I told this story once some time ago when this subject came up in another thread, so here goes. When I was a student at University of Houston a number of years ago, I was helping a wonderful gentleman who was the stage manager at Cullen Auditorium - we were replacing a couple of burned out autotransformer dimmers in the stage lighting switchboard. In order to do this we had to shut off power to the 600 amp feeder from the MDP in the basement of the building - no LOTO, just a lock on the door to the switchgear room. We opened the breaker, then attached a warning notice directly over the handle, then left after locking the room. While we were installing a replacement dimmer (and while nearly all of my body from my waist up was inside the switchboard), several pilot lamps lit up, indicating that the power was turned back on [Linked Image]. Miraculously I backed out of the switchboard without bumping up against several large phase busses which ran the entire length of the board. The stage manager and I went downstairs to the basement, found the switchgear room door open, the feeder breaker turned on, and the warning note wadded up and thrown on the floor. We turned the breaker off again, closed the door and hid in a corner of the room behind the MDP panel. A few moments later, a secretary opened the door and entered the room and turned on the breaker again, whereupon we detained her until the University Police arrived. When asked why she disregarded the warning, she said that the air conditioner in her office had gone off (apparently a wiring problem resulted in her a/c being connected to the same feeder breaker (600amp, 3 phase, mind you) as the stage lighting switchboard in the theater. She was more concerned about the heat in her office than the fact that we were doing electrical repairs [Linked Image]. Aside from immediately being fired, I don't know what happened to this stupid person, but a long stretch in prison should have been part of the punishment - or maybe a psychiatric evaluation.

Mike (mamills)