When the brown hits the fan - Worst bloopers

[highspark]

Whats the worst bloopers you have done in regards to customers possessions.I've done many but probably the worst was when I was sent to look at an alarm. Got up to the bellbox un-screwed it then casually placed it hanging on the leg of the ladder...Gust of wind ....smash..... damn that isn't good. Couldn't get a direct replacement (none the same shape) so had to replace the whole bellbox.

 

[spark 68]

I once 'cattled' a central heating controller during an IR test on a ringfinal (a hidden spur), and now always do a 'soft test' at 250V first, just in case.
This has only every happened once, and will never happen again, lesson learnt.

 

[Paul.M]

Laying cables in a loft and the piece of wood I was sitting on snapped in half, gravity took over and my backside went straight through the ceiling in the spare bedroom!

The posh customer saw the funny side of it. I repaired it FOC of course and he was happy with the out come. He gave me twenty quid tip because I came back once the plaster were dry and I painted the full ceiling. Still makes me chuckle now thinking of my butt cheeks hanging from the ceiling .

 

[highspark]

Abit of an only fools moment.....Was cutting out old wiring on a rewire. Cut into a lighting circuit....bang...that sounded loud. Went down stairs and the pendant had smashed into the meter clock and cracked the it.....damn

 

[Plonker 3]

As a apprentice, putting in some new lights with another electrician. I was asked to nail the floor boards down, never looked what I was doing just placed them all down before nailing them. Job was complete and on the way out the owner of the house asked where the water was coming from that was leaking down the side of the light fittings. Yep you guessed it , straight through a water pipe, got away about 2 hours later than we should have.

 

[AP Electrical]

Moving leather sofa into a conservatory in a customers house while we did some skimming work few years ago, anyhow I didnt know they had installed spot lights into stripped wooden floor, anyhow time went on and darkness came and the lights were switch on.
so theres me skimming away all cozy by the roaring fire, whoops.

 

[mhar]

Customer takes possession of part of a brand new barn complex conversion at midday. I turn up at 2.00 as arranged only to find customer has already managed to fall out big style with the neighbours. Have to run a cable to the tv, preferred route is external but this would mean going into the neighbours garden so is a no no. Only route in is by the front door and left through a 1.2 m thick cob wall or along hallway and round through lounge door frame. Hallway is about 15' long and 7'6" high, is polished wooden floor and plastered walls so would look horrible and be the first thing you see when you go in the house, explain this to the customer and he agrees. Longest bit I have is 1m long so I explain this to customer and that he should get permission from the neighbour for me to go into his garden. Neighbour refuses. Bit of head scratching as customer wants it done there and then before wife arrives so I say that the only way that I can think to do it is to use my 1m long bit to drill as far as I can then hammer it in and then use a 300mm long bit in the hole as well to give me the extra length and continue hammering but that by doing this there is likely to be a large exit wound. Some discussion then customer says to do it as will be hidden by the tv. So I drill in and start to tap the 1m bit in when I lose my nerve. Explain to the customer again, he says to do it, I say i'm not at all happy, he says he will do it so we put the second bit end to end in the hole and the customer starts tapping. Easy at first but then he gets to the plaster on the other side and gives it a bit of welly. Thrump!!! Builders had used sand and cement plaster straight onto the bare cob, exit 'wound' was from floor to ceiling and approx 9' long. All we could do was laugh (and cry with laughter) even when we were cleaning it up before the wife's arrival

 

[GLENNSPARK]

on an install a while back.......banging knockout boxes into a single thermalite wall between hallway and bog on the hallway side......one belt too much and straight through.....and theres the mrs of the house on the pot...lol....

 

[robd]

Had a ceiling with 40 plus gu10's in, 4 zones, controlled by rf switches with 4 receivers hidden in the ceiling. Not wired or installed by me but got the job of testing it, pulled various lights down from ceiling and was turning them on and off with the switch to help me hunt for the receivers, had one of the GU10's sitting on the edge of the pool table, turned lights on and pulled various lights down. Then I hear a cracking sound behind me, the GU10 has melted a ring out of the paintwork on the edge of the pool table! I also left one of my pens behind one night and the little girl got hold of it and drew on the chairs! Oh dear, I think they loved me, and my boss too come to think of it!

 

[Knobhead]

OK it’s on the industrial side. We worked as a team, 1 electrician 2 fitters and a welder. So I could find myself belting 7 bells out of a pump, the fitters mucked in when I needed a hand.
We were getting a bit annoyed with a pump that the impeller wouldn’t come off the shaft. The impeller and shaft were scrap so it didn’t mater what we did to them. The welder comes up with the idea of heating the impeller to crack it off the shaft. OK lets give it a go, bear in mind the impeller weighs ¼ of a ton. ½ an hour of heat from 2 oxy-propane heater nozzles and it just getting a dull red. Two of us then took up the sledge hammers, a few good hits and a lump broke off. Oh well if it’s got to come out in bits then so be it. More heat more hammering and red hot bits were flying all over. The workshop was full of smoke and it was getting difficult to see anything so time for a tea break.
In the workshop we had a mess room built out of wood. You can guess the rest, it explained where a fair amount of the smoke came from.
We weren’t popular with the other shift teams.

 

[Deleted member 9648]

About 5 years ago got a call to a very plush country pile for a few small install jobs.....two outside lights either side of the front door was the first job. Only way was to drill through the wall at a carefully calculated angle with a meter long SDS,the first went through a treat....second one all hell let loose,I'd gone straight through an alarm cable..........Following this disaster there was some fishing to do with a legnth of oval,not going according to plan,getting frustrated, the end of the oval hooked round an antique plate hanging on a wall and knocked it off....:sad_smile:.....left the job somewhat sheepishly,after much apologising to the lady of the house. Thought I'd never go back there again,but amazingly they are now regular customers....must be the years of bullsh**ing practice!

 

[Darkwood]

Not me but my work mate was up a small pair of steps many years ago fitting a drop for a dear old lady, she politely offered a cuppa and biscuit to which my mate said please...
5mins later she walks up to him cuppa in hand but he was connecting the drop and unaware of her presence, she noted this and poked her finger in his side ---- well instant reflex meant his arm shot down by his side and flying his elbow straight into her head!!!

She went down and was out for the count for at least 10mins, her hubby walked in from room after hearing the cup/plate smash and with a red face and apologetic tone he explained repeatedly apologising ....... what do you think the old hubby said; "Ive been waiting years to do that, quietest i've ever heard her".
When she came round she had no recollection of the incident and offered my mate another cuppa......
Still crack me up now !!!! :blush5:

 

[trev]

Last few days of a fit out of a training centre for young unemployed, little bit of stripping out to do. Electrical foreman tells me to remove a fire alarm call point and points to the one to remove. "But thats red mate it's brand new" says me
"Listen mate" he says "I get paid for thinking, you get paid for doing"
"So you want the red one on the right hand side of the door as we look at it taking out?" I asked just for clarity
"Yes, at last the penny drops" He shouted
So away I go, a few seconds in the alarm starts sounding. Being well drilled in the emergency procedures everyone in the place(many many different trades all in all about 100 lads) downs tools and walks into the car park (I'm trying hard to keep a laugh in at this point). Elec foreman comes out and tries to tear lumps off me threatening me with the sack until I pointed out that he told me to do it several times in front of witnesses and was questioned several times so if it were anyone's fault it wern't mine.Then in the distance we heard a naaayyy naarrrr naaayyy naaarrrr as the fire brigade beat a hasty path to the training centre's door.
All the lads on the job got a free 45 minutes off and the main contractor got billed somewhere in the region of £500

 

[Rockingit]

Grief - so many possible contenders I think I might share an almost a mishap, instead.

I've worked in some pretty bizarre settings over the years, but a couple of years ago I got asked to advance the electrical install for a big party the RAF were having in one of their hangars at a station. Trouble is, in some piece of genius planning they hadn't cancelled what the hangar was used for early enough - so to cut a story short, I'm up really high in the rafters of this reinforced hangar (think they call them a HAS?) whilst there is a taxiing, armed to the teeth with genuine weapons about to take off, Harrier UNDERNEATH me, on the Cherry Picker. I got a quick whoosh of fairly hot engine exhaust, fingers got really sweaty and slippery really quickly, and I dropped a 3T shackle pin (weighs about 500g, solid steel bolt). Amazingly, it missed £45m of Her Majesty's property by a nats whisker and no-one noticed.

 

[Andy78]

As an apprentice I was in one saturday, as was everyone else, for a largish cable pull. Something like 150m of 95mm 4 core up and over a factory floor. I had pulled the good job up in the scissor lifter feeding the end of the pulling rope and cable over girders, through loops of rope, round corners, over cable rollers etc. After it was all in, the guys on the ground started dragging the slack through. I heard a massive clang behind me and had to shout "whoaah".
i was then left with the unenviable task of telling the 7 knackered, burley, generally p****d off sparks, who didn't really want to be in on a saturday anyway, that half of it had to be pulled back out because I had passed it through the guard rail of the scissor lifter.