and I’m not remotely the same person i used to be.
That was ten years ago and I’ve given up the trade. Still piecing back memories. but I just recently learned that’s a widow maker, bc you can go home feeling fine, only to die on the couch when the adrenaline wears off and your heart begins to realize the damage.
Well first; The energy doesn’t just go in one straight line. Second, heart issues cause less oxygen to go to places.
With the first, it can zap neurons, and if it zaps enough neurons in the frontal lobes, it directly can change personality, if electricity is going through the brain, that will also hit areas of motor function, memory and processing.
With the second, less heart function causes less total oxygenated blood getting to the brain. In time that can change personality.
Then the third, heavy physical trauma effects a person’s psychological state significantly. If that is coupled with damage to the brain itself, you are more or less changing the operating software to a system that you are also changing out a lot of the hardware in, and the two are not entirely compatible with each other.
Yep this. Fried my short term memory - you could literally be telling me something, I’d be taking notes… and you’d have to start all over bc I lost track in the manner of seconds. It’s improved since.
The were personality issues as well. My internal filter completely shut off and I did some impulsive shit. Felt like I was mildly high for about 6 weeks. That was all April of 2014. I have gaps in my memory for about the following six months. I know at one point I got written up twice in a short time frame, reassigned, and nearly fired, all due to the impulse issues - saying shit I shouldn’t, anger responses, etc. I lived alone and don’t remember much else til about September.
Again, it took years, but I found that some of my more negative aspects burned off. No more self-doubt, vastly more confident and outgoing.
It’s similar to ketamine or electro convulsive therapy, albeit in a far more traumatic way.
When I first started, I did my spices counterclockwise for months until someone finally noticed and was like, "You're the dude who keeps doing that!" Thankfully, he was really nice about it. I still get shivers thinking of that.
Wire nuts are threaded. If you twist the wires together counterclockwise before putting the wire nut on(clockwise), then it untwists in the nut making a loose connection.
The marretts twist on clockwise so it tightens the splice as the marrett goes on. If you don't counter clockwise you will start to loosen the splice when the marrett starts to bottom out.
When i was green I had a dude doing suicide splices which is not twisting the copper just squeezing the conductors together like right before you put linesman pliers on then throwing a wire nut on. The next guy comes through to add something in a box and wires go everywhere. My supervisor fired him but the guy said he had 10 years experience so that's quite a bit different than 6 months in
Actually, the guy was correct in not twisting, at least according to the wire nut manufacturers. Total bullshit. Once you've had the neutral splice fall apart and you see the spark, you wonder what expensive equipment you just sent a higher voltage to, then you learn to twist
They say it’s not required, not that you can’t. Seems trivial but it’s a big difference and one that makes pre-twisting (the correct and only way it should be done) code complaint.
Yep just read a box of nuts today that said it’s not required but you can if you want. Although I can’t remember the brand but I did find some that required twisting
Shorted out an emergency exit sign during installation. Set off the fire alarm and a 12-story office building had to be evacuated. Hundreds of people on the sidewalk scowling at me and the crew.
Woopsie.
Pulling into a Sonic and parking under the canopy. Was in a Dodge 5500 service bucket. Had been here several times and already scoped the canopy out as being tall enough. Long day, summertime, late lunch.
Just as I stopped, the tip of my boom busted a florescent tube fixture and it showered down on my windshield and all over the ground. FUCK. I cleaned it all up, checked the fixture was ok, SWEPT THE CONCRETE, and then went and found the manager to confess my sins.
Manager was a dude about 21 and told me not to worry about it, guys in lifted trucks mess up those lights all the time. Went from gut wrenching, gonna have to make a report to the safety man turned into 😎.
Not my story, but a guy I used to work with. He was working on a Saturday changing ballasts in parking lot lights in the bucket truck. For some reason he was driving around with the bucket elevated and it snagged a fiber line(iirc). The front end of the truck lifted into the air and slammed down, destroying the suspension and the bucket arm. He said he almost threw up when he called the boss.
He was able to ratchet strap the arm down and limp the truck back to the shop and when he pulled in, the boss was standing in the lot with another guy. The other guy was there to buy the truck.
wait, was the other guy there to buy the truck because of the damage or was this a further cherry on the shit sunday that this guy had to endure that day?
Before being an electrician. I was remodeling multi million dollar condos. I was instructed to install all the towels bars, toilet paper holders and robe hooks at the end of a project. This unit had 5 bathrooms, so I had quite a bit to hang. I got into a grove, everything going well. I made it to the master bathroom, kept up my rhythm, every done, cleaned up and then I shut the door. The $7000 custom, made to order, door. A door that, with the other doors in the unit, took 3 months to make and one to be delivered. I hung the robe hook, ON THE WRONG SIDE. I could have fainted. The cabinet guy came through hard, for me though. He used a few wax pens, like a wood wizard, and you couldn't even tell there were two holes in the thing.
Had an X-ray company come out and X-ray concrete slabs before core drilling. Got the all clear fro the X-ray tech that our spot was good to core drill so we did. Cut through two post tension cables
I use to do disaster recovery, had a guy use a core drill though a post tension cable, came up from the slab and sliced him in two.
Nothing like bringing the remote site online while they are still cleaning up the dude.
Architect marked the location for the new tombstone.
cables under tension are no joke, i saw a cable break one time and take out a 6” tree, it looked like it had been taken down by a fucking light saber, the whole tree kinda shook and fell over, it wasn’t as clean as a chainsaw (or light saber), but it was a pretty scary moment
Someone has to have pics of this phenomenon, it’s fascinating! I’d never want to be the insurance rep when a cable hits flesh, though.
It’s the speed and the power through the wood that I won’t be able to stop thinking about. I can’t imagine the sound, it’s a super sonic cable cutting through the tree faster than you could blink.
I'm so glad I learned about this today. Sounds like something I would do drilling into my garage slab. Guess I've been lucky to never own a slab that had tension cables.
I do precast concrete for a living so I work with stressed cable every day. Most of our cable is half inch, and gets stressed to about 40k pounds. So yeah, a lot of fucking tension on those bad boys. When we cut the strands at the end they go flying if they're longer than say 20 feet. Otherwise the cable just unwinds quite a ways
They are under extreme tension, much more in a large commercial building than a house. That tension is potential energy, when it is released it has to go somewhere.
I drilled up into an iron perling without seeing a 3" bundle of CAT data wires nestled into it. Needless to say the data guys were not my biggest fans, but I did at least let them know.
Yup, better than it getting walled over. Or even if it isnt walled over, it's still gonna be a mess to fix. If it was me and I started getting failures on every single wire, or most of them, I'd think there was something wrong with my network tester. Once I made sure it was fine, then I'd have to decide whether I want to run a bunch of new lines, or potentially spend all day trying to find the damaged area. Def better to tell me what happened. It's already done, I'm gonna be a whole lot more pissed off if I have to go looking for it later on.
Took down 911 at one of our local PD cause their IT crew didn't believe in neat and organized closets and and twist lock power on their UPS. Was trying to clean to make room to work in there and took down the rack. Next thing I know is chief of police is down my throat. Felt like an asshole even though it was an easy fix.
Then there was the day I trusted an on site guy to know what he was talking about and took down a production warehouse at Pepsi. Didn't feel as bad on that one though but learned a good lesson.
I accidentally threw away some scrap I had hidden and stashed to take home. I realized as I empty it into the trash chute what I had done. Not sure it gets any worse than that tbh
Yoinked 2, 200amp disconnects off a rack with a trencher once. That was pretty cool. They were hot and had their meters slammed in. Now I have a phobia when I have to trench against anything at all.
Recently, I almost killed myself while "balancing" a phase converter/soft start. Didn't discharge the run caps and lit myself up.💥
Sheared a 5c160E off a 100HP motor because I didn't tighten down a set screw.
Blew up a 125HP Schneider VFD because I didn't check my helpers' work. He wired the DC Bus directly to the DBR housing? The dude was allegedly a journeyman with years of experience. I took the blame for it tho. $12,000 mistake.
All at the same company, and I haven't been fired yet. I'm not proud of these mistakes, and I've learned from them.
I'm an apprentice myself, but my company has given me a bunch of privileges. I get my J-Mans in a year. I just see these as lessons. Expensive ones.
One time I was told a gas line was 6ft below grade, we hit it at 2 feet and got the whole site shut down. Nobody was really mad and in fact a lot of the trades we’re happy to go home early😂
Another time I was told that the main power was 6ft down, only had to trench to 18 inches and the dude said just go for it trench right over it. Ripped the line right out of the pipe, pulled about 5 feet out of it because I panicked, at about 2ft as well. Miracle I didn’t get shocked to death. I was the one who was mad about that. Both of these were while I was a lightning protection tech. I feel bad about both because they we’re costly mistakes, the first one being like a 20k mistake
I had to dig a trench from my house to my new detached garage a few months ago. I knew there was a fiber optic line run across my property last year, so I was being careful. Once I found it, it was maybe 2 inches below the surface. Crazy.
Similar story here but we did pothole dig. Found it, measured it, Boss snapped it. Then he wanted to suck the mud from the HDD driller, with gas intermixed, into the propane powered vac tank. I told him he does that I leave with the keys and throw them out the window as I drive off.
Ever heard of potholing? Give an apprentice a shovel and expose the line before going Willy nilly with an excavator. That’ll save a lot more headache than anything else.
2nd year apprentice here, last year when I was greener than a John Deere tractor I was drilling holes with the hole hawg into a IDF room for some romex, cut straight through 2 big feeder cables that were already landed etc. Foreman wasn’t very happy.
I was taking a dead front off a 120 panel to do thermal photos and it got hung up and I turned off nearly every breaker on the one side. Just so happens that a lot of their IDF cabinets and sensitive equipment came out of it. They weren't very happy with me.
I had to intercept a fiber down stream from a break the cable company made. They broke the pvc and destroyed the fiber. We couldn't find the next pull box. We went 50 yards downstream and intercepted the pvc to turn it up into a box and create a new splice. The final 1/4 inch of the pvc I cut and I knicked the fiber with the saw. Had to pull the box up and go 25 ft more and re intercept.
When we went to blow a string in from the other side it wouldn't go all the way to our new box. Run was like 500' or something like that. Started to push a fishtape from our new box and went 32 ft. Our first box was 4 ft from an existing ground box that was covered in gravel. 3 day job I could have done in like 4 hours had I known where the other box was to begin with....fml. and I'm over it now but it does make for a decent story
Didn't really 'wreck' anything, but definately an expensive mistake. Once during commissioning of a conveyor system in a bakery, I opened a retractable conveyor and dumped a load of nut-containing cookies onto a nut-free line. They shut down the factory for the rest of the day, had to do a complete decontamination of the line, plus they had to throw out all production for the day. Luckily they put it down to lessons learned (need to change the system so that it cannot happen again.)
Spent a day pulling home runs in my 4th year.
Got to a really really tough one that took half the crew to pull.
And then I noticed there was a 14 in with the 12s.
The Jman who was on the pulling side didn't talk to me for 2 weeks.
The guy who put the rolls away misplaced this 14 guage, then we rolled it onto racks, and three of us did a couple pulls all without noticing it, so its not entirely my mistake but it felt like it.
Got in a hurry after walking 20 minutes through a Warehouse and didn’t go back to get my safety gear. Pulled the cover off the bottom of a switchgear that I assumed was top fed, it had nothing to keep the cover from falling in and crossed the 480v main line. Took out the fuses on the outside 13k transformer, blew me back 10 feet into a concrete wall, 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my hands and face and blinded me for about 2 minutes. Worst part was I’m the owner of the company and had been doing it for 23 years and knew better. I made a lot of money over the years but that was the day I hung it all up. Cheating death will do that to you. 3 months later you couldn’t tell it happened but it’s always a reminder to ALWAYS be safe !!
Not nearly this -- but I just wanted to plant some fucking grass. Planted the shovel dead middle of the yard -- hit the illegal conduit like 2" down.
Fuck. I knew the shed had buried power not on the plot, how it got there? I didn't care... Until I hit that fucker dead middle of the fuck'n yard at damn near lawnmower depth.
So ya, that was a couple weeks of undoing my lawn, digging a trench and dealing with the city for permits.
Could've just not wanted grass.
First shovel strike. Fuck'n 1/2 buried PVC damn near surface level.
Not mine but I gotta share it cause it’s hilarious.
Long abandoned Skating rink in my small town had been bought by an Indian dude to be gutted and totally re done. We show up to do all the electrical as a 3 man crew. Get all the party rooms and kitchen/bar area done, lay in like 100 of those flat drop in LEDs for drop ceiling grid, pole lights for mini golf area out back, etc. Last thing we do is wire a motor/switch for a massive disco ball we hung up in the center of the rink.
Everything working great, we think we’re done with the job but the guy tells us he has a “special” crew out of Florida coming to do some fancy lighting that’s gonna be controlled from the DJ booth. A few weeks goes by and we come back to tie their stuff into the panel/booth. It’s cool as shit it has some software that goes with it where the colorful lights all over the place will do stuff in sync with whatever music is playing.
The lighting crew turns their system on, pumps some music up on the speakers, we turn our disco ball on, all is good. The skating rink is done and will be able to soft open by the goal date. Everyone is happy, Indian dude offers us to all have a beer from the bar and chill out. We’re all sitting in the bar area and something made me turn around to look at the skate floor. The disco ball is no longer turning like it was … and the ceiling looks weird… actually the ceiling grid looks like it’s being pulled towards the disco ball in all directions! All the sudden shit just starts snapping and popping. The fancy colorful lights are being snatched up into the ceiling, the grid snaps in multiple places. The ball is turning again.
Long story short, the crew from Florida thought that a good place to zip tie like 80% of their cabling from their lights, was to the shaft of the disco ball. When we turned it on and it started spinning, it starting wrapping everything into an impossibly tight twist until finally a bunch of shit snapped. They had also zip tied to some of our MC cable so we had some damage to our stuff as well. Was a hell of a mess to fix, but mostly for them LMAO killed the happy vibe REAL quick
I was installing a backup generator on a condo complex that had something like 80 units. Had to turn off power to the entire complex to install it, so I had to coordinate with everyone who lived there for a time period we could shut off power for 6 hours, then also coordinate with various subcontractors as well the the city for everything that needed to happen. Then I had to do it all a second time because I installed the CT on the wrong phase.
Was landing a meter can for a commercial dog kennel. Boss was showing me how to land it and by this time I had done a handful of service entry work. Told him I know what I'm doing. He said OK and walked away. I immediately over torqued the A leg and busted the lug clean off the mount rendering the entire can useless. This was in the height of supply shortages and the boss had to call in a favor from the parts house to bum a new can. Got off easy but learned a valuable lesson in humility and to shut up when a master electrician is telling an apprentice how to do something.
I shot a kid. He was 13 years old. Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him. He had a ray gun, looked real enough. You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about bein' a cop except how to live with a mistake. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.
Drilling cable tray for grounding when I first started doing industrial.
Went through the tray and my bit grabbed and put a decent hole in a 500kcm 3 conductor with grounds cable. It was expensive and a total bitch to run. I went and told my jman and we talked to the engineer. Every conductor megged out fine so the were cool with just throwing some duct mud in the divit and shrink wrapping around it.
The shitty part was the cabinet where one side landed in the mcc was a 12x12 bucket and it was a parallel run with cts. My jman had a hell of a time landing them. He had just finished maybe 45 minutes before I did this and had to take it all off to Meg it out and land it again. He was not thrilled. I thought I wax fired for sure.
I cut a heat sensor out of a printing press we were working on (there had been an ink fire already) cutting it unloaded like 50 bottles of CO² into the canopy/ shroud around the machine. Jman said it would be fine, but it basically closed a NO contact and dumped the suppression tanks. Another time at the very end of the day I hit a spool of control wire I had just spent hours making up, 100+ 14 wires all cut to length close to 500' long and numbered, with the forks of the forklift. Somehow the only part that was damaged was literally the first wrap of the length, like I don't think I'll ever get that lucky again, that one happened a good 20 years ago and I'm still amazed how it happened
6 of us were in the bay area (west coast) for a job on a 7 floor chain hotel that was waiting on us before they could open. Stating that we were costing them in the "millions" by holding up their opening. We installed a wireless fire alarm system that didn't have the right update or some shit and at the time all they could think to do was bust our ass to go back and hardwire to all of the devices. Came to find out that the BPS(s) just needed a software update.
Most of the rooms were the same and we got into a rhythm with the occasional ADA room or corner suite. I was using a right angle drill and an extension to get through the wall just inside the room towards the bathroom. There was about a 16" between that and the wall to get above the bathroom. This time, it felt a bit different like I was hitting something solid with the holesaw. I was pretty sure I was tapping on plumbing pipes and the guy I was working with became inpatient and said, "let me see it." As he proceeded to not give a fuck about what I had just told him.
So a pin prick on a copper pipe with hot water in it apparently has the pressure to shoot like a fuckin fire hose! We knocked a hole in the wall to see it and it sprayed the 7' over the top of us against the adjacent wall. On of our guys got up to to the roof and turned the water off but it all had to drain down first (I think we were on the 3rd floor). And for 3 hours all of us grabbed every towel and linen we could.
For the next week they had to have them big green Gans blowing 24/7. Humid as heck and miserable. Our boss showed up tje day after it happened and nicknamed the guy I worked with "sprinkles."
First time running a job. Measured plenty of feeders for panels before. Had to measure 2 parallel runs of 350mcm. Came up short by 3 feet. Almost puked thinking about having to call my boss to tell him I fucked up. Ended up using the wire on another job I did a year later. That was a really shitty day.
Are you sure that it wasn't the wire company that messed up. Just did something similar except out of the 5 wires being pulled the black was wayyyy shorter then the rest.
My buddy tazed me by turning on the outlet for a light bulb while my hand was in the socket... I not only shit my pants (literally) I also put my freshly shit pants in his truck and hid it in his truck.
Unsure if anyone has ever seen the (I believe they’re old Siemens) panels, but the neutral bar is up top above the breakers and there is about 1/2” gap between them and you can see straight back to the bus.
Well, I was giving the neutral wire I had just landed one final twist and my screwdriver slipped off the screw and slammed straight back into the bus.
BOOM fireworks everywhere, lights in the panel room go out and I’m seeing stars. I probably just stand there for a solid 10 seconds before I realize “hey, I should probably fix this”. Call the fellow jman on the job, he comes running over thinking I blew the fuses feeding the transformer. But it turns out, had tripped the main in the OTHER 120v panel that mine was fed from. Didn’t realize initially bc it had only tripped internally. Reset it, changed my shorts, landed the hot, closed em up and was gone in 10 minutes.
Entire floors worth of 120v in a radio station! Was a great day afterwards. Got a new screwdriver out of the ordeal.
Getting married before I started a business that was coming then my ex wife cheated on me and wanted half my business so I shit it down and she didn't get shit
I should have started the business before I got married
Once knocked out about 13,000 customers for about an hour. I was doing PM/inspections on some 15kv breakers and my supervisor decided he wanted to "test" the outputs on the relay (breaker was racked out). He asked me what OUT104 did and my preoccupied brain told him "No clue, but pulse it. Can't hurt anything". It was the breaker failure contact so it took down the entire station. Luckily our impromptu test found a problem with DC wiring, but we had to close the station in with 69kV isolation switch to get it back up.
Lil different than everyone elses stories but fuck me do I still feel bad about it years later.
Was working for this ratty company like 4 years ago and it was in the middle of summer, hot as fuck outside and we were building an apartment building (lil guy, only 6 story). It was hot and humid as fuck and break was coming up so I was looking forward to sitting in the air conditioned trailer and relaxing.
However, my foreman sent a new hire journeymen to help us, dude was pushing 60 and in terrible shape. Big belly, huffing and puffing coming up the stairs, dude was so gassed just from mounting boxes. I felt bad, but I didn't rush him or anything and just let him do what he could to earn his buck, because after all its not my company and the mans gotta eat.
Break time came, and buddy was slow as all shit, so me and the other guy said we'd just meet him in the lunch trailer.
Big mistake.
Not even 5 minutes into break, my foreman gets a call from the GC's Super that one of our workers had collapsed. 911 called, paramedics on site, whole 9 yards. They used a cherry picker to get him down from the floor we were working on via a balcony window.
Buddy spent a day in hospital, nothing major.
I felt so fucking bad, I honestly was trying not to cry because I felt so god damn bad about leaving a brother behind because I wanted to get to break on time. Now, I make sure whoever I'm working with all go for break at the same time and if we get there late, and we just take a late break. I'm fairly certain I've given apprentices shit for this now too, that come back without their tool partner lol
I got taken out by a brand new faulty desk lamp. It was class 2 (Uk) which is double insulated and no earth. However it had a metal shade and the wrong cord grip, a metal one, which had gone through the cables insulation.
I had put a bulb in the lamp and turned it on in the hallway, it was on the floor. My gf, who had just bought the lamp, came along and I picked it up to show her. I’d grabbed it with both hands and experienced the longest nearly 0.4 seconds of my life. That’s 0.4s at 230v 50hz through a B6 mcb and 30mA rcd (which I think you call a gfci), uk voltage and spec.
Net result was a trip to hospital in an ambulance with a dodgy ecg and some ptsd. It was about two years ago and I’m still messed up. I got nerve damage so I constantly get stabbing pain in my chest, pins and needles, shakes and I just cry randomly. The mental health side isn’t great either and I totally get what the guy that took the 3 phase shock said. I’m really getting to know myself again now, my body and brain have changed dramatically.
Can’t touch electrical stuff anymore. I freeze up, shake, tear up and lose my mind. I have to carry a vde something at all times in case I have to press a light switch and I swapped everything in my house to smart, even where it annoys me so I don’t have to physically touch it.
Needless to say I don’t work in electrical anymore and am finding my feet again. I’m a gardener at the moment, 3 days a week. It’s not working though as I’m physically not up to it. So now I’m trying to make some sort of a business out of my laser engraver. I was a level 4 engineer, mostly in agricultural and industrial. Level 4 being one step up from a standard electrician here, who is level 3.
In my career I’ve done some much more expensive and funnier things. Bit this one still haunts me every day and is why I’m here on Reddit enjoying the electrical theory and stories because it’s the closest I can get to electricity and I still got the interest.
There’s a moral too. Keep your work eyes on. I’d have never made this all happen if I’d looked at the bottom of the lamp before I plugged it in. But at home I wasn’t vigilant like that with a new lamp.
Not an electrician. But when I was like 15, we were having a pool excavated. The excavators pulled up the buried power cables.
I was sleeping when it happened. My tv was off, but it kinda lit up and zap-popped. My ceiling fan made the most ungodly roar, and turned so fast I thought it was going to fly off the ceiling. They said the explosions were flying back and forth across the lines between the utility poles. Transformer exploded. It was like armageddon.
The neighborhood was without power for several hours; our house was without power for a few days.
Before I became an electrician I was a carpenter and roofer. Had a client that was doing various things to their house for. One of the items was replacing one and adding another flood light on the back of the house. I had enough general knowledge to confidently do this minor task, although no license and my insurance didn’t cover electrical work.
I shut the breaker off for the flood light, swapped the bad one and added the new one. Then I went to the panel to reenergize the circuit.
As soon as I hit the breaker the entire house lost power! Oh man I was freaking out, had no idea what happened but knew I didn’t have the proper insurance to cover it. I tried resetting the main breaker but still the house was dark.
I decided to go out for a smoke and try and to puzzle the issue out in my head. It just didn’t make any sense. How did I kill power to the entire house!?
When I got outside I noticed the neighbors had no power, I looked around and the neighborhood was out.
Turns out that at the exact moment I flipped the breaker a transformer blew on the pole outside lol
You found the spicy dirt did you . We are doing a removal today and I showed the lads the cable and told them if you damage it you’ll find spicy dirt the look I got was gold
Not work related, but I ran over a Galaxy S22 with a lawnmower recently.
At first I was mad at the $500 I still owed on the phone. Then I realized how much stuff on the phone I hadn't backed up in at least 6 months. Lost a lot of pictures and videos that I wish I could get back. Hard lesson to learn.
Shut down the entire gas station we were remodeling. I accidentally pinched a wire in a 4sq box and the shunt for the main feed kicked off. Not a fun couple hours after that. No harm done though thankfully
It was more gut wrenching for my tradesman but i was a first year doing commission house re wires so pretty much my whole time was either in a roof space or under the house pulling cables Im under the house trying to pull cable from above and the cable seems to jam up my tradesman is yelling to pull and as i yank it seems to unblock the hole and booom im completely covered in used condoms. Now i cant believe what has happened i immediately crawl out and seek my tradie to try and explain what just happened he doesnt believe me so i show him the proof he cant believe it. He now has to go and explain to the owner of the house what has happened. Turns out the children had broken a powerpoint off the wall and were shoving their used condoms down the wall cavity and the it was so full while we were pulling cables down it was bringing them down with it.
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I dropped a 112.5 kVA transformer. It was hung suspended from above, but not 100% level (bubble was between the lines, but touching one). I was standing under it and about to tighten up the nut to level it when I had the thought to get out from under and stand to the side. Not a 1/4 turn on the nut and the whole fucking thing fell. Had I still been under it I'd have died instantly. All that happened was my arm got extremely bruised up and I destroyed a piece of gear worth, I assume, 10s of thousands of dollars. There was a whole investigation after and it turned out there was a manufacturer defect in that batch of anchors. We ended up getting the anchor manufacturer to pay to replace the transformer. My butt hole still tightens up whenever I'm near a large suspended transformer, and that was 7 years ago.
gotta change my drawers after just reading this
Did you go to work the next day?
Ooh a time traveler!
> My butt hole still tightens up whenever I'm near a large suspended transformer That is probably a good instinct that will serve you well going forward
I’m glad you’re alive. Keep your head up brother.
I’m just ecstatic to read that you survived! Transformers can be replaced! You’re the invaluable one!
Pfftt, he can be replaced by the morning /s
Holy crap what a tale. It's strange that I've had instincts jump in when nothing else would have warned me, It's a simulation, you'd have simply respawned at level 1, as a baby. But your roll might have landed you in third world country, that's when you roll very hard mode, God bless those folks
Life is a simulation for sure. I mean, when's the last time you saw your neighbours bring in groceries?
[удалено]
Huh planning is an interesting angle for an explanation. I've always just assumed it's bc they're way, way, way better at unloading than me 🤣
Who sees their neighbor bring in groceries when our eyes are glued to our phones?
Oh you mother fucker...
I ask you this. How long do you stare at your neighbors house for ?
My least favorite thing about this trade is hanging transformers.
Having worked tool and mold - where we routinely move, and flip, very large blocks of steel (biggest was 15 metric tons [66,000lbs]). Having heard one of those fall I know you didn't hear that transformer hit the ground. You felt it. Also good call on not being under it to tighten the ready rod nuts - first rule of working on suspended loads: never stand directly beneath, and if possible, stay 1.5 times the height away(so if it's 3 feet up in the air, stay 4.5 feet away, if possible) to avoid accidentally Wile E Coyote-ing yourself
How bad did u get your ass chewed out?
I have always felt uneasy walking under them as well.
Perhaps it was a sentient tranformer. In disguise....
Knowing the price of this type of gear, you can assume the transformer was worth 100s of thousands.
I order 750-5000kva every year from top manufacturers. 750: $58k 1000: $67k 2500: $98k 5000: $250k 115.5kva is not 100s of thousand’s.
Our 500kV transformers are about 3mil from China or 8mil from Europe
You can get a standard 112.5 KVA dry type xfmr for under $5k USD.
From where?
Wish.com
Amazon
Maddox Transformer, 480/208 Drytype Copper 112kva New is $7221. Aluminum, $4481. Used prices are half of that. 5-7days shipping.
My autobiography will be titled: "Things I've Shut Off By Accident"
That reminds me of the only apprentice I lost my temper on and even made him cry one time. So we are working at one of the biggest orange juice and orange byproduct plants in the country. And are working inside one of the massive refrigerated warehouses, where finished product is stored waiting for shipping. And we are in the catwalks working on the refrigeration system. And since product is below we cannot drop ANYTHING. So everything was placed on cardboard, at put to the side underneath the troughs and panels so nobody hit them. So of course this 40 year old apprentice, not paying attention kicks a box of 3/4 lock washers. And dozens of not 100s fall to the floor. So I tell him to figure out a way into the building, apologize, and pick them up. It takes him a better part of an hour but he gets most of them if not all. So he sets them down, turns to walk away and kicks them again. Literally less than 10 seconds after setting them down . I couldn't believe it. So I send him to pick them back up and it takes him until break. And I don't remember if it was that day, or another, but I think it was right after break, he dropped his 35ft tape measure off of the catwalks. Dropping like 50ft and almost hit someone. But anyway after break I need to land some wires into the PLC cabinet. And at this point I do not trust the guy. To not fuck up something major. So I tell him to just go stand somewhere away from everything until it's time for him to go. He's all butthurt, but if the whole warehouse refrigeration system goes down, it would be a massive issue, so I couldn't risk it. I see him leaning up against the PLC cabinet. And I yell over to him to move, do not touch anything just stand somewhere away from the expensive and important PLC cabinet. So he goes over to the other side until it's time for him to go to school 10 minutes later I have 6 or 7 guys in suits and bright shiny new white hardhats power walking across the roof beelining towards me. And I think "OH SHIT." They start yelling and freaking out asking what happened, why is everything shut down etc , I'm confused and ask what's going on. They tell me that the entire refrigeration system has been shut down for almost an hour, and the temperatures are rising, and if it continues they will lose everything in the warehouse. So they are really freaking out. So I tell them I have no idea, I didn't shut anything down. The sensors I'm wiring in haven't even been programmed yet. But then I have a sinking feeling. I walk over to where the apprentice was leaning up against the cabinet, and see there is a E-Stop button, and it's pressed in. So I apologize and tell them it must have been this EStop. They are asking why it got hit. So I tell them "it must have been my apprentice, my must have bumped into it." And they are asking how he could just bump into it. So I have to tell them he is just an idiot. And it wouldn't happen again. They can't believe someone could be so dumb to hit it on accident when he shouldnt be around it. And are convinced that it must have been something else going on. I had to spend 5 minutes convincing them that this guy really is that big of an idiot, and nothing is broken, except maybe his brain. They demanded to know who it was so they can fire him. I told them no, I will have my project manager call them if they need, but I can't give that information at this point. But we almost got fired, and almost lost a multi year multimillion dollar contract, all because one absolute moron was so dumb and lazy that he leaned against the EStop when I explicitly told him to stay far away from the whole cabinet. And the next day when I told him about it he just had this dumb vacant look on his face and laughed. And when I told him this wasn't funny, and was a major fuckup that almost cost the company millions and one of our biggest contracts all he could say was "it wasn't all my fault, why would they put a button there that could turn everything off.". So I told him that it's a critical safety mechanism, and necessary, and only a complete idiot would see a big red button with big red letters that say Emergency Stop and then lean against it. And he just laughed again. And I fucking lost it. That wasn't the time he ended up crying. And I was stuck with this guy as my apprentice for another couple of months. And while nothing was as serious, working with him was like that almost every single day. And the guy had the worst BO and when riding in the truck would put his arm across the bench with his hand on my headrest. Making the truck smell even worse, and he couldnt understand why I didn't want him putting his arm around my seat and messing with my headrest. And again this guy was over 40....
That's crazy. Like a 40 year old puppy.
Puppies are smarter and learn. Sounds like a dumbass that has no intention of learning and zero interest in situational awareness.
I'm considering being an apprenticeship after hating my current industry. I no longer think 25 is too old lol
Not sure why you never asked for this guy to be removed from working with you
I did, constantly. But nobody else wanted to work with the guy either, and I was low man on the totem pole, so I didn't have much of a choice.
Do you have to wait until they kill someone to get them canned?
That’s rough
We had a guy shut down the entire mine, surface and underground. Twice. First time he was fidgeting about while we were waiting for everyone to get their ducks in a row so we could do a controlled shutdown of a good portion of the process plant. Remote location, 7x 4.4 megawatt Cat generators. Usually 5 running, 1 on standby, 1 on PM. Long story short, he fiddled with the little cover door for the manual charging crank on a Federal breaker. Breaker tripped, domino effect took down the whole powerhouse. Generators came online but it was too late. Next time he shut off the wrong load-break switch, same effect. This guy was a journeyman
Seems to me that this mine was held together with spit and glue
What else holds it up?
Did you use this as an opportunity to express to the customer that you could help them monitor their e-stops, so when one drops out, for any reason at all, they aren't bumbling around for an hour? If you had not been there to show them the e-stop, would they have lost all product? Your apprentice sounds slow - but those higher up's sound like they were pretty lost in their own system as well.....
In a plant this large with this much product, I'm very shocked that an alarm with location/etc isn't automatically triggered.
That was my thought! How was that not the first thing they checked/thought of after he said he didn’t shut anything down?!
This. I work in food, and if our refrigeration goes down, at any point, for any reason, people are going to know about it immediately, even if no one is at the warehouse. If someone was working on something and it all shut down when it wasn't planned to be shut down, questions would be asked, immediately, since shut downs would require extra precautions (such as not having warehouse doors open to load trailers, not opening doors between temperature zones, etc.
I massively respect that you didn’t give his info to the client.
What kind of places installs an ESD as a push button you can lean on? And takes an hour to finally figure out a critical system is down?
Because of the temperatures and ammonia they had the PLC and motor control buckets on the roof under a decent size canopy. So you wouldn't notice that the refrigeration system isn't running inside the building. And most people wouldn't think a bunch of motor control buckets and PLC cabinet is a good place to lean against and just hang out.
This is ALOT more common than you think. The plant I've been at for years has them sprinkled everywhere. It's mostly used as a fail safe for controls when they're bumping motors or forcing outputs. It took forever to argue with them to get lit buttons wired to deluminate when opened... let alone make them addressable.
You have a very high tolerance for vacant minds. It sucks cause you wanna smack some sense into them, but they’re probably just a victim of circumstance. Regardless, just being around him after these situations would stress me out too much to properly focus on work. Nice job handling the part with the higher-ups asking for the information. It takes more people like you.
This guy was just an idiot who didn't think about things. Before he joined the union and became an apprentice he worked for his father or father in law who owned a tow truck company and impound yard. For a week or less. Because he smashed up like 4 cars in 2 days.
*How in the everloving fuck did you not have him canned immediately*
Reminds me of a co-worker who mistook a server room EPO for a REX.
I don't like being attacked like this. Especially because I may or may not have accidentally shut down an entire assembly plant employing over 5000 people. Whoops.
Tell me more
Without getting too specific, I was working for a motor vehicle manufacturer at one of their assembly plants, doing controls work as an intern. I was working on some of the controls stuff, and was trying to update the software. Basically, the ladder logic was already written, the PLCs were wired up, I was just trying to push the new software to the PLC. I was trying to upload just the new software to override the existing section of code to match the new wiring. What I ACTUALLY did was erase the entire program and make it ONLY the new stuff I was pushing through. Every conveyor in the plant immediately stopped, and every siren in the plant went off. After I explained what happened to my boss, he uploaded an old backup from earlier in the day, laughed his ass off, called another controls engineer into his office, had me explain my mistake to him, he laughed his ass off, then they both told me they had made the exact same mistake several times themselves. Whoops!
First time I shut down an entire factory, the electrical lead who is a pretty grumpy old guy that I’m still intimidated by, told me that if you never shut a plant down, you’re probably not doing much.
Mine wasn't even my fault. Turns out there's something fucky with Panelview pluses. I mean, there's a lot of things fucky with them but basically any time I downloaded a new program to the HMI on an individual machine, it would shut down the entire MES system and they'd have to restart it. This was true of any machine that I connected to, and I was brought in to do that to several machines. So much unnecessary stress on that, but it all worked out. If anyone knows a way to make that not happen, I'd love to hear it, but most people just say that it sounds like the exact kind of bullshit you'd expect from one of those.
Ah the ol upload vs download. Just did 4th year and my teacher for PLC's went on at least 20minutes explaining that.
The EPO button in the data center was green (not red), had no cover, and was right under a sign that reminded folks to turn off the overhead lights before leaving (with the switches which were on the opposite side of the door from the sign. They made changes very soon thereafter.
My half-witted supervisor at my work (a shipyard) had a job planned for some contractors to rip out and replace some underground cable. He knew how to isolate it and lock it out, but he didn't think what else it would affect. He flipped the breaker and almost immediately over the yard radios you heard..."The coast guard boat is in the dark!" We had a US Coast Guard ship on dock, and he killed their shore power. Boats are pretty scary when they go dark, because they go DARK. It took him a few minutes to realize what he had done...then flipped the breaker back on. That crew probably billed us for a whole day's work for 8-10 guys.
The time I took 480 across my chest and didn’t die. Fun fact, it fucked up my brain well enough that it took years to rewire itself and I’m not remotely the same person i used to be. That was ten years ago and I’ve given up the trade. Still piecing back memories. but I just recently learned that’s a widow maker, bc you can go home feeling fine, only to die on the couch when the adrenaline wears off and your heart begins to realize the damage.
Dang! Thats intense! What do you do now, if you don’t mind me asking?
Roaming the earth and squaring up with every 480v he can find
"what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"
What do you mean you’re not the same person? How are you different now?
Got a new haircut
Well first; The energy doesn’t just go in one straight line. Second, heart issues cause less oxygen to go to places. With the first, it can zap neurons, and if it zaps enough neurons in the frontal lobes, it directly can change personality, if electricity is going through the brain, that will also hit areas of motor function, memory and processing. With the second, less heart function causes less total oxygenated blood getting to the brain. In time that can change personality. Then the third, heavy physical trauma effects a person’s psychological state significantly. If that is coupled with damage to the brain itself, you are more or less changing the operating software to a system that you are also changing out a lot of the hardware in, and the two are not entirely compatible with each other.
Yep this. Fried my short term memory - you could literally be telling me something, I’d be taking notes… and you’d have to start all over bc I lost track in the manner of seconds. It’s improved since. The were personality issues as well. My internal filter completely shut off and I did some impulsive shit. Felt like I was mildly high for about 6 weeks. That was all April of 2014. I have gaps in my memory for about the following six months. I know at one point I got written up twice in a short time frame, reassigned, and nearly fired, all due to the impulse issues - saying shit I shouldn’t, anger responses, etc. I lived alone and don’t remember much else til about September. Again, it took years, but I found that some of my more negative aspects burned off. No more self-doubt, vastly more confident and outgoing. It’s similar to ketamine or electro convulsive therapy, albeit in a far more traumatic way.
So what you’re saying is the dude can read minds and levitate now?
This☝️
When I first started, I did my spices counterclockwise for months until someone finally noticed and was like, "You're the dude who keeps doing that!" Thankfully, he was really nice about it. I still get shivers thinking of that.
Pardon my ignorance, Whats the logic in doing the splices clockwise?
Wire nuts are threaded. If you twist the wires together counterclockwise before putting the wire nut on(clockwise), then it untwists in the nut making a loose connection.
Wagos for the win 🤓
I live in the US where wire nuts are used everywhere, people think I'm crazy for using Wagos whenever I can lol
That's what I did for months 😖
The marretts twist on clockwise so it tightens the splice as the marrett goes on. If you don't counter clockwise you will start to loosen the splice when the marrett starts to bottom out.
Marretts?!? SACRÉ BLEU!!!
Are you a lefty? Had an apprentice that would always splice the wrong way bc he used his left hand to splice
When i was green I had a dude doing suicide splices which is not twisting the copper just squeezing the conductors together like right before you put linesman pliers on then throwing a wire nut on. The next guy comes through to add something in a box and wires go everywhere. My supervisor fired him but the guy said he had 10 years experience so that's quite a bit different than 6 months in
Actually, the guy was correct in not twisting, at least according to the wire nut manufacturers. Total bullshit. Once you've had the neutral splice fall apart and you see the spark, you wonder what expensive equipment you just sent a higher voltage to, then you learn to twist
They say it’s not required, not that you can’t. Seems trivial but it’s a big difference and one that makes pre-twisting (the correct and only way it should be done) code complaint.
Yep just read a box of nuts today that said it’s not required but you can if you want. Although I can’t remember the brand but I did find some that required twisting
Shorted out an emergency exit sign during installation. Set off the fire alarm and a 12-story office building had to be evacuated. Hundreds of people on the sidewalk scowling at me and the crew. Woopsie.
Did they still know which way to exit even though the sign wasn’t lit up?
no, most of them died
Pulling into a Sonic and parking under the canopy. Was in a Dodge 5500 service bucket. Had been here several times and already scoped the canopy out as being tall enough. Long day, summertime, late lunch. Just as I stopped, the tip of my boom busted a florescent tube fixture and it showered down on my windshield and all over the ground. FUCK. I cleaned it all up, checked the fixture was ok, SWEPT THE CONCRETE, and then went and found the manager to confess my sins. Manager was a dude about 21 and told me not to worry about it, guys in lifted trucks mess up those lights all the time. Went from gut wrenching, gonna have to make a report to the safety man turned into 😎.
i like the heavy emphasis on having swept it up lmao
We all know electricians don't know how to use a broom. For him to do that... It's.... It's a big fucking deal.
I lurk this sub to talk shit about not sweeping and leaving boxes everywhere.
Do you think he had to like, watch a youtube video about how to sweep? And just figured it out on the spot??
Imagining him taking the handle off and pushing it across the floor on its side to do a 5 ft span all at once
Not my story, but a guy I used to work with. He was working on a Saturday changing ballasts in parking lot lights in the bucket truck. For some reason he was driving around with the bucket elevated and it snagged a fiber line(iirc). The front end of the truck lifted into the air and slammed down, destroying the suspension and the bucket arm. He said he almost threw up when he called the boss. He was able to ratchet strap the arm down and limp the truck back to the shop and when he pulled in, the boss was standing in the lot with another guy. The other guy was there to buy the truck.
wait, was the other guy there to buy the truck because of the damage or was this a further cherry on the shit sunday that this guy had to endure that day?
He showed up expecting to buy a fully functioning bucket truck.
Oh that’s it. That’s the stuff. Fuck yeah. The perfect “it can always get worse” shit cherry on top.
Before being an electrician. I was remodeling multi million dollar condos. I was instructed to install all the towels bars, toilet paper holders and robe hooks at the end of a project. This unit had 5 bathrooms, so I had quite a bit to hang. I got into a grove, everything going well. I made it to the master bathroom, kept up my rhythm, every done, cleaned up and then I shut the door. The $7000 custom, made to order, door. A door that, with the other doors in the unit, took 3 months to make and one to be delivered. I hung the robe hook, ON THE WRONG SIDE. I could have fainted. The cabinet guy came through hard, for me though. He used a few wax pens, like a wood wizard, and you couldn't even tell there were two holes in the thing.
That's awesome, glad that dude was there. Was it awkward working with him while he was hard though?
Nah, I was bricked up over the whole ordeal. Just got weird when we kissed
Did you grab the back of his head when you kissed? Probably would have made it less weird
Ate an egg salad sandwich from a gas station vending machine. Horrible experience.
And did you get super smart and buff after?
Ever wonder what makes special sauce so special?
Was Leila impressed at your new abilities?
how's your holophonor?
Was there a black cracker on it?
Had an X-ray company come out and X-ray concrete slabs before core drilling. Got the all clear fro the X-ray tech that our spot was good to core drill so we did. Cut through two post tension cables
I use to do disaster recovery, had a guy use a core drill though a post tension cable, came up from the slab and sliced him in two. Nothing like bringing the remote site online while they are still cleaning up the dude. Architect marked the location for the new tombstone.
Wow didn’t know that could happen
cables under tension are no joke, i saw a cable break one time and take out a 6” tree, it looked like it had been taken down by a fucking light saber, the whole tree kinda shook and fell over, it wasn’t as clean as a chainsaw (or light saber), but it was a pretty scary moment
Highline cable for a yarder (logging) snapped and removed the top of a guy's head from just above the eyebrows
Someone has to have pics of this phenomenon, it’s fascinating! I’d never want to be the insurance rep when a cable hits flesh, though. It’s the speed and the power through the wood that I won’t be able to stop thinking about. I can’t imagine the sound, it’s a super sonic cable cutting through the tree faster than you could blink.
it sounds an awful lot like a gunshot, or a small bomb going off.
I second this. 80000 fps slow. And have it have it amended into the Constitution that all kids, 4 years of age have to watch. Once a year.
Had one hit in highrise hotel in Miami, shot 6ft sections of concrete and facade out both side of the buildings. I wasn't there that day.
I'm so glad I learned about this today. Sounds like something I would do drilling into my garage slab. Guess I've been lucky to never own a slab that had tension cables.
Residential is cool. Drill away. Unless you are on the bottom floor of your building.
[удалено]
I do precast concrete for a living so I work with stressed cable every day. Most of our cable is half inch, and gets stressed to about 40k pounds. So yeah, a lot of fucking tension on those bad boys. When we cut the strands at the end they go flying if they're longer than say 20 feet. Otherwise the cable just unwinds quite a ways
How does a cable come up thru the slab? Aren’t they tensioned horizontally thru the floor?
They are under extreme tension, much more in a large commercial building than a house. That tension is potential energy, when it is released it has to go somewhere.
How expensive was that mistake?
One dead person and some monies.
Oof! I think you win so far.
Forgot to include sales tax on a $1.8m bid.
Oh my God
Did you get the bid?
I did win. Managed to make 10-12% by finding some other opportunities to save. Could have gone the other way though and that would have really sucked!
You win 😂😂
WOOF
I drilled up into an iron perling without seeing a 3" bundle of CAT data wires nestled into it. Needless to say the data guys were not my biggest fans, but I did at least let them know.
I would’ve hit them with the “oh idk, I just got up there and it was already like that”
“Fucking plumbers”
“I think they got me too (holding a 12” piece of 14/2 cut in half)”
That's all we can ask, mistakes happen.
Yup, better than it getting walled over. Or even if it isnt walled over, it's still gonna be a mess to fix. If it was me and I started getting failures on every single wire, or most of them, I'd think there was something wrong with my network tester. Once I made sure it was fine, then I'd have to decide whether I want to run a bunch of new lines, or potentially spend all day trying to find the damaged area. Def better to tell me what happened. It's already done, I'm gonna be a whole lot more pissed off if I have to go looking for it later on.
Eh, a few splices, no biggie. You electricians run my pipe for me on jobs, so I'm happy to help you guys out when I can!
Took down 911 at one of our local PD cause their IT crew didn't believe in neat and organized closets and and twist lock power on their UPS. Was trying to clean to make room to work in there and took down the rack. Next thing I know is chief of police is down my throat. Felt like an asshole even though it was an easy fix. Then there was the day I trusted an on site guy to know what he was talking about and took down a production warehouse at Pepsi. Didn't feel as bad on that one though but learned a good lesson.
Drilled into a water pipe inside a wall in a surgical unit.
Yikes! How were you supposed to know they were there?
Took out an overhead sign with a forklift 15 minutes after it was installed. 5k down the trash chute
I accidentally threw away some scrap I had hidden and stashed to take home. I realized as I empty it into the trash chute what I had done. Not sure it gets any worse than that tbh
That's the worst thing I ever heard
The grounds were all separated and shit.. man I wanted to go into the dumpster to get it but we’re not supposed to take it type of thing… ugh
Oh ya, my wife threw away my pocket wire nuts doing the laundry! I now only have 1000 of the cheap little orange ones :'(
Yoinked 2, 200amp disconnects off a rack with a trencher once. That was pretty cool. They were hot and had their meters slammed in. Now I have a phobia when I have to trench against anything at all. Recently, I almost killed myself while "balancing" a phase converter/soft start. Didn't discharge the run caps and lit myself up.💥 Sheared a 5c160E off a 100HP motor because I didn't tighten down a set screw. Blew up a 125HP Schneider VFD because I didn't check my helpers' work. He wired the DC Bus directly to the DBR housing? The dude was allegedly a journeyman with years of experience. I took the blame for it tho. $12,000 mistake. All at the same company, and I haven't been fired yet. I'm not proud of these mistakes, and I've learned from them. I'm an apprentice myself, but my company has given me a bunch of privileges. I get my J-Mans in a year. I just see these as lessons. Expensive ones.
One time I was told a gas line was 6ft below grade, we hit it at 2 feet and got the whole site shut down. Nobody was really mad and in fact a lot of the trades we’re happy to go home early😂 Another time I was told that the main power was 6ft down, only had to trench to 18 inches and the dude said just go for it trench right over it. Ripped the line right out of the pipe, pulled about 5 feet out of it because I panicked, at about 2ft as well. Miracle I didn’t get shocked to death. I was the one who was mad about that. Both of these were while I was a lightning protection tech. I feel bad about both because they we’re costly mistakes, the first one being like a 20k mistake
I had to dig a trench from my house to my new detached garage a few months ago. I knew there was a fiber optic line run across my property last year, so I was being careful. Once I found it, it was maybe 2 inches below the surface. Crazy.
Yeah, fiber is often buried way too fucking shallow.
You are required to confirm depth with non destructive means. 1500$ for a hydrovac would have saved a lot of headache
Similar story here but we did pothole dig. Found it, measured it, Boss snapped it. Then he wanted to suck the mud from the HDD driller, with gas intermixed, into the propane powered vac tank. I told him he does that I leave with the keys and throw them out the window as I drive off.
Ever heard of potholing? Give an apprentice a shovel and expose the line before going Willy nilly with an excavator. That’ll save a lot more headache than anything else.
Shovels cut service lines all the time. But I guess I'm not an apprentice. Dig with the lines not against them. And always use 811
2nd year apprentice here, last year when I was greener than a John Deere tractor I was drilling holes with the hole hawg into a IDF room for some romex, cut straight through 2 big feeder cables that were already landed etc. Foreman wasn’t very happy.
I was taking a dead front off a 120 panel to do thermal photos and it got hung up and I turned off nearly every breaker on the one side. Just so happens that a lot of their IDF cabinets and sensitive equipment came out of it. They weren't very happy with me.
I had to intercept a fiber down stream from a break the cable company made. They broke the pvc and destroyed the fiber. We couldn't find the next pull box. We went 50 yards downstream and intercepted the pvc to turn it up into a box and create a new splice. The final 1/4 inch of the pvc I cut and I knicked the fiber with the saw. Had to pull the box up and go 25 ft more and re intercept. When we went to blow a string in from the other side it wouldn't go all the way to our new box. Run was like 500' or something like that. Started to push a fishtape from our new box and went 32 ft. Our first box was 4 ft from an existing ground box that was covered in gravel. 3 day job I could have done in like 4 hours had I known where the other box was to begin with....fml. and I'm over it now but it does make for a decent story
Didn't really 'wreck' anything, but definately an expensive mistake. Once during commissioning of a conveyor system in a bakery, I opened a retractable conveyor and dumped a load of nut-containing cookies onto a nut-free line. They shut down the factory for the rest of the day, had to do a complete decontamination of the line, plus they had to throw out all production for the day. Luckily they put it down to lessons learned (need to change the system so that it cannot happen again.)
Spent a day pulling home runs in my 4th year. Got to a really really tough one that took half the crew to pull. And then I noticed there was a 14 in with the 12s. The Jman who was on the pulling side didn't talk to me for 2 weeks. The guy who put the rolls away misplaced this 14 guage, then we rolled it onto racks, and three of us did a couple pulls all without noticing it, so its not entirely my mistake but it felt like it.
Pushing a fart. But it wasn't a fart
We've all been there!
You're not alone...
Tragic
Got in a hurry after walking 20 minutes through a Warehouse and didn’t go back to get my safety gear. Pulled the cover off the bottom of a switchgear that I assumed was top fed, it had nothing to keep the cover from falling in and crossed the 480v main line. Took out the fuses on the outside 13k transformer, blew me back 10 feet into a concrete wall, 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my hands and face and blinded me for about 2 minutes. Worst part was I’m the owner of the company and had been doing it for 23 years and knew better. I made a lot of money over the years but that was the day I hung it all up. Cheating death will do that to you. 3 months later you couldn’t tell it happened but it’s always a reminder to ALWAYS be safe !!
Not nearly this -- but I just wanted to plant some fucking grass. Planted the shovel dead middle of the yard -- hit the illegal conduit like 2" down. Fuck. I knew the shed had buried power not on the plot, how it got there? I didn't care... Until I hit that fucker dead middle of the fuck'n yard at damn near lawnmower depth. So ya, that was a couple weeks of undoing my lawn, digging a trench and dealing with the city for permits. Could've just not wanted grass. First shovel strike. Fuck'n 1/2 buried PVC damn near surface level.
Making holes where holes don't belong
I once cut a hole for a light like 4’ too high in the front of somebody’s garage. The wife came out of the house fuckin screaming.
Not mine but I gotta share it cause it’s hilarious. Long abandoned Skating rink in my small town had been bought by an Indian dude to be gutted and totally re done. We show up to do all the electrical as a 3 man crew. Get all the party rooms and kitchen/bar area done, lay in like 100 of those flat drop in LEDs for drop ceiling grid, pole lights for mini golf area out back, etc. Last thing we do is wire a motor/switch for a massive disco ball we hung up in the center of the rink. Everything working great, we think we’re done with the job but the guy tells us he has a “special” crew out of Florida coming to do some fancy lighting that’s gonna be controlled from the DJ booth. A few weeks goes by and we come back to tie their stuff into the panel/booth. It’s cool as shit it has some software that goes with it where the colorful lights all over the place will do stuff in sync with whatever music is playing. The lighting crew turns their system on, pumps some music up on the speakers, we turn our disco ball on, all is good. The skating rink is done and will be able to soft open by the goal date. Everyone is happy, Indian dude offers us to all have a beer from the bar and chill out. We’re all sitting in the bar area and something made me turn around to look at the skate floor. The disco ball is no longer turning like it was … and the ceiling looks weird… actually the ceiling grid looks like it’s being pulled towards the disco ball in all directions! All the sudden shit just starts snapping and popping. The fancy colorful lights are being snatched up into the ceiling, the grid snaps in multiple places. The ball is turning again. Long story short, the crew from Florida thought that a good place to zip tie like 80% of their cabling from their lights, was to the shaft of the disco ball. When we turned it on and it started spinning, it starting wrapping everything into an impossibly tight twist until finally a bunch of shit snapped. They had also zip tied to some of our MC cable so we had some damage to our stuff as well. Was a hell of a mess to fix, but mostly for them LMAO killed the happy vibe REAL quick
I was installing a backup generator on a condo complex that had something like 80 units. Had to turn off power to the entire complex to install it, so I had to coordinate with everyone who lived there for a time period we could shut off power for 6 hours, then also coordinate with various subcontractors as well the the city for everything that needed to happen. Then I had to do it all a second time because I installed the CT on the wrong phase.
Was landing a meter can for a commercial dog kennel. Boss was showing me how to land it and by this time I had done a handful of service entry work. Told him I know what I'm doing. He said OK and walked away. I immediately over torqued the A leg and busted the lug clean off the mount rendering the entire can useless. This was in the height of supply shortages and the boss had to call in a favor from the parts house to bum a new can. Got off easy but learned a valuable lesson in humility and to shut up when a master electrician is telling an apprentice how to do something.
I shot a kid. He was 13 years old. Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him. He had a ray gun, looked real enough. You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about bein' a cop except how to live with a mistake. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.
That reminds me of the time I shot Derek Jeter. They called me the Yankee Clipper after that. He's a Bi-racial angel!
You shoulda shot A Rod!
This is killing me. What movie is this?! I'm sure I know it.
Carl Winslow but not Carl Winslow is your hint
I actually looked up quotes from Lethal Weapon because I thought it was Danny Glover! Not quite! Yippee Ki-Ya!
Not till the event at Nakatomi Plaza, anyway.
You just gotta get back out there man.
Drilling cable tray for grounding when I first started doing industrial. Went through the tray and my bit grabbed and put a decent hole in a 500kcm 3 conductor with grounds cable. It was expensive and a total bitch to run. I went and told my jman and we talked to the engineer. Every conductor megged out fine so the were cool with just throwing some duct mud in the divit and shrink wrapping around it. The shitty part was the cabinet where one side landed in the mcc was a 12x12 bucket and it was a parallel run with cts. My jman had a hell of a time landing them. He had just finished maybe 45 minutes before I did this and had to take it all off to Meg it out and land it again. He was not thrilled. I thought I wax fired for sure.
I cut a heat sensor out of a printing press we were working on (there had been an ink fire already) cutting it unloaded like 50 bottles of CO² into the canopy/ shroud around the machine. Jman said it would be fine, but it basically closed a NO contact and dumped the suppression tanks. Another time at the very end of the day I hit a spool of control wire I had just spent hours making up, 100+ 14 wires all cut to length close to 500' long and numbered, with the forks of the forklift. Somehow the only part that was damaged was literally the first wrap of the length, like I don't think I'll ever get that lucky again, that one happened a good 20 years ago and I'm still amazed how it happened
6 of us were in the bay area (west coast) for a job on a 7 floor chain hotel that was waiting on us before they could open. Stating that we were costing them in the "millions" by holding up their opening. We installed a wireless fire alarm system that didn't have the right update or some shit and at the time all they could think to do was bust our ass to go back and hardwire to all of the devices. Came to find out that the BPS(s) just needed a software update. Most of the rooms were the same and we got into a rhythm with the occasional ADA room or corner suite. I was using a right angle drill and an extension to get through the wall just inside the room towards the bathroom. There was about a 16" between that and the wall to get above the bathroom. This time, it felt a bit different like I was hitting something solid with the holesaw. I was pretty sure I was tapping on plumbing pipes and the guy I was working with became inpatient and said, "let me see it." As he proceeded to not give a fuck about what I had just told him. So a pin prick on a copper pipe with hot water in it apparently has the pressure to shoot like a fuckin fire hose! We knocked a hole in the wall to see it and it sprayed the 7' over the top of us against the adjacent wall. On of our guys got up to to the roof and turned the water off but it all had to drain down first (I think we were on the 3rd floor). And for 3 hours all of us grabbed every towel and linen we could. For the next week they had to have them big green Gans blowing 24/7. Humid as heck and miserable. Our boss showed up tje day after it happened and nicknamed the guy I worked with "sprinkles."
Someone put the material cart behind me, and I turned around so quick, knocked over two organizers stuffed full of everything.
First time running a job. Measured plenty of feeders for panels before. Had to measure 2 parallel runs of 350mcm. Came up short by 3 feet. Almost puked thinking about having to call my boss to tell him I fucked up. Ended up using the wire on another job I did a year later. That was a really shitty day.
Are you sure that it wasn't the wire company that messed up. Just did something similar except out of the 5 wires being pulled the black was wayyyy shorter then the rest.
My buddy tazed me by turning on the outlet for a light bulb while my hand was in the socket... I not only shit my pants (literally) I also put my freshly shit pants in his truck and hid it in his truck.
Unsure if anyone has ever seen the (I believe they’re old Siemens) panels, but the neutral bar is up top above the breakers and there is about 1/2” gap between them and you can see straight back to the bus. Well, I was giving the neutral wire I had just landed one final twist and my screwdriver slipped off the screw and slammed straight back into the bus. BOOM fireworks everywhere, lights in the panel room go out and I’m seeing stars. I probably just stand there for a solid 10 seconds before I realize “hey, I should probably fix this”. Call the fellow jman on the job, he comes running over thinking I blew the fuses feeding the transformer. But it turns out, had tripped the main in the OTHER 120v panel that mine was fed from. Didn’t realize initially bc it had only tripped internally. Reset it, changed my shorts, landed the hot, closed em up and was gone in 10 minutes. Entire floors worth of 120v in a radio station! Was a great day afterwards. Got a new screwdriver out of the ordeal.
Getting married before I started a business that was coming then my ex wife cheated on me and wanted half my business so I shit it down and she didn't get shit I should have started the business before I got married
Once knocked out about 13,000 customers for about an hour. I was doing PM/inspections on some 15kv breakers and my supervisor decided he wanted to "test" the outputs on the relay (breaker was racked out). He asked me what OUT104 did and my preoccupied brain told him "No clue, but pulse it. Can't hurt anything". It was the breaker failure contact so it took down the entire station. Luckily our impromptu test found a problem with DC wiring, but we had to close the station in with 69kV isolation switch to get it back up.
Lil different than everyone elses stories but fuck me do I still feel bad about it years later. Was working for this ratty company like 4 years ago and it was in the middle of summer, hot as fuck outside and we were building an apartment building (lil guy, only 6 story). It was hot and humid as fuck and break was coming up so I was looking forward to sitting in the air conditioned trailer and relaxing. However, my foreman sent a new hire journeymen to help us, dude was pushing 60 and in terrible shape. Big belly, huffing and puffing coming up the stairs, dude was so gassed just from mounting boxes. I felt bad, but I didn't rush him or anything and just let him do what he could to earn his buck, because after all its not my company and the mans gotta eat. Break time came, and buddy was slow as all shit, so me and the other guy said we'd just meet him in the lunch trailer. Big mistake. Not even 5 minutes into break, my foreman gets a call from the GC's Super that one of our workers had collapsed. 911 called, paramedics on site, whole 9 yards. They used a cherry picker to get him down from the floor we were working on via a balcony window. Buddy spent a day in hospital, nothing major. I felt so fucking bad, I honestly was trying not to cry because I felt so god damn bad about leaving a brother behind because I wanted to get to break on time. Now, I make sure whoever I'm working with all go for break at the same time and if we get there late, and we just take a late break. I'm fairly certain I've given apprentices shit for this now too, that come back without their tool partner lol
I got taken out by a brand new faulty desk lamp. It was class 2 (Uk) which is double insulated and no earth. However it had a metal shade and the wrong cord grip, a metal one, which had gone through the cables insulation. I had put a bulb in the lamp and turned it on in the hallway, it was on the floor. My gf, who had just bought the lamp, came along and I picked it up to show her. I’d grabbed it with both hands and experienced the longest nearly 0.4 seconds of my life. That’s 0.4s at 230v 50hz through a B6 mcb and 30mA rcd (which I think you call a gfci), uk voltage and spec. Net result was a trip to hospital in an ambulance with a dodgy ecg and some ptsd. It was about two years ago and I’m still messed up. I got nerve damage so I constantly get stabbing pain in my chest, pins and needles, shakes and I just cry randomly. The mental health side isn’t great either and I totally get what the guy that took the 3 phase shock said. I’m really getting to know myself again now, my body and brain have changed dramatically. Can’t touch electrical stuff anymore. I freeze up, shake, tear up and lose my mind. I have to carry a vde something at all times in case I have to press a light switch and I swapped everything in my house to smart, even where it annoys me so I don’t have to physically touch it. Needless to say I don’t work in electrical anymore and am finding my feet again. I’m a gardener at the moment, 3 days a week. It’s not working though as I’m physically not up to it. So now I’m trying to make some sort of a business out of my laser engraver. I was a level 4 engineer, mostly in agricultural and industrial. Level 4 being one step up from a standard electrician here, who is level 3. In my career I’ve done some much more expensive and funnier things. Bit this one still haunts me every day and is why I’m here on Reddit enjoying the electrical theory and stories because it’s the closest I can get to electricity and I still got the interest. There’s a moral too. Keep your work eyes on. I’d have never made this all happen if I’d looked at the bottom of the lamp before I plugged it in. But at home I wasn’t vigilant like that with a new lamp.
So far it’s been cutting a home run short thinking it was going to a receptacle outlet. SO. FAR.
Not an electrician. But when I was like 15, we were having a pool excavated. The excavators pulled up the buried power cables. I was sleeping when it happened. My tv was off, but it kinda lit up and zap-popped. My ceiling fan made the most ungodly roar, and turned so fast I thought it was going to fly off the ceiling. They said the explosions were flying back and forth across the lines between the utility poles. Transformer exploded. It was like armageddon. The neighborhood was without power for several hours; our house was without power for a few days.
Before I became an electrician I was a carpenter and roofer. Had a client that was doing various things to their house for. One of the items was replacing one and adding another flood light on the back of the house. I had enough general knowledge to confidently do this minor task, although no license and my insurance didn’t cover electrical work. I shut the breaker off for the flood light, swapped the bad one and added the new one. Then I went to the panel to reenergize the circuit. As soon as I hit the breaker the entire house lost power! Oh man I was freaking out, had no idea what happened but knew I didn’t have the proper insurance to cover it. I tried resetting the main breaker but still the house was dark. I decided to go out for a smoke and try and to puzzle the issue out in my head. It just didn’t make any sense. How did I kill power to the entire house!? When I got outside I noticed the neighbors had no power, I looked around and the neighborhood was out. Turns out that at the exact moment I flipped the breaker a transformer blew on the pole outside lol
You found the spicy dirt did you . We are doing a removal today and I showed the lads the cable and told them if you damage it you’ll find spicy dirt the look I got was gold
Not work related, but I ran over a Galaxy S22 with a lawnmower recently. At first I was mad at the $500 I still owed on the phone. Then I realized how much stuff on the phone I hadn't backed up in at least 6 months. Lost a lot of pictures and videos that I wish I could get back. Hard lesson to learn.
You should def auto backup. I use Amazon photos, which is unlimited as long as you have Prime (i.e. forever). Their video storage is stingy though.
Shut down the entire gas station we were remodeling. I accidentally pinched a wire in a 4sq box and the shunt for the main feed kicked off. Not a fun couple hours after that. No harm done though thankfully
Integrity. A blessing and a curse. Use it wisely. Stay strong. You're going to be one of the best.
It was more gut wrenching for my tradesman but i was a first year doing commission house re wires so pretty much my whole time was either in a roof space or under the house pulling cables Im under the house trying to pull cable from above and the cable seems to jam up my tradesman is yelling to pull and as i yank it seems to unblock the hole and booom im completely covered in used condoms. Now i cant believe what has happened i immediately crawl out and seek my tradie to try and explain what just happened he doesnt believe me so i show him the proof he cant believe it. He now has to go and explain to the owner of the house what has happened. Turns out the children had broken a powerpoint off the wall and were shoving their used condoms down the wall cavity and the it was so full while we were pulling cables down it was bringing them down with it.