ECN Forum
Posted By: Zapped Funny Stories - 09/15/06 05:27 PM
I'll start with one from a couple of days ago.

I get a call to go out to a gentlemans rental property to address a problem with his AC. He explains that he also gets no fan, and has replaced the thermostat, but that didn't help.

He happens to be an electrical engineer.

I stand quietly and do my best to appear interested as he lays out for me what exactly I should be testing and inspecting, and in what order, for a good 15 minutes. The breakers, or maybe it's one of the busses, or perhaps blah blah blah...etc.

Then I walked up to the furnace and plugged it in.

The look on his face? Priceless.
Posted By: ShockMe77 Re: Funny Stories - 09/15/06 10:46 PM
About 10 years ago I went on a service call. Customer complained that the receptacle serving her living room television was not working. The first thing I noticed was no ceiling mounted light was present in the room. But just for giggles I decided to check for a tripped circuit breaker. Nothing was tripped so I asked the customer what each switch did in the living room. One was foyer light, another for outdoor coach lamp, and the third was for?

Yup, u guessed it, a switched receptacle was turned off!

Lady wanted to know if she would be charged for this "simple" service call. LOL
Posted By: HotLine1 Re: Funny Stories - 09/15/06 10:47 PM
Went to inspect a temporary service.....got out of the car, and couldn't stop laughing for a few minutes.

Posted a red sticker to 'call insp'

EC called, said 'what's wrong?' I said..'what's right is the two ground rods, that's it'

Re-inspect on 9/11...still all wrong, except the rods, and he installed a brand new panel.....NEMA1.

re-inspect 9/15....still the same as above, but now it's not making me laugh.

John
Posted By: GA76JW Re: Funny Stories - 09/15/06 11:39 PM
I've been working with a JW who seems to think he knows everything. Well we are working on the second floor of a building roughing in the slab.
All the open holes going down for various Coolers, Generators and such are covered with plywood for now. The plywood has "No pisar" written on it.
He looked at me with a straight face and said "You actually have to tell these animals not to pee in the holes"

I just left it alone.

For those who may not know. No pisar is spanish for "No step" or "Do not step"
Posted By: renosteinke Re: Funny Stories - 09/15/06 11:40 PM
My partner and I responded to a "no power to half the house" call from a property management firm.
We were greeted there by "Chong," who described the problem. Looking at the fuse box, the first thig we see is a good 30 amp fuse, carefully wrapped in aluminum foil. After removing this, checking the circuit with a meter, and installing the correct fuse, we went into the house.

Still no lights. Hmmm. As I approached the first fixture to look for clues, the roomate "Cheech" came down from the second floor.
"Hey, Man... I forgot to tell you I took the bulb, I needed it upstairs."

Let's see... light doesn't work... the first thing you do is get out the foil?
Posted By: Rewired Re: Funny Stories - 09/16/06 03:28 AM
Back when I was a first year apprentice and was working at the retirement home, decided to play a little prank on our foreman.
Another apprentice and I were busy vacuuming out dirt and sucking in twine into all the underground feeder conduits when we got the bright idea to get the plumbers in on the prank too and pull a twine through one of the floor drains and tie it off elsewhere..
Immediately summoned our foreman and showed and told him that:
"When we vacuumed string into the pipe going to the west wing, the floor drain in the west wing shower room started to whistle so we put the string in anyway, and also Peter the plumber is having trouble with one of the toilets in the same area, said something about augering up some kind of wire out of the drain or something and would like to talk to you about it."

I swear, I have never ever seen someone get that worried / panic look on their face quite like that ever in my life, it was PRICELESS! Wish I had a camera THAT day!

A.D
Posted By: macmikeman Re: Funny Stories - 09/16/06 05:18 AM
I was 18 years old, a bonifide weakling of 118 pounds. My mom's connections go me working part time as a laborer at a bank construction site while attending the local JC. The super's name was Lucky. He was a fancy dresser. allways a white shirt and cowboy tie, and shiny cowboy boots. One day we were pumping concrete for one of the vaults when the hose tube got clogged up. Lucky ordered me to release the lever lock between hose sections. I pulled and yanked with all my might. No go. Finally Lucky got impatient and grabbed it out of my hands and gave it a yank. He got covered head to foot in concrete. All I could see was his eyes. After a little while he started laughing with everybody else in the room, and I kept my job.
Posted By: velect Re: Funny Stories - 09/16/06 10:53 AM
Had a restaurant call me about servicing a toaster that did not work. He said he tried it in a different receptacle and no go. I was assuming it was one of those commerical toasters that cooks like 12 pieces of bread at a time. I get there and it is a Hamilton Beach toaster that probably retails for $9.99. I told him the unit was bad and gave him a bill for $75.00
Posted By: JJM Re: Funny Stories - 09/16/06 06:10 PM
You just gotta love restaurants... especially any electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and other "non-food related" work done by chefs and managers.

Chef says we need a new outlet, because the old outlet "wasn't powerful enough" for the fancy new commerical microwave oven, still with the blue plastic and stickers on it. They plugged it in, and "it no work".

Pull out my Fluke 335, and it's is reading 208V between both legs of the NEMA 6-30R 250V receptacle. I look at the cord on the new microwave, and it's a NEMA 5-20R 125V plug, but the vertical pin is twisted horizontally to "make it fit" into the receptacle. They said the company [manufacturter] must've put the wrong plug on, so they "fixed" it.

I explained to them that their fix just ruined the brand new oven... the new oven was 120V and they plugged it into a 208V outlet, and they new unit is now likely toast. They hoped it would only be a fuse, and I said I hope the Powerball ticket ticket in my wallet is the winner too, but that's not gonna be the case.

Since I felt bad they fried a brand new microwave, and it was on the way to my next stop and it was lunchtime, a turkey club and soda took care of the visit.

Joe

Joe
Posted By: e57 Re: Funny Stories - 09/16/06 08:00 PM
During a remodel of a lower floor, the owner one day complained of thier DSL being down - 'you must of cut something...'

So after tracing it out, noticed this line was NEVER CONNECTED. Not that it had a bad connection, it never had one. Not punched on the jack, not punched at the board.... [Linked Image] I punched it and charged for my time...

A few days later, owner passes on to the GC that there are some outlets not working in the kitchen, and the landscape lighting is not working. 'you must of cut something...' So I quickly notice a GFI CB in the panel is tripped - "Hey, they're on now" But the landscape lighting is still out. 'you must of cut something...' This one puzzled me, two switches in the kitchen had no voltage on the line side, I even ask myself 'did I cut something?' I break out the tracer, and start thinking if I wired this I would have put a 3-way to the other deck entrance to the deck.... Low and behold there is a 3-way switch there, I flip it, and the lights go on.... Seems someone wired it as some sort of unorthodox master switch to drop power to the two dimmers at the kitchen [Linked Image] I go back to the GC and tell him, and that I am going to charge for my time for that.... And I ask how long have they lived in this house - 4-5 years, and I tell him that in the past I have gone out to service calls for an outlet with no voltage only to find it was a switched outlet that they never knew about for people who lived in thier homes for 20+ years and never knew what that switch did....

Then a day later the GC says the customer says one of the recessed cans is out... 'you must of cut something...' I go to the GC and tell him, if I go up there, and it is something stupid I am going to charge for my time for that....I go out to my truck and hand him a bulb - try changing it? WOW - it works....

Then the GC asks me to get an estimate for adding some switched outlets that the owner wants in the finished areas of the house - 'this one, and this one...' So I take a quick peek - Funny, all the ones she wants switched are already switched... I go back to the GC and tell him, and that I am going to charge for my time for that.... It was a quick install..... [Linked Image] [Linked Image]
Posted By: Surfinsparky Re: Funny Stories - 09/17/06 01:18 AM
I was called "stat" into O.R.Where they had a patient on a surgical table.There must have been over a million dollars worth of education in the room.They could not get the table to lift the patient and wanted to know how long it would be to fix it.Without saying a word I plugged in the table and told the staff it's all fixed.
Posted By: capt al Re: Funny Stories - 09/17/06 02:48 PM
I went on a same day emergency service call for a grocery chain we service. The call was for no power to the scale on the meat wrapping machine. They had a scale tech come out and he moved the machine across the room to prove it worked. He then moved the machine back into place and informed the manager to call an electrician since it was not his problem. I get there, walk into the meat room and look at the switches beside the door. The switch marked do not turn off "Meat Scale" was off. Turn switch on and scale works fine. The look on their faces was priceless.

Al
Posted By: n1ist Re: Funny Stories - 09/17/06 11:36 PM
I used to live in an apartment building. The landlord said that a tennant was complaining that his brand new TV had horrible interference each night at 10PM, and since I am a ham, was it due to my radios?

It turns out the tennant had a new TV (which defaults to CATV) plugged into the building's master antenna and was trying to watch a UHF channel. I had him flip the setting to "antenna" and the problem went away. Oh and why did the problem show up at 10PM? That's when he turned the TV on to watch his show. No interference problems when it was off :-)
/mike
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Funny Stories - 09/18/06 04:13 AM
As my wife always says when she catches someone, "Well, it works fine in the off position, let's try turning it on".
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Funny Stories - 09/18/06 08:10 AM
When we moved into the new apartment there was a lot of weord switches too, but it took me no more than 15 minutes until I knew what every switch did. There's no way I'd accept to have a switch in my house of which I don't know what it does!

I've got a funny story too... when I was around 5, my dad rented another apartment in an old house. One room was used as an office, one was a guest bedroom. Then there was a half bedroom (used for storage) and the kitchen we used as a work shop. He only had the office and guest bedroom rewired, as well as the panel replaced (fuses, two 10A circuits with screw-in breakers, some of which didn't even went out if you pushed the red button, let alone trip).
One day when I was maybe 6 or 7 and had already done my first attempts at house wiring, the ceiling light in the work shop failed.
I knew the wiring was shoddy at least, so I tried to convince my dad of a rewire and didn't bother to really check out things. Well, it turned into a full rewire (and I'm still glad we did it, the original wiring was incredible), but when we were done (mostly I was done), the light still didn't work. Then it dawned on us and we considered checking the light bulb...
Posted By: jraef Re: Funny Stories - 09/18/06 08:55 AM
I once got called out to a gold mine in British Columbia way out in the boondocks to fix a big soft starter on an air compressor. It was a 16 hour trip to get there, the last 10 hours of which were on a bumpy dirt road. When I got there, the PC board had been obviously raked with a screwdriver, there was a 6" long gash right down the middle, circuit traces cut, components destroyed etc. Their "electrician" said "You guys must have shipped it from the factory that way". As much as I wanted to scream and throttle him (as if we would miss something that obvious), I swallowed my pride and replaced the board. A 10 minute job.

The next day I began my 16 hour trip home and since it was a mining area with blasting etc., I had to have a radio in the car and report as I passed each mile post on the road. 5 hours later they call me to return, the compressor isn't working again. 5 hours back, I open the cabinet and again, someone has raked a screwdriver across the main PC board. Now they accuse ME of doing it! I said "Oh sure. I drive 16 hours to get here to do a 10 minute job that you could have done yourself and I'm going to risk making this trip again just to piss you off? Where's the logic in that?"

I had one more board so I put it in and start the compressor. Now it's too late for me to start out for the nearest town again until the next morning, so I get a tour of the mine by the maintenance supervisor. While we are in the catwalk of the machinery bldg where the compressor was, the shift changes. A new guy comes into the machine room holding his ears, opens the cabinet and rakes a screwdriver across my PC board again, killing the compressor. Then he goes off in a corner behind the compressor where nobody can see him (except from the catwalk) and settles in for a nap! He gets fired that night.

The worst part is, after firing him they ask me to give him a ride back to town the next day when I leave! Needless to say I did not want to spend 10 hours on a dirt road in the wilderness with a disgruntled employee who might feel I am responsible for his losing his job! I declined.
Posted By: Almost Fried Re: Funny Stories - 09/18/06 02:34 PM
My plumber buddy hired me to do an extensive 320 Amp service and tie together feeds to several boilers, outbuildings, hot tub, etc., about a year ago. Several areas were not completed such as wiring in his shop. Now, my friend takes up a lot of space, has a big ego, did his apprenticeship on the 50 & 51st floors of the WTC in '70, moved to the Ozarks in the early seventies. He is really good at his Craft and he and I trade jokes about many of the so-called master plumbers and electricians that we encounter. So I had installed a 60 A circuit and receptacle for his brand new welder, as yet not ordered when the plug was installed. Several months went by and I go in to the supply house one day and my friend had been in that morning and left a note for me to call him.(Don't ask why he didn't have my number...) So I checked in to find that the welder won't work, I musta done sum'tin wrong...so I drive out to his place, kick into troubleshoot mode, suspected a missing leg of the 240. I checked the receptacle, breaker, panel, he had proper voltage everywhere & the welding machine fan was running, I checked the manual, did my best to seem thorough, he claimed that when he shorted the stinger to the ground clamp, he got no response. I suggested he bring me a scrap of steel, explained that maybe the unit needed to detect a tiny bit of resistance in order to work, clamped the ground to the steel, pressed the trigger and ZAP! it worked. The look on his face when he realized that I had driven 30 miles to show him that pressing the trigger was required was too good for words. He had made such a fuss attempting to blame me for doing something inappropriate with HIS welding receptacle, only to find out that all you have to do is push the lil' red button... In his defense, his welding experience was 20 years ago and with stick, so he had never held a MIG gun in his hands before, but you gotta be carefull when you think that just because you are a NYC trained MP that you have an open license to be an expert in every area of life...Read the book, maybe.
Posted By: TNSunny Re: Funny Stories - 09/21/06 05:33 PM
I got a call to change out a range a few weeks ago. The customer said that the guys from Best Buy had come to replace his range, but told him that he would need an electrician to do it because the unit was "hard-wired" into place.

I get out to the house, tip the range forward, and see a piece of BX running from the back of the range down to the floor. The first thing I thought was that some genius ran the conduit through the floor and tied into a J-box under the house. But then I slid the range out a few more inches and found that some genius had actually fastened a molded range plug on the end of the conduit and it was plugged into a receptacle on the floor. (The whole range was sitting on a box frame about 3.5" above floor level.) I reached down, unplugged the range, and asked him if there was anything else he needed. [Linked Image] I might have been there a total of 5 minutes.

If the install guys from Best Buy had slid the unit out a little further they would've been able to do the job and saved the customer a service call.
Posted By: TNSunny Re: Funny Stories - 09/21/06 05:50 PM
I get a call to change a bad breaker. Get to the house, and the customer takes me the main load center and - while he's telling me what's wrong - he tries to switch on a tripped breaker. He doesn't switch it "off" and then back "on," he simply tries to push the switch on and hold it there. His explanation is that the breaker is bad. [Linked Image]

I try to switch the breaker on, when all of the lights dim and it trips back out. Find out that this breaker controls the living room receptacles. I ask if these are the only things in the house that aren't working. They answer "yes." I had already checked the load center, so I start pulling the receptacles out and find one that looks like the ground wire had been bent around and contacted the ungrounded conductor. The others have some loose back-stabs. SO, I change the receptacles out confident I had found the problem. Turn the breaker back on and it trips again. [Linked Image]

Again, I ask if there is anything else in the house that isn't working. One person says "no," then another finally says "well, except for the venthood that burned up in the fire yesterday." [Linked Image] (They had a grease fire on the stove that burned the vent hood.)

Check the venthood and found that the temperatures from the grease fire had melted the insulation on the Romex and allowed it to go to ground.

I had worked for nearly an hour moving furniture, pulling receptacles, etc. and asked at least twice about other electrical problems before they finally decided to fill me in on the fire!!!
Posted By: mshaw Re: Funny Stories - 09/22/06 03:16 PM
While I was roughing in electric in a new home the plumbing contractor was furious that the drywallers were using his plumbing dumping their left over drinks and occasionally as a urinal. After watching repeated encounters over a couple days we came in to see the plumbers smiling like chesser cats. When we asked them what was going on they said that they had decided to use their boxes of screws as urinals before they left on Friday. All the drywallers were happily hanging rock with a mouth full of screws, how appropriate.
Posted By: Rewired Re: Funny Stories - 10/03/06 03:56 AM
This one came up in conversation at the lunch table today, I almost forgot about this one..

Last winter we were working with a local construction company at the mental hospital here in the city, replacing the concrete bases of light standards in the parking lots and driveways throughout the complex.
The last one of that day, we pulled the pole off, set it off to the side and the construction company barricaded around the concrete base, which I might add only stuck out of the ground about 6-8 inches and had 4- 3/4" bolts sticking up.
Now we did get some snow that night and the lot was plowed and somehow the barricades must have got plowed in and over, and the base got covered with snow.. Also in the middle of the night someone came joyriding (tresspassing really) through the lot and must have thought they were going through the " small snow pile". WRONG.. The next day all we saw was tire tracks leading up to what was the snow pile, a now uncovered concrete base with all 4 - 3/4" bolts bent right over, and pointing in the direction of travel of whatever hit it, and a LOT of transmission fluid in the snow..
Also noticed where the "mystery vehicle" came to a stop ( after it went right over the base!), a set of "dually" tire tracks like that of a tow truck were also present. The baracades, GONE, dont know where they are to this day, and we never heard a word about anyone crashing into anything by the hospital, staff, passers by or the guilty party!


A.D
Posted By: XtheEdgeX Re: Funny Stories - 10/03/06 04:01 PM
I was working on the control room of a new prison once. We were at the point of putting in the 2' X 4' fluorescent lay in fixtures. Another electrician came in to help me, and I told him that we were putting the fixtures together on the floor first, before laying them in (whips, bulbs, etc.). The fixtures had two ballasts that had to be plugged in with a factory installed pigtail, before wiring in the whip. The first one he did, he put the whip on, plugged in the ballasts, and then when he put the bulbs in, the bulbs lit up. I was watching him freak out. He grabbed the end of the whip and saw the wires just hanging there, not connected to anything. I was laughing pretty hard by now! The look on his face was comical. That's when I told him that they were the ballasts with the built in battery back up.

Edited for spelling

[This message has been edited by XtheEdgeX (edited 10-03-2006).]
Posted By: CTBigman Re: Funny Stories - 10/03/06 04:40 PM
About 20+ years ago, we were finishing a 3 story office building at a busy intersection in Groton CT. At lunch break a bunch of us tradesmen met on the unfinished 3rd floor for lunch. Outside there was a 2 man window glazing crew working on the windows in a boom lift. Right in the middle of our lunch they "mooned us" and gave us the bird.
I told the guys "watch this", grabbed my Pepsi bottle, filled it with water, poked a hole in the cap with my awl, put it in my tool apron and went up to the rooftop.
I walked over to the edge where the window guys were, leaned over and said "you think thats funny?, p*ss on you" I made it look like I was opening my pants fly and squeezed the Pepsi bottle full of water (sticking out of my apron) I soaked both of them, one of them was trying to use the other for a shield, funniest thing you ever saw, especially when I looked up and saw traffic stopped and people pointing up at us.
I had to show them the empty bottle or they would have killed me hehe!! when I got back down to the break room every guy was crying they were laughing so hard.
I don't think Earlydean was there but Im sure he heard about it (Hey Earl guess who this is!!)


[This message has been edited by CTBigman (edited 10-03-2006).]
Posted By: PEdoubleNIZZLE Re: Funny Stories - 10/05/06 04:51 AM
Well, I can't top CTBigman...

The funniest story I have, I was working temp jobs. A crew came to the temp agency and got me, a "retired" Master electrician (the electrician from the "stolen tools recovered" post), and 2 other guys who probably didn't know the difference from a screwdriver and a hammer... We'll call them Beavis and Butthead.

The job was at a warehouse being converted to some offices and retail space. Beavis and Butthead were supposed to be on clean-up, but they decided it would be much more fun to throw various emt fittings at eachother. One of the fittings landed in a sub panel with no breaker. The feeders were hooked up, btu not live. Beavis reached his hand in the panel to grab the connector, and I told him "Don't move, you can die."

I convinced him that it was live, and that if he moved, a spark would jump from the buss bars to his hand and kill him... or worse, paralyze him from the neck down. We kept him there for 2 hours and some odd minutes, coming up with different excuses... Can't find the main breaker, have to call the power company, channel 4 news is outside and we need to do a press conference (that was our lunch time).

After I "found" the main and "shut it down" I told him he had to move backward 3 steps. On his first step, I clapped my hands in a way that sounds like a spark (years of practice and perfection [Linked Image]).

Beavis was mad and left without pay, and Butthead just swept the (clean) floor all day. I made sure they never worked on any crew I got picked by after that.

I love being evil [Linked Image]
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Funny Stories - 10/05/06 06:19 AM
I was working once in a huge "glass house" computer room that was fed by a 1600a 3p wye. They had 2 big water cooled MP systems with about 1000 remote users and the local batch work. (NIH Bethesda) These guys never shut down. In those days the power whips under the floor were Russell Stoll plugs on SO cord. Sometime around 75 someone decided these all had to be FMC but nobody makes a connector that attaches FMC to a RS receptacle so they pull out leaving the plug hanging on THHN. Well they were swapping the room over one 400a panel at a time while the customer was still up. Somebody yanked on one of the SO cords and we had a flash/bang under the floor and the room went dark. People were losing their mind and they put in an emergency call for "the electrician". By the time the GSA "building electrician" (also plumber and trash can tech) showed up we had isolated the problem to one 400a panel and had that main turned off. He went downstairs and cranked on the 1600a breaker. The room came up and they were furiously working to get the systems up and back online. By the time he got back up there they just about had everyone online. We told him the tale and he immediately said we must be wrong and flipped on the 400a breaker... Boom ... dark!
By then the DP manager was bouncing off the ceiling. Dummy goes back downstairs and cranks on the breaker again. In the mean time we had found the FMC that shorted and just had that 60a 3p turned off. The whole room came back up and they started IPLing again. Dummy shows up in the computer room again, we show him the breaker that was causing the problem, tell him about the FMC and the connector, he again tells us we are full of crap, That can't be right, flips the breaker on and BOOM.
The data center manager called security and told them "if that janitor comes back up here, shoot him!"

We LoTo'ed the breaker and went on with our conversion.
NIH got a contract with a real Md licensed contractor after that.
Posted By: ghost307 Re: Funny Stories - 10/05/06 01:34 PM
Once upon a time I was working with another tech at a firm with a HUGE computer center...and an even bigger sense of self-importance. We were working on an MG set that powered the system and wouldn't maintain a constant voltage. We told the IT guy to WAIT until we said that we were done before starting the computers and reloading the tapes that he had made before yesterday's crash. As soon as we ran the MG set to find out what the problem was, he saw that the power was back and had his people start reloading their data. Once we saw the MG in operation, we started troubleshooting. Each time we shut down the machine to work on it, Mr. Manager was in our face screaming that the system had "crashed again...and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!!!" This went on 5 times until we finally had the problem fixed and went to tell him that we were done; he could reload his data. His snide comment was that he had outsmarted us by NOT loading the tapes because he knew that we were just going to crash his precious computer again.

Too bad he didn't listen the first time...when we told him to wait until we were done.

BTW, each time he came over to yell at us we decided to work a little bit slower.

[This message has been edited by ghost307 (edited 10-05-2006).]
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Funny Stories - 10/05/06 04:43 PM
That "precious computer" might be costing him several thousand dollars A MINUTE when it is down. If you have a big bank that misses the nightly check "capture" and doesn't get the cash letter back to the fed in time it could be a million bucks.
They do have a reason to want it back up.
Posted By: JCooper Re: Funny Stories - 10/06/06 02:47 AM
This one actually happened to another tech in my company, but it is worth sharing. He was doing a PM on a card access system at the world headquarters for a re-insurance company. The doors leading into the server room had magnetic locks on them, which require an over-ride on the inside of the door, typically a pull station or break glass device (break the glass which releases a button held closed), so he tested the break glass right next to the door, or so he thought, too bad it was the EPO for the ENTIRE UPS system (which was not identified), he said all you heard were computers spinning down and most of the lights went out. At the end of the day the customer actually thanked him because they always saw the red button on the wall but didn't know what it was, still not something I would want to be responsible for.
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Funny Stories - 10/06/06 04:38 AM
"EPO" stories are pretty common. NIH disconnected all of theirs.
Ever seen a Halon dump? That is a whole lot more exciting. Sort of like a bunch of little tornados in the room. Floor tiles hop into the air and everything that was not nailed down flies around.
Posted By: jraef Re: Funny Stories - 10/07/06 11:14 PM
My ex-partner Gene told me a great story from when he went into Communist China in 1971 shortly after Nixon's "Ping Pong Diplomacy" trip when we re-established business relationships with them. He was sent over to manage the electrical installation of a new MDF plant being built from the ground up.

A lot of the components were coming from Russia, and they had a 50-60% out-of-the-box failure rate. So he implemented a 100% inbound test program for all electrical components, i.e. circuit breakers, contactors, light fixtures etc. As he would find a device that didn't work, he put a string tag on it that said what was wrong and if he couldn't tell, he just wrote N.F.G. and tossed it in a pile. The Chinese workers, not accustomed to wasting so much precious stuff, went through the piles to try to salvage or get replacements from the Russian suppliers. One day they approached him with one of his NFG tags and asked, through his translator, what it meant. He said "No F##king Good", waiting for their response. They just nodded politely and left. 2 days later the translator came to him and said "I can translate the first and last word, but I am having trouble with the middle word". He had apparently never been taught slang but because they are taught to respect their elders he hadn't admitted his problem on the spot, chosing instead to research it. So Gene made a circle with his forefinger and thumb of one hand, then passed the middle finger of his other hand through it rapidly in succession. The translator copied the motion, nodded in acknowledgement again, and walked off. About 1/2 hour later Gene walked by and saw him in a group of translators apparently debating the meaning of this hand signal with puzzled looks. Then one of the Chinese electricians walked over and they showed him the sign. He burst out laughing because HE understood immediately! Turns out the term NFG translates into Chinese slang almost verbatim!
Posted By: BEAMEUP Re: Funny Stories - 10/08/06 12:33 AM
Mine happend to me last week. We were pulling the wire to a fire pump service and the pipe came out of the ground at the floor, I was sitting on a bucket of polywater J pulling lube so I could lube up the wire going down the pipe. I got off balanced and sliped off the bucket of lube & hit the floor. Well I thought i had cleard the bucket of lube, but I landed right on it and squished the lid off of it and had my butt covered with a gallon of lube all over me. All I could so was laugh.

[This message has been edited by BEAMEUP (edited 10-07-2006).]
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Funny Stories - 10/08/06 01:21 AM
We got in trouble with "Not Functioning Good" at IBM but we all swore that was what it meant.
Nobody believed us. Old VN era vets had lots of stuff that our elders were not comfortable with like "FKNA" for an affirmative answer to almost anything you were adament about. We may have invented most of the shorthand Emailers and testers use today. We had a Motorola RF text terminal in 1985 that we carried around.
The basic text message was 55 bytes max so you got creative.
Posted By: Rick Kelly Re: Funny Stories - 10/08/06 02:33 PM
About 1976 while working as a second year apprentice, I was replacing burnt light bulbs in an area that was a Class 1 Div 2 hazardous location. This was in the press room of a large printing plant. The Crouse-Hindz explosion proof fixtures were hanging from the ceiling 20 feet over the top of the individual printing units which themselves were 20 feet high. So... needless to says we had step ladders balanced on top of the printing unit. Never would be acceptable today... but back then it was kind of like a standard proceedure.

The problemn was that this plant used a massive bank of batteries, in the basement, for their 120v emergency lighting power supply and needless to say none of the emergency powered fixtures were identified.

So we killed all of the AC going to the other lights and tried to figure out if the one remaing to be changed was fed from the AC or the DC source. They refused to allow us to kill the DC source as half of the facility was still running.

So... I gingerly removed the heavy globe and tried to remove the 200 watt bulb... naturally the bulb came out but the steel base of the bulb remained in the socket. Oh great... I'm in a Class 1 Div 2 (naptha and toluene solvents) location balanced on a ladder 40 feet in the air with the remains of a bulb still in the fixture socket and no way to ensure that the power is off. I know... I'll get the sub-foreman and he can decide if there is power or not...

Now you have to picture this... the SF was an older gent with many years in trade, was an awesome teacher (he tought me lots over the 6 years I worked with him), had hands like catchers mits... both in respect to size and in leather content. He climbs up the ladder to the fixture... sticks his finger up into the bulb base still stuck in the socket, touches another finger on the same hand to ground, holds it for a second... then says... "nope no power there". But to be sure... he takes out his fingers... licks them then tries again... "Nope no power for sure". He then climbs down the ladder and I go up. Take my still shiny Klein's, shove them into the base to twist it out and promply blow a hole in both jaws of the pliers. Nearly fall off of the ladder and look around to see if the atmosphere in the press room had or was about to flash (plant had been down 12 hours at that point point so no explosive vapors were around).

Learned a good lesson that day... if any chance of a DC distribution system... allways check to see if one side is tied to ground or not. It was not. I still have the Kliens with the holes in them.

Edited for spelling...

[This message has been edited by Rick Kelly (edited 10-08-2006).]
Posted By: Zapped Re: Funny Stories - 10/10/06 12:48 AM
jraef: That's pretty funny. I recently taught one of the Mexican Laborers to say "No 'F'ing' Way" to the general contractor then next time he asked him to do something. Much to my amusement, he did it, and right infront of about 10 guys from 3 trades. The look on the GC's face and the reaction on the job was worth the fact I had to cop to it in order to keep the poor underpaid guy from getting fired.
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