ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area What was the most embarassing mistake you made and what do you do now to prevent it?

Wirewiz

That was the only luck I had that day it was an old system and was CO2 not powder. No mess only ruined the food cooking and shut down the gas main.

I did see a powder system at a gas station go now that was a mess. We had finished the job and the suppression company came to test the system. One of the sensors was defective when tested it looked ok and they connected the system. Then the about 2 hours later it tripped when some poor guy opened his car hood. When I got there the powder was everywhere including about an inch deep inside his engine compartment!

I didn't do it but I was with another electrician while he was connecting a service drop to the mast. We were in a hurry and I guess neither of us were paying attention. He was up on the ladder and when he finished and climbed down we tried to lower the ladder. It was then that we noticed that he had run the conductors THROUGH the top rung of the ladder. The only good thing about it was that there were no other witnesses around.
Don

I stuck my finger in the toaster as a kid.
Mom asked me what I had done, and I showed her...by doing it again. Not electric, but pretty hot, nontheless!!

I put a big dent in the side of my boss's van when backing out of a narrow driveway that had a stone wall with sharp pointy rocks on each side.

He was angry (of course) but he didnt fire me. I dont work for him anymore though. I saw him driving recently and he still didnt get if fixed, and that was 3 years ago.

I was working years ago for a small company who had the job of cleaning and repairing some 2x4 troffers for a large dept store in a large mall. We were supposed to make them all look as new as we could, including straightening some ceiling tiles that weren't tight against the t-bar. The fellow with me was up on the mezzanine above the kids clothes, trying to get a tile to fit back down right. It had a sprinkler head with trim in it that was making the tile fit poorly. He pushed on the head slightly to get the tile in, and OFF CAME THE HEAD. Knocked him off a twelve foot ladder with the force of the water, but he climbed back up and tried to put his hand over the pipe end. Bad mistake, the high pressure and the fire retardant sent a horizontal umbrella of that mix all over the clothes, him, the customers, (the store was open, and busy) and started cascading down the steps like a waterfall. I just sat on the top of my ladder and watched, to dumbstruck to get down. People were running from the store tracking out the white mix into the mall, the fire alarm was going off, the management was yelling at both of us, sheesh. I wondered if I could fit all of me into my hardhat if I pulled hard enough.

To this day, I'm nervous near sprinkler heads, and give them a long, hard look before I do anything near them. I'm sweating now just typing this!

Dallas

Dallas and his sprinkler story gets my vote.
Chris1

I'd say a tie between the sprinkler system and the CO2 system one.
Its funny how electricians involuntarily get involved with plumbing stuff!

I was building a garage. I was a rural area, no other houses around and the home owners were at work. All alone, working on the roof when my ladder blew over.

Well it would be hours before anybody got there, there was no way to climb down and I figured a cell phone call to the police would just get me laughed at. It was a steep roof and I was working with a rope and harness so I didn't fall.

I did some rock climbing in college and knew it was a short drop to the ground and I could easily rig something to let me rappel off the roof.

I started over the edge and got my make-shift rappeling equipment caught up on the roof's drip edge. I was wearing my framing tool bags and had a large selection of tools to use to pry, poke, and hammer myself over the rough spots and was on my way down when the rope tied itself in a knot with me hanging about 3' off the ground.

I hung there comfortable but concerned for a while deciding what to do. I finally decided to just cut myself out and try to fall on my feet. I did but my the hanging had left my legs numb and I collapsed onto the concrete driveway unable to stand, tools all over the driveway, and a cut off piece of rope hanging over my head when the lady of the house pulled up along side of me.

She jumped from her car and gasped "Oh my god, are you alright."

I, embarrased, laid there and just said "Oh, yeah, I'm fine", as if this kind of thing just happens all the time and she was being silly to ask.

She cautiously went into the house and when she came out a few minutes later, the feeling had come back and I was cleaning up my stuff.

I working as Sr.Test Tech years ago. I was testing a slew of small PC boards, plugging in the flat cable,turning on the tester, stepping thru some simple functions, unplugging it, and grabbing the next one. I worked myself up into a hi-speed frenzy mode trying to make a dent in the stack of cards to be tested. For some reason, I ended up doing comparisons between 2, then 3, and ended up wanting to keep track of them. I ended up with one under my right armpit, one under my left armpit, one in my left hand.....just one more I wanted to look at....so I unplugged the unit under test and stuck it in my MOUTH. (y'all already know where I'm going with this one). Somewhere...somehow...I got side-tracked when I grabbed the next board. Naturally (of course) I ended up plugging in the unit I was chomping on. When I hit the power switch........well..like Sparksalot story about the service drop being run through the top rung of the ladder........I'm mostly glad there were no witnesses around to add further injury. Let's just say PC boards flew everywhere while I was dancing the jig like the niget I had momentarily become.