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Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 2
S
New Member
ausador,

What a story. I'm afraid it happens too often. Unfortunately, there is a stigma against the trades caused by a few bad apples and by the general public's ignorance of what it costs to run a company. Many people think they are hiring you for the day/week/month just to cover your salary.
The truth is, you never know whose house/business you are walking into when taking a service call. The only way to protect oneself is to have everything documented and signed as you have.
At least it had a happy ending.

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 348
I
ITO Offline
Member
Not really a service call but it was one of those really bad clients that still makes me mad just thinking about him. At the end of a particularly nasty design build job, where my client lied, lied, lied through his filthy yellow teeth through the whole job, he decides to not pay my last draw or my retainage because as he puts it I am “guilty of several design deficiencies”. Things like he “thought” the switch bank for the warehouse lights were going to be on another wall, or he expected there to be more receptacles in his office…ect ect. Never mind I had a set of plans that he signed off on, he sat there in an arbitration meeting and said since he did not know how to read plans it did not mean anything.

Then in the arbitration meeting he as the Gaul to say, “It’s my job to make sure you don’t make any money”. Both the mediator and I were completely shocked, and then the mediator asked, “It’s the electrician entitled to a fair profit?” to which the owner said, “Not at my expense.” This was the point I walked out of the meeting and called my lawyer, it turns out he did have the right to hold my retainage until we worked out our differences but the judge was not impressed with him also holding my last draw and when the profit comment came out in the arbitration minutes, I got my money and legal fees, but I still lost money on the job.

The GC on the project took a different route and tried everything they could to please this jerk, and were out there for 3 months making changes and doing asinine punch list items like cleaning his roof, mowing the lawn and re-striping his lot 4 times. He even made them pay his electric bill for the last three months they were out there doing his never ending punch list. They finally had to cut him off and sue him too.

Last edited by ITO; 12/14/07 12:16 AM.

101° Rx = + /_\
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 49
A
ausador Offline OP
Member
Hmmmm.....ok this story is from way back in 1981...as a new green apprentice with a shiny new pouch and tools. I had less than four months on the job when my employer accepted a labor only contract from (nameless government contractor).

(Nameless government contractor) had recieved a hugh increase in orders to deliver both communication and fire control computers for the navy. This would require an expansion of thier plant and a cure for the bottleneck of testing such systems. (they could build them much faster than they could go through the 7 step testing process.).

My trusty journeyman at the time was an air cargo pilot by trade who filled in sometimes as an electrician when things were very slow. Said journeyman worked everything hot by choice even when it was unneeded and expected you to do the same. His response when you got knocked onto your butt from current was not to inquire how you were but rather to ask..."well..do you know what you did wrong?"

I have to admit that this darwin style learning process definately motivated me to learn all that was possible about my job conditions as shortly as possible.

Anyway...I suppose I should tell a story instead of continueing on about my....err...glory days. (LOL)

The plant of (Nameless government contractor) had a master electrician and three journeyman on the payroll. During one part of the project we were to remove the feeds to seven 200a 480V compressors so that they could be removed and replaced with two 600a 480v centrifigal compressors of a newer more efficient type.

I remember being up on a manlift with a sawzall cutting two inch conduits with the conductors in them up into manageble lengths. I also remember yelling 35 feet to the ground to the master electrician in charge of the job...."this conduit?"

I had to lean up out of the manlift standing on the lower gaurdrails and resting the left side of my lower chest across a 6" sprinkler to reach the conduit with a sawzall.

"This pipe?" I yell down again before starting cutting, I recieve an affirmitive from below. You all can guess what happened.....the conduit I was attempting to cut was live..

There is a fairly small visible flash but the noise is like a double barrel shotgun going off right next to my head. Enough current flows through me to leave bright red burns on the left side of my ribcage where I am touching the sprinkler pipe. The sawzall gaurd is welded to the conduit and requires a three pound hammer to knock it loose once I recover my senses. My ears ring for almost three weeks and I become 1st person famaliar with the phrase.."What?...say that again?"

Thus the importance of lock-out tag-out and verifying them yourself......

(it is a service call since it was a labor only contract right?) ????

Last edited by ausador; 12/14/07 02:02 AM.
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 5,445
Likes: 2
Cat Servant
Member
I, and another electrician, were dispatched to a rental house, whose occupants complained that half the house was without power.

I arrived moments after the other guy ... who was with the rental agent, at the old-style fuse box. I got there just in time to see him remove a foil-wrapped fuse. "I love (bleep) fuses!" said he. A check with the meter showed all circuits were getting power.

At this point, the tenants came out. First impression: I always wanted to meet Cheech and Chong! "Chong" teels us that there's still no lights on the first floor.

Lighting was by switched receptacles. As I bent under a lamp, to turn it on, I was interrupted by "Cheech" coming down the stairs.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you (to Chong) ... I needed a bulb, so I took one from the front room, until I can get more."

Yup. The first floor had no lights because ... there were no light bulbs. And, yes, someone had wrapped a perfectly good fuse in foil in a repair attempt ... without even looking to see if there was a bulb, or the lamp was unplugged, or the switch was 'off.'


Joined: May 2006
Posts: 29
G
Junior Member
Ill venture another, and Ill try not to spell to badly or "thumb type". Yue cea watt I meen.

Back in the mid 8ty's I worked as a industrial electrician for a world wide aluminium giant. One night [2nd shift] I hear a call for an electrician on "press 12" over the intercom. Now "press 12" is an extrusion press half the size of a house, not including the billet ovens that feed it or the run out tables or the cut off saws or the heat treat etc.

There are alot of people invovled and many interlocked systems making extrusions.

So, I hurry down to press 12 and on the way I pass the break room which I see to have alot of people smiling and sticking change into vending machines. I quickly refocus on my job. Get the damn line up and running. I do the same thing as I always do. I get out the program book and start "working the problem". I even have what in those days we called a CRT. It is a monitor which lights up every circuit and sensor along with control panel start/stop, cycle, manual/auto, bypass, you name it. Should have been a piece of cake [now is that i before e after c] well anyway I wrestled this problem over and over with production foreman looking on.

Could not find where the CONTROL CIRCUIT was open! Then something happened I still cant explain. I got down almost reptile like a peered under alot of mechanical "stuff" behind the control panel that housed the PC's, etc.

Well low and behold there was a residential [ivory] 15amp SP switch mounted on a stub up 1/2 ridgid conduit, to include hany box and cover.

Real electricains dont use that kind of gear in hostile industrial applications. So I knew I found something. I trace the conduit back to the CP and notice two "red wires" that enventually end up with a yellow tucked back in behind a spagetti mess of wiring.

Well, I GOT IT. I FOUND IT. I close the SP ivory and WHOOOOM!!! Suddenly the whole line is ready to run. I hand it back over to prodution and go on my way. I said nothing to anyone.

This particular plant was a bastion [spell] of hostilty between trades, production, management, etc.

The very next night I hear the same call, "electricain, press # 12". What do I do? NOTHING!. 30 minutes later after repeated call for "press 12" my foreman plows in to our maint' room all agasht with a production foreman in tow.

"MACK what are you doing?"We need you down on 12. I calmy get up ask request that they both follow down to 12. On the way I point out the crowd in the break room. I then lead to a spot and have them kneel down to examine peculiar [switch].

I stretch over and close the afore mentioned switch witch returns the line operational. I tell them of the previous night which convinces them the the press operator is deliberatley shutting down production costing thousands of dollars per minute.

I then sternly ask the production foreman, "What are you going to do about it" His reply:

"Well, their [union], I cant do anything". He says to me.

Not long after, this plant which had operated since WW2 was closed putting myself and alot of other people out of a job.

I edited this thing once, I tried, so now I will just "ghoe gwrabb ae beeah".




Last edited by Gmack; 12/14/07 05:38 PM.
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 29
G
Junior Member
Alright, twice, [Aluminum] not "aluminium". Its the damn "electrician" in me. Why am I trouble shooting grammar.

I need new glasses too. BUT as one electrician to all others, it is realy a waste of time.

WE GET IT!. We hear each other.

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