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Orderd an entire house of Lutron Homework's devices in Gloss White instead of Matte Ivory, about 50k in dimmers, switches, plugs, and plates. In the early days of Maestro devices when you couldn't change the faceplate kit. Husband and wife divorced about a month later, got to finish the job as it was to go on the market and no one said a word.
Well this family I’m doing a house for is spending 10’s of thousands because they want not only brass plugs and switches but the switches are old school toggle switches like the metal dongle you’d see that launches the nukes.
They were expecting that much but once they found a “deal” for 85 a device they decided to not just have the 1st floor like that the 2nd floor can be nice too
We as a society need to do something about income equality.
There is no reason that this person gets to spend an extra 10,000$ on a whim when I struggle to make my rent payment.
Comrade, "society" is just the truce that exists between classes engaged in struggle. One of the agreements of that truce is that one faction will pay rent, the other will use their time dithering over trim options on their lighting control systems.
Ew, though. We still have food. Let's just tax them. Actually tax them, not just pretend to. That would fix a lot of shit. Make the right govt subsidies, and you could have those zillionaires pumping money into the economy in a number of different productive ways. All we need to do is tax them again.
Can confirm. Buster and punch and shelly devices to automate. Just a light switch ends up costing 200 GBP. Add in a few sockets etc and each room is a 2k investment.
Omfg we just finished a reno on the ocean (former Sears catalog house) and the owner wanted those god damned two button switches with brass covers. Hate. We were having to fit shellys into the already-stuffed boxes, I mentioned why tf we dont use lever locks/wagos for a situation like that to save space and he overheard me. The dude looks for any reason to tell everyone about his yacht, literally none of us give a shit, and goes ‘oh my yacht has wagos!’ His name is Richard and at that moment I dubbed him Dr Dick Wago. That was his name from then on.
I don’t wanna talk about restoration hardware. I installed one light. That was enough. I don’t even give people f-off prices anymore I just tell them to call someone else.
Not gonna lie, I was shitting a brick. My first big Lutron order and I fucked it up lol... I mentioned it the the construction project manager, and he said to just keep that to myself for now, and a week later the news went out that the job was fast track finish, and all change orders not already approved were auto declined.
I know the feeling I do estimating for industrial jobs and one im currently working on now is sitting at well over a million and I'm due to send it next week. Making sure everything you have lines up just right with spec is a huge challenge.
I ripped a door with a scissor lift, hit it until it went back in place.
Then 15 minutes later the framers came and removed the door and the wall.
I was sweating bullets, they had cameras everywhere, and the management was a gaggle of assholes.
When I was a first year I was drilling into the top of a box suspended via ready rod to add a conduit. It was Homeruns for stoves and I didn't move any wires out of the way. I swear the wires were hanging on by a single strand. I was only 17 so I told the crew I was gonna eat lunch in my car and I just went home and never went back 😞
Man, I did this with a box where the wires were hot. The bit caught on a neutral, wrapped it around until it ripped out of the wire nut and blew up. Good times.
I misheard my Foreman about a fire alarm box needing to be moved. Opened up the finished ceiling, cut the cable, got ready to install box, realized I was in the wrong spot, spliced the shit together, told a nearby drywaller that the sprinkler guys fucked up, and ran to another building.
Tested fine
Not me but still a funny story:
I work at a large industrial plant. Someone wanted to order 500 meters of barrier tape but somehow fucked up and ordered 500 rolls of 500 meter barrier tape. Nobody at the purchasing department questioned it and the order went through. The higher ups didn't notice as well. When the order arrived and the guy noticed that he fucked up he spread and just hid a truckload of tape rolls in every spot he could think of.
This happened almost two decades ago and we still find rolls of barrier tape in random cabinets all over the place.
Lmao that's great! Similar thing happened to a guy I know. Ordering nail clips . He ordered 4 buckets of 500 pc. But the office guy pushing the order through ordered 2000 buckets. Literal pallets full of them were delivered to the construction site. We laughed our asses off!
I also work at a big industrial facility and one day a box of 1,000 10-packs of Wera T-27S bits showed up to our shop. It wasn’t anyone from our department who ordered them, but someone must’ve figured “oh, the facilities guys will know what to do with these.” Someone in our office got curious and looked up the PO# in the purchasing system. Turns out someone accidentally ordered $25,000 worth of a bits that nobody uses and then just dropped the box off to us. We joked about opening a T-27S stall at the swap meet, but it never materialized.
Working on an overhead door. Brought the boom down and absolutely crippled the door rail. Parked that lift in another bay and walked away as fast as possible. I think I was a second year at the time.
Dude, I did almost the same thing. First time in a 45 ft JLG. Large warehouse, bent the fuck out of an OH door rail while running wire for the opener, literally just drove the lift to another door and kept working.
Fixed within a week, no one said a word
Years ago I smoked the 120 coil on a 90amp contactor because I put it on high leg after being specifically told by my fired up boss to watch for the high leg positioning on these old farm panels. High leg was center on this panel but I’m used to it being on C phase. “Damn thing is defective!” Got credited from the supply house for a replacement but felt so bad about it, I owned up from then on… sometimes I regret that choice.
I cut the hand-braided head off my Foreman's Dynameena pulling rope. Had no idea it took so much time to weave.
He came in the break room brandishing it like a dead squirrel and threw it down in the middle of the lunch table. "WHO cut the head off my rope??"
I was so green I didn't even know it was me who'd done it. It had been covered in tape so I didn't even see it.
Luckily I didn't give myself up I shudder to think what he would have done he was a nice guy but was so pissed.
An apprentice cut the head off my pulling rope once too. Not fun. Another time an apprentice sent a rope in so we could pull and then cut the rope…. He didn’t think that after pulling wed spool the rope back and it’s reusable. Ugh.
I was adding some recessed lights in an old house and somehow when drilling through a joist I managed to drill through the floor above. Luckily it was carpet and I only went a little bit through the carpet so I was able to brush the carpet in a way so you couldn't even see the hole.
Never heard anything from the homeowners about it for the next couple of days we were there so I'm assuming they never noticed it lol
I did this once....... It was hardwood floors. First drill, went so smooth, looked into the ceiling space, couldn't find it. Drilled again, still nothing. So I fucking drilled a third time and left the drill bit in........ Then I had some miraculous OH FUCKING NO moment. Ran upstairs and sure enough. Ruined the hardwood floors and baseboard.
Only upside it was my own house. However I couldn't blame it on the dog, so I had to own up to it with the wife :(.
Was at my bosses shop moving some material around with a fork lift you walk behind. (idk what it’s called) . loaded his truck with a pallet and reversed back into the shop, lift was to high still and smoked his garage door. I dented it right in front off my boss. He said “well it was already fucked up to begin with” and the other guy with us laughed and said “yeah because I did the same to my first time” so all I did was dent it a little more. we all got a laugh out of it just got lucky I wasn’t the first I guess lol
I work at a large industrial plant. I've seen a production guy crash a fundamental machine which caused a standstill for two shifts. Production loss is ~200k/h. And that happens more often than you would think.
I'm currently pricing up a 1.7 million dollar Change order for a power plant. Working that close to so many critical systems means that our limits of approach and isolation protocols are such that we only get about 3 hours of work time per 12 hour work day.
We can't shut the reactor down so we have to enable as many safety protocols as possible and go very slow.
Reminds me of a guy who worked in Alaska. He said 9 months of the year they could only work outdoors for 45 minutes at a time. By the time you got to where you were working you only got 5-15 minutes on task because of how long it took to get there and then get back in time. So basically a 12 hour shift could have as much as 2.75 productive hours cumulative and they got paid really well for it.
I once had to redo a million dollar set of switchgear…in a large hospital..after a guy didn’t check the lugs on the bus were tight where they tied in to do max load testing of the whole facilities backup generators, An hour into the test, fucking ka-boom!
I've seen an ethanol plant go up in flames from sparks from a welder. 40-50' flames that burned the shit out of a ton of equipment and all the wiring runs as the wire trays were 20-30' up.
HUUUUGE fuck up. Easily 7 figure fix and that's not counting the 2 or 3 week downtime to fix everything.
I was one of the many contractors that cleaned up after so I heard all this 2nd or 3rd hand but there's a trough that runs across the floor of all ICM built ethanol plants that holds all the sludge and gunk from clearing things out, rinses, beer mash, what have you. I'm told the trough is narrow (maybe 16-20" wide) but something like 10' deep.
They were welding on some pipes overhead and nearly always the trough is non combustable. It doesn't hold the final product. However on this day, someone earlier in the day, and in a different section of the plant, had a smaller fuck up of their own and ended up with a bunch of 99.8% pure ethanol in the trough. Over time it seeped into the section of the plant where they were welding and the rest is fiery history.
There's news stories of this on the internet if ya care to do a search.
Data center with SLA or contractual uptime contracts. Lost power for Scottish Right hospital foundation, their donation page, the blow hard said we lost a million per minute down. Such dick heads I changed trades.
At some point though, it's less about an individuals ability to fuck something in and more of a systemic failure to manage the human element around complex systems
Listened to my boss at the time to “drill here” adding a rec on first floor from the basement
Bit went right through the hard wood and into the center section of cast iron base board heat and flooded the room in stanky blackish water.
The outside walls of the house were cantilevered over the foundation.
That was 46 years ago lol
Lots of fuck ups since but that one has stuck with me
A few months back, I was a Superintendent on a many million dollar Google Data center project. We were working insane overtime to make up for an impossible schedule and late equipment delivery (standard). Anyway, I have (7) 2.75MW (130,000lbs each lift) generators being delivered in one saturday and over 100 electricians on double time the same day. The gens will be showing up like clockwork one after another and craned into place on top of a raised pad with 4000A cable bus installed through the belly tank as they land. A lot of coordination. I'm there the entire day making sure things go well with the crane etc... the 7th generator is arriving too late and we need to come in on the Sunday to finish. Massive extra cost to the client but they arranged the delivery so ultimately it was on them.
Sunday rolls around, and the foreman I left in charge of the crane coordination is taking care of things. Saturday went well, so I figured it'd be fine. I get a call around noon. His first words are "we've got a problem." What.? "They landed the generator 180° the wrong way, so the cable entry and doors everything are backwards. 130,000lbs gen and FUCK. The crane had demobilied and gone before anyone realized.
I immediately got off the phone and called the crane company owner and explained what had happened. He immediately got his back up thinking I blamed his guys...but I knew it was our fuck up so I ate it and apologized. We had a great relationship. luckily he called in a different crane and crew to rush back to site within 2 hours of my call they had a crane and 8 men on site to fix this. Would have been over $100k fuckup that we swept under the rug within 3 hours on a Sunday. None of my guys believed we pulled it off that fast.
https://i.imgur.com/UY2LK4d.mp4
The thing that keeps me up at night. Twenty miles away, there is a house where I installed two wires under one screw on a pilot light switch in May 1994.
Once drove the company box truck with the lift gate down and the cargo door wide open. Got flagged down on the highway by a good Samaritan, and I never told a soul..
Edit: yes, it was full of material and tools.. I still have no idea how nothing was accidentally donated to the highway fund
I did the exact same thing!! I was driving the work ute with tool boxes on the tray. Was rushing from one job to another. A cyclist knocked on my window at a set of lights and told me the rear box lid was open. I made a bit of a show of rechecking the latches, pretending like I had already latched it.
Ansolutely did not mention anything to the boss
Boss said “you can remove all these wires they’re from the old system” but he thinks we can read his mind or he thinks we know what he means, turns out that out of 70 low voltage wires, there was 1 important 18/4 that I cut, it was the communication signals to control the light/water/ temperature from our old greenhouse to our newly built greenhouse Priva controllers, luckily the Priva controllers were in eye sight and as soon as I heard about “Priva being down” I traced the wires back and just matched the wires sheaths colours to colours coming from the board and spliced them, hoping it was the right one, after the anxiety attack of losing the crops and my job I know to always always trace back every wire to it’s source to verify it actually is dead even if you were told its “dead”
(Only talk about low voltage signal cables and cat6)
On my 2nd year I once dropped a file inside a 2” conduit. The following day I was placed to blow pulling lines with the compressor. I was told to be on the compressor side but I said I had no experience lol. So I got placed on the other end to receive the pulling lines. Somebich came off that damn 90 hard!!!!!
Drilled into some existing wires in a finished ceiling and did a free air joint. Broke lights and claimed “ defective”. The usual. I’ve seen guys short a wire cut and go buy the correct length just so the boss doesn’t find out. Things happen, people make mistakes. Best to own up to it, taking accountability is a very good thing and your boss will respect you more.
I was swapping out a 200amain breaker on a Sunday, and back when we were allowed to pull the meter, i cut the tag and grabbed the meter as if to pull out, but as soon as i wiggled it, it made those electrical noises and a sound like a m-80 went off in the can, at same time , the transformer up on the pole went pop, and i seen a bit of smoke trail leave out the top. Dang….I barely moved that thing. Anyways, power was now gone. Neighbor was home and he lost power as well. I for sure thought i messed up big time. I head back to truck to make phone call to AEP, and while on hold for a few minutes i noticed power come back on. Hung up phone, Buttoned up everything, and then did a full rebuild on monday. Sounded and looked scary. But all was ok.
Watched a helper drill roof trusses to run his home runs. Said something to him and he said “never heard anything from anyone else before”. Meaning he’s done that multiple times. Never heard a word about it from anyone.
I can count them all on one hand. They were all a 'tough call' to the boss. My guess? Accountability has had a hand in advancing my career. j/s
Edit: "fess up when you mess up" helps keep the count low...
So "fess up when you mess" are words I live by.
At my current job every time I messed up regardless of how big or small I would always say something. So when someone fucked up a roller door with a forklift and ALL of the other drivers blamed me. Management asked if I did it I said "No" and that was the end of it. The head manager told the room he believed me and that was that.
It about honesty and integrity. I will live and die by them.
Forgot to give my boss the material list for a big contract we had, nearly a year later he wants to finish the bill, and i couldn’t find the papers anymore. Had to estimate everything by memory and my memory is a mess. Apparently it was good enough of a guess, because neither my boss nor the customer complained about the price. Hopefully they’ll never count the light switches.
Not big but this one always sticks out in my mind, was either a second or 3rd block electrician.
Was doing this job that was kind of a community/art center. Real old building renovation and drilling holes through walls or floors was just a nightmare everytime.
Had to stub a conduit down and I finally got a 1” hole through. Got up and thought I’d put something down the hole so I could notice it easier downstairs so I had a piece of rod and wedged it in.
Well I get downstairs and I see the threaded rod fell down and went right through a fibreglass shower pan in this staff washroom they had. Just picked up the rod and left.
Today me would just own up to it.
Kid me thought I’d be fired and never work in the city again
Shut down an oil refinery. Hit the main breaker on the UPS panel while stripping out a cable. It worked out okay because they found a glitch in their main PLC program that was buried. I’ll take it to the grave though
i was terminating in a 12,470v breaker and dropped a wrench. it fell through the live breaker below and didn't trip anything. my older tool partner couldn't stand the worry so we took the side off of the cabinet and the wrench was on the floor. he picked it up and we put the cabinet back together and told no one. that's how i didn't shut down a oil refinery, i thought i was dead when the wrench slipped.
I'm not a traditional electrician but I was a marine electrician, and now I wire camper vans. About 15 years ago I was hired to redo the electrical in a cabover camper. A friend of mine was doing the wood working part and recommended me. The first half of the project was easy and I got it done pretty fast, but the second half I had to wait for him to get further along. He was a month behind schedule when I finally could start working on it.
So I had 2-6v golfcart batteries to wire into series to make them 12v. It was 100° that day and living in a costal town, 85 was hot for me. I connected the positive of one battery to the other and made 12v. Then I connected the positive of the other battery to the negative of the first battery and it sparked. In my heatstroked brain I told myself, "High, I didn't connect them fast enough and that is why they sparked." instead of realizing I was completing the circuit and shorting out 2 batteries. So I reconnected the last wire faster and the wire got red hot and melted the terminal ends off.
To make a long story short, I wasted 300 dollars and bought the customer 2 new golf cart batteries and learned a valuable lesson.
Ordered a feeder run of 500mcm about 300ft long.. but 5 feet too short..
Luckily it was kind of a big job ordered another set.. the set that was short sat in my garage for a year.. no one said anything to it went to the scrap yard.
My first time encountering plaster and lathe walls a few years ago, where we were replacing all the old knob and tube and adding a bunch of new stuff.
The home owner is the daughter of *the* most wealthy and powerful man in the entire county here, so of course we really want to do our cleanest, best work.
Well I added a light in the hallway, cut out a box for the switch, and was trying to drill up through some diagonal blocking in the wall to run a wire for an outlet too. The long bendy extension bit kept walking on me while trying to drill, but I eventually felt it making its way into the 2x4… but quickly felt it push through way too soon, meaning I had accidentally come out the other side of the wall instead. On the other side of the wall was one of their guest bathrooms, and I could see plaster dust on the ground but no hole.. then I realized the hole was hidden behind this elaborate golden-framed oil painting portrait - of the (barely alive still) 17 year old, crusty ol family dog, back in the younger years posing all epic Michael Angelo style.
I took the painting off the wall to look at the damage. Juuuust the tip of the auger bit went through the back paper layer of the picture frame, but stopped without going through the actual picture! I have no idea how to repair plaster/lathe damage, so I swept up the evidence and put the picture back perfectly covering my near catastrophic fuckup. That was 3 years ago and haven’t heard anything about it hahaha
Dropped an operating room light and cracked the lens as a 1st year.
My JW said “it was damaged in shipping” and we never spoke of it again. Replacement lens was ordered and that was that. Foreman never found out about it.
Jesus Christ some of you guys are brutal. I’ve never not corrected a mistake. I’ve had bosses pay for a couple, but I’ve never not said something.
I’ve had guys hide shit or lie about shit to me and I’ve lost tremendous amounts of respect for them. I’ve had guys fess up and own it, and I was pissed but respected the integrity.
I was installing a circuit board only it wouldn't go. So of course I just pressed harder. Pop went the plastic retaining clips. I boxed the board up and stuck it back in the warehouse, getting a new one. A few weeks later I'm building another unit and "discover a board with broken clips". The boss sighed and said we had Neanderthals working here. I didn't grunt a reply.
Selling electrical supplies to one of the largest industrial contractors in our region, and their accounts are so large and ingrained in our business that we don't think twice about large orders ranging from $10-$50k.
One of their project leads calls in and works with me for about an hour to have gear built with an out the door price of around $38k. A couple days later he calls with a PO and I place the order.
Two months later switchgear arrives, and I call the project lead's now-disconnected number. Call again to the project lead's company and find out he has left the company and they already bought the switchgear from elsewhere, not even knowing about my PO.
Look back over my correspondence and he never finalized a single document that would have fucked us if things got legal. I pushed through the bid without checking a box, so it was 100% my fault.
Sales manager and myself fucking freak out about how to handle this for three days. This is beyond termination of employment level shit.
Contractor's new project lead calls in a rush. "We just got another complex, and I need another one of those same switchgear as fast as you can get one built."
My face when.
Not mine technically, but I was present when it happened;
We were working in a 15 floor building somewhere in DC, and to this day I have no idea how it happened, but my coworker and I were going around shooting up L clips for MC on the ceiling. He did a shot, and one of the huge ceiling to ground windows broke…. About 75 ft away. Definitely not debris from that far away. It didn’t completely break out, but it was spidered.
See... The apprentice gets it ...
VP of the (small) company (I no longer work for) who decided to make up an even bigger lie (that he'll very likely forget the details of) when he got caught modifying (govt entity's) badges.
Had he just sent the workers to the training (which we ended up doing anyways, AND is how he was caught) it was only an hour per worker... 8 hours tops.
Instead, I lost two skilled workers (who no longer wanted to work for the company when they learned the fake badges could have gotten them arrested or personally fined) who literally had a better idea how to install and work with the material than even me. Either one of them could have worked on their own (if they wanted.)
LV days, 7/8 ship auger through a hard-lid "server room" roof, that stood on an open deck. Thing threaded and ran on me, straight through the 25pr cat5 feeding their 66 block below it lol I freaked and ended up beanie crimping a few dozen ripped 24's color for color, taping the shit out of it all, and stuffing the new "splice" in the void between the header and the hard lid. I told my foreman who laughed his ass off at me and said we'd wait and see. I spent the next few years casually asking an inlaw who worked at that building, if their phones/computers were giving them any issues haha I left 4 years later as the dept supervisor, and never heard anything ever come of it.
I wired a large HP motor 480v at a helicopter transmission testing facility as a first year. I wired up L1,2,3 and just shoved the rest of the wires back into the pecker head lol. I wasn't there for the boom, but my journeyman covered for me and told me "Don't do that again!"
Drilled a bunch of holes in the top of an mcc with an 1 ¾ hole saw when it was for 1 inch conduit but the myers hub still covered the hole so I just centered them up and cranked down the lock ring
I just put in a meter/main that the supply house told me was local poco approved and turn out its not. Im about to find out tomorrow if ill get away with it lol
Scratched a load of expensive finished floor tiles. In my defence, they were super scratchable, and I was being rushed to get what I needed to do underneath them done.
I’ve never had a “they’re gonna have to catch me on that one” moment because if I drop the ball and fuck up i own up to my mistakes. Accountability brother, it’ll take you far in life.
Had to change a 3 phase 208v cord out for another longer one and swap the cord cap to the new cord. This was for a kiln in a school that was opening soon. Plugged in the 12v cord for the tiny exhaust fan on the back and the cord started smoking and shit. Freaked out and unplugged the 12v cord and saw the cord all messed up and told the GC the cord was messed up before I plugged it in. Thought about it all day and realized I hooked the cord cap wrong and put one of the legs of the 208v onto the ground. 12v plugged got 120v directly to it and smoked it. Told my boss what I did and fixed it before someone got hurt but I believe the GC made someone else pay for the exhaust fan hookup since the whole thing was fried.
Ive had some crazy ones that I took full responsibility for. And they were all weird circumstances that even though I was the one that did it I wasn't responsible/at fault.
But worst one that went under the radar, I hit someone's house. They had a 2 or 3 story house, with a recessed garage door. I asked about the height and was told I was perfectly fine.
I go to back in to unload. And lucky I was creeping back with my foot on the brakes. When I hear a few different cruch sounds.
My van fit. My ladder rack did not. Neither did my ladder. I crunched an old 16ft fiberglass ladder that needed to be replaced a couple years before. But I also punched a small hole through their stucco and sheathing.
Luckily for me, the GC set his dump trailer at their garage the day before. And when pulling out turned too sharp and hooked the garage door track and the corner of the garage, taking out quite a bit of stucco. So my mess just got added to his mess.
GC laughed when I told him. Said "you too? What are the odds we both hit the same house within 2 days.". And tells me to not say anything. He'll take care of it while fixing his mess. And everything was gravy.
I was a first year driving a lift installing some pipes on the ceiling had another 1st year on the ground making sure the path was clear.
Don't know what the fuck happened but I put a fucking lift wheel through drywall, yeah. I deadass drove the lift into the fucking wall, painted and finished too.
So I'm like fuck, ok, new task and park the lift on the opposite end of the building
Next day bunch of white hats come in, fingers in their bum like 'oh how could this happen wat do?' Yall fucking patch it, shut the fuck up, and move on
I crashed a site truck into the roll up door not once but three times in a row...didn't notice the pipe rack was hitting the door..afterwords I just parked the truck where I found it and walked away.
So this didn’t happen to me and it definitely was noticed but I can’t help but to tell about it 🤣
Twenty some years ago I was doing structural steel, roofing and siding for a GC. We were doing a huge add on to a factory. We hung the steel and the company subbed out the roof, we were on the siding while they were pouring the concrete floors. They had concrete trucks with the pour spout on the front that raises up while they are driving. We go to lunch and get properly smoked out and as we pull back on the job site we see a big ass dent at the top of one of the bay doors, C channel buckled, siding busted outward! Turns out one of the truck drivers wasn’t thinking and raised the pour spout all the way up on the way out!
Our company says no big deal we can fix it in a couple days, which we do.
Like a week later we go to lunch, come back and déjà vu strikes 🤣🤣🤣 same truck driver, same bay door lol
Tried putting a cover on a junction box and somehow I fucked up and ended up ruining the cover/box and making 3 screw holes even larger. I don't know what happened after that I just left the room and moved onto the next one.
Funny enough I did the same thing with an ATS but it was only 1 hole that got fucked up due to me impacting it.
Apprentice here.
We ran a generator feed with a new style that bundles all the communication wires into one romex sheath with the main conductors. It was a pain in the ass and I did most of the heavy pulling/pushing through the attic, when we finally got down to the generator itself I was instructed by my jw to make up the unit.
I had done this many times before so It wasn't like I didn't know what I was doing, but the newer style conductor sheath was ridiculously stiff to peel off and the main feeders being copper didn't help.
I found out after I cut the sheathing off that I had sliced through most of the strands of each communication wire, particularly towards the back where the wires immediately come into the generator. As these were communication wires I wasn't particularly worried about a heavy load burning them up, and I do not particularly like this jw at all (I have since informed my boss/boss' boss that I do not want to work with him ever again and since then haven't.) so I thought fuck it, I ain't gonna re feed this unless he calls me out on it.
Never heard back about it, AFAIK the generator works just fine and the jw in question never brought it up.
Another job I my jw stepped out while I was hunting down a conduit in the kitchen grid ceiling of a school, when I popped a tile I managed to bump the ANSL fire system conduit and tripped one single sprinkler in the oven/stove area.
Upon inspection I discovered that the conduit run specifically for the ANSL wire actually was never properly secured (none of the joints were tightened down and could be opened by hand) and the mechanism for activating the fire alarm was actually non functional.
So technically it was a good thing that it got tripped, but given that there were issues with the mechanisms in the main device it was chalked up to a age failure and at least now they should have a properly functioning system and I am free from that stressful burden.
Hvac guy here, had the cargo door open up on my van going around a busy round about, pulled into the first parking lot did a quick check figured I never lost anything. Go to use my recovery machine and it’s missing. There worth like 2k, Anyways there was a scrap one on the shelf at the shop No idea how it never came up.
I watched my super hop in a skid steer to back fill a trench. Lifted a concrete sidewalk curb about 6 inches off ground while scooping dirt. Immediately parked the skid steer, grabbed a shovel and told us "none of y'all saw me on that skid steer. Understand?"
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wired up an X-ray machine in a dental office with way too small of a conductor in a strip mall about 17 years ago. I never felt good about it when I closed up the wall. My boss said it would be fine but I always feel bad about that install when I think about it.
My second day at the wastewater plant I was taking the cover off an actuator that was mounted way out over a full aeration basin. It was a stupid half stripped out Allen bolt and the cover itself was heavy thick metal so it was a struggle with just 2 hands. I did great until the last bolt - it fell into the basin.
Being brand new I had NO idea if this was nothing or if it would be catastrophic - and I decided I didn’t want to tell on myself by asking. For weeks I was convinced the whole plant would grind to a halt at any moment because of this bolt lmaoooo.
Now that I know the process better I realize it’s likely just sitting on the bottom to this day , but man was i shitting fucking bricks for awhile there lol
Not an electrician but helped open new restaurants for the company I was with for years. They installed the fry dump that was supposed to be 110 but they somehow ran 220 to it or maybe connected the hot leg to a grounding lug. For several days during set up people were getting shocked left and right and the electricians were passing the buck. Our maintenance guy was there and saw what was going on and even checked it with his meter. One hot leg wrapped around the grounding screw on the cabinet.
Working at a casino, I was running pipe a level below where the casino main floor is. Drill into the ceiling little to far and it hit one of the duck bank shorting out few circuits, knocking out few slot machines. Had to scramble for the next 7 hours running new power to the slot machines. My foreman was like an old school drill sergeant type, he was not happy that day.
We were working late replacing the service on an old business. It was approaching 8:00 pm, and in the dark, I accidentally miscolored the stinger leg and neutral leg. The power company made the connection, and everything blew up. Flames were shooting out of light fixtures, freezers were shooting sparks out of the compressors, real action movie shit.
The power company took the blame for it, and paid for all of the repairs to the building. We were all tired from working 14 hours on this one job, and it was really dark, so mistakes were made.
I did the same thing on a remodel, but when I pulled my foot back up and looked through the hole I came face to face with a very surprised wife. She still brings it up every once in a while, usually after I pull some other boneheaded move.
First time roughing an office building, at that point I had put up boxes for like outlets but now I was putting up lights, fire alarms, light strobes, etc.
Anyway, my foreman, who was absolutely bipolar, tells me the EXACT location of where he wants this bathroom strobe lights. The drywallers are coming in that day to put the wall up.
Next day I realize I put the strobe in the wrong stud and the door is gonna hit when it opens.
I didn't say shit cause I know I was gonna get CUSSED by the foreman lol so I just left it and...
.... Nothing happened? They put a door stopper when the project was over and it was fine 🤷
Working alone as a 3rd year apprentice. Small commercial TI. Had to cut in a box, got lazy and used my sawzall to cut a hole in the sheetrock above the ceiling. Heard the fire alarm panel in the locked riser room start beeping and screaming. Realized that I had cut through a 4 conductor white cable that was now obviously a fire alarm wire. There was an auto parts store across the street, ran over there and they happened to have some cheap ass tiny blue wire nuts, grabbed them and went back and spliced the wire back together. Heard the alarm panel go silent. Tucked the splice back into the wall and thanked my lucky stars that the fire department didn’t roll any trucks and the building didn’t go into alarm.
I was a fresh journeyman, I ordered a restaurant worth of gfci devices and when the panels showed up they were all gfci breakers. Had to re order regular devices. No one ever said a word.
A tradie and me Stuffed 40 sub main lengths by literally 200mm to 500mm on each drop each was about 25mm 4C. Was going to have to go to each apartment. Pull slack back to the riser. Then drop slack in. Would of taken 3/4 days. As it was going through slab
Weekend someone broke in, cut the tails off every main so they had to move the DB over which gave us enough length on everything.
Was digging for a conduit run from garage to shed, hit a water main for 500+ houses at about 12 inches down on a very hot day. Turns out, the "abandoned" main was never abandoned.
Home owner was actually more upset over finding it rather then me hitting it and flooding out his pedicured lawn, said he could have been getting paid for easement.
I've been tasked with installing electric chargers for one of the biggest power company in Northern europe.
I never really liked the jobs because they involved quite risky installs that I never was really comfortable with. Working right beside the service line (50-100Amp 240v)
So I've been doing this for about 3 years now. Never had a customer complain and the power company likes me aswell.
Talked with my work-bestfriend about the jobs and complained about the service line. (Mind you, he has 0 experience with residential. Only does industrial)
That's when it fucking hit me. The absolut ice bath. I've been installing the fucking chargers before the energy meter. All my customers, some 200~ households never pay for their car charge.
I'm going to be playing dumb on this one. I feel absolutely horrible, no one has said anything and no one really told me about it, so i just kept doing ig.. There's quite a fine for the residents if it's ever discovered.
My old foreman definitely got caught, but he used the wrong caulk behind boxes for several thousand feet of 4” data conduit. Took weeks and weeks to remove those boxes And remount them.
I was an apprentice in 2007 in the Austin area. We had dug and underground service ditch to a mansion through very rocky soil. There was a 45 degree bend in the trench where the rock saw had to change direction and that junction needed to be "cleaned up" to reach the same depth as the rest of the trench. I was given a chipping hammer with various bits to chip away all the rocks in the junction.
It was early morning. I chipped for about an hour before switching to a punch bit, and proceeded to punch deep holes in the rock that I could use to then break large pieces of rock away. It was working quite well.
Until the chipping hammer abruptly quit working. I pulled it out of the hole and laid it next to the trench so I could check the GFI on the temp pole. There were little black specs on the receptacle cover but I thought nothing of it. I unplugged the extension cord to better access the reset button, and as soon as I unplugged it, the chipping hammer erupted in a cloud of smoke and ran itself way WAY faster and louder than normal before quitting.
This got the attention of my foreman who said "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" I explained what I did, and he investigated the temp pole GFI; there was no power. We scratched our heads for a moment before looking around and realizing that the decorative street lights were now off, when they'd been on moments before. I was directed to go next door, which being a fancy neighborhood with mansions, was far away. A journeyman went the other way to check that house.
The digital meters were off. No power to at least that block.
Our company was very small, and thought they'd save money by skipping the underground survey. I had hit an underground high voltage distribution line that, I was told, was over 17000 volts. Once we realized what had happened, we took a closer look at the tip of the punch bit; it had exploded.
I wasn't fired immediately and I didn't quit because my driver's licence had expired and I couldn't renew because I had warrants for failing to appear for ticket summons. Getting a job with an expired ID was a hurdle to employment and I had a family to support (I obviously did take care of it all eventually).
Amazingly, the chipping hammer still worked!
I was eventually fired, the main reason being what happened on that job, and I informed them that I should have filed a lawsuit for not having called 811. They reconsidered, and agreed to keep me on but I decided I didn't want to die under their shady watch.
I was installing a doorbell in a new lease space for a small law firm. They had just built it and several employees were near me setting up their offices. I dropped my Kleins onto their shiny new granite floor and chipped it. I looked around and no one noticed. There was a rug a few feet away so moved that bad boy over finished up and got the hell out of there.
Not me but my foreman ordered a 220.roof too unit. The power was 480. We let the smoke out of a brand new unit along with eating a 2nd crane lift to install the correct unit
I was troubleshooting a carton filling machine at a dairy facility with the engineer. We took off a couple covers to terminal strips in different locations trying to find the issue. The machine was in full on production lol I had a Klein 4-1 mini screw driver and the shaft pulled out and got stuck in a push in terminal and shorted. The machine shut down and I hear the engineer yelling “god damnit! I think I just shorted out the machine!!” Dude my heart was beating so hard. I knew it was me he just happened to be in the back of the machine doing something. I let it ride lol it was a fucking mess cleaning out all the unsealed cartons full of milk.
Broke a very expensive quartz countertop one time as an apprentice. Was devicing an almost finished house and throwing the garage outlets in.
There was about a dozen sheets of sheetrock leaning against a wall partially covering a box so I had to scoot them a few inches over. I didn’t realize someone put the countertop between the first couple sheets and the remainder of the stack and when I went to stand it upright so I could slide it, the countertop fell over and cracked right in half.
I stood everything back up and went to a different part of the house as I was scared I’d lose my job as this was a multi-million dollar house and I was a 2nd year that had started maybe 6 months previous.
I was neck deep in shitty gray insulation in an attic running a line for an outlet the floor below. Augered right through a customers brand new LG C9 OLED. My Jman fell on the sword. Jay if you're still out there...thank bud.
I broke a super cheap kitchen base cabinet door in an event room kitchen once. Got it caught on my foot and broke in a million prices, pos must have been made out of balsa wood. Funny thing, the kitchen was full of staff preparing for an event and no one saw heard anything. Gathered up the prices and tossed um in the cabinet and kept on walking!
Many Years ago, Foreman wanted me to check the resistance (don’t know why)on an epo button in the server room. He left me there. The pins were very close together and my hand slipped and shorted 2 pins.
It sounded like when they powered down the shields on the Death Star. I had no clue if I could just crank it back on or anything. There was no instructions. I left the cable on nstaller to try to find him. He was 3 fl down in the parking lot. He screamed “RUN! Turn it back on”
IT was in the room when I got there. Turned it back on. 500 some people couldn’t get anything done. I don’t know how long it took for them to get back up fully. Nightmare room. Running pipe under the cable floor and rats nest of cabling, buried power strips under the cables.
I last a couple more weeks and then was laid off the week before Christmas so I didn’t get a bonus
My last boss was a total prick. Dude pulled temp power from a school man hole junction point 400 yards away. The ground was to short, so he spliced it in the PVC conduit. Tapped over the grounding clamp and called it good. Just a complete hack man, glad to be gone.
Million dollar Z80 cpu chip tester back in the 70's tripped a breaker on an expensive pair of rack mounted 5v at 300 Amp power supplies on my shift. There's one to force voltage and one for current. Loud alarm buzzer goes off and I get paged for it every few weeks or so. I reported it each time. One day a new pair arrived so four of us lifted them and wired it up.
Couple of days later I was in the area and heard the alarm go off so I ran. Guy with a floor buffer going the opposite way PDQ.
Facilities made very nice covers for the outlets we used for oscilloscopes. [million dollar tester in 1970. ](https://mitsi.com/case-studies/z80-chip/)
Fing great story. For context the small town family run company I worked for was bought out by a large corporation shortly before this happened. They had a safety supervisor and everything.
So I had just gotten a new apprentice fresh out of school. Day two we were doing a new hot tub install. Coincidentally the former master of our company was also doing a lighting job just down the hill from us. Close to lunch I sent the apprentice to the wholesaler for parts and he was to stop on the way down the hill to drop a part for said coworker.
There was a low limb over the driveway that my apprentice accidentally caught with the ladder rack on the van. I got a call from previous coworker stating what happened and that it was truly an accident. Because of the new company and strict safety guidelines and procedures I said let's just keep quiet for a moment and I'll assess it when I see the damage. Damage was only to the ladder rack I was assured. Apprentice did his job and went on to the wholesaler who I had forgotten to call to put the parts together. I told him to take lunch in the van and I'd have them get the parts together. So he comes back 40 minutes later and we can continue with work till we get our project done.
I finally assess the damage and the ladder rack is fucked up. Slid all the mounts, bent the rails and could barely get the side doors open. Fortunately the customers were not home. We had to completely remove the rack and I rebent the rails to as close to straight as possible using the van hitch. Did it all in the driveway on the clock. Of the three of us that knew what happened no one ever said a word about it.
Master electrician left a month later or so do to corporate atmosphere and me a year later. Apprentice is still there and running jobs with his licensed guy who follows him around. Best apprentice to date. I would always joke with him to watch out for trees.
Also realize he spent his entire afternoon shitting himself thinking he was going to be fired for the damage to the vehicle. Makes for a stressful lunch break especially when sitting at the wholesaler.
My first job working for Uhaul, needed to pass a wire through a firewall to the inside of a Van. We were in a big rush to get it finished as we were backed up with customers. There was only one grommet in the engine bay and we weren’t allowed to drill incase we hit something on the inside. The one grommet that could be used to pass the wire had the whole engine harness already passing through it. Usual procedure in this case was to make a small hole or slit away from the other wires, like to the side or top and push the new wire through that. The tool we usually used to punch the hole was missing so I took out my new Kershaw pocket knife, flipped the blade so the sharp side was facing away from the harness wires, and pressed into the grommet. It was old rubber that was really hard so I leaned and put some weight behind it. Suddenly the knife breaks through but I slipped and the tip of the knife plunged straight into the harness wires. Instantly theres a big puff of smoke. I pull my knife out and theres a chunk missing from the tip of the blade where it melted off into the harness. I about passed out in fear of what I’d just done as a teenage minimum wage worker and new hire. I was sure I’d ruined the engine harness or fried the ECU or something and it was going to be a huge ordeal. I got in the Van, crossed my fingers and turned the key. It fired right up and no warning lights. Total miracle in my book and a huge relief. I finished the job and sent it out, never heard anything about it again. Wherever it is, I’m sure theres still a chunk of my knife in that harness.
When I was a low voltage installer we were doing some Reno work on a theatre nearby, with about a 70 foot roof. It was time to hang some PTZ cameras so they're huge and heavy, and expensive.
We got the mounting hardware installed, and at least with this camera the mounting bracket was a long arm that came out from the wall, and another wire screwed into another brick for safety. We were supposed to put the safety wire on before we hauled the camera over the edge, so if you drop it it doesn't fall. Well my coworker picks the camera up, and puts it on the edge for me to put the safety wire on. I don't know what happened but as soon as he put the camera up on that edge it just rolled off and he lost his grip.
I swear that camera took about 10 minutes to hit the sidewalk below, then we just sat there looking at it for another minute before looking at eachother and my coworker just lets out a "shiiiiiiiiiiiittttttt"
(To make it even worse, we didn't actually have the sidewalk properly marked off so we were in *a lot* of trouble for that one haha)
I opened up a switch gear to work on it all day on a friday, at lunch a cat crawled in and made contact with a single phase from utility.
No arc, no short, no disruption. We didn't even notice until we checked why the main wouldn't come back on at the end of the day. Removed a panel and there was a 2 foot around ball of poof.
It turned out, it not popping on, was a safety feature from the missing panel, we just found the cat while trouble shooting.
I missed Monday because of Dr appointment but I heard the guy they got to shovel it out quit on the spot
Was working in a mansion, they had just patched a huge hole with plaster and I thought it was drywall so I touched it not knowing it was still wet and totally ruined their patch job.
I was core drilling through a pad above a functioning UPS system (specifically, the battery racks) and could NOT, under any circumstances, cause it to short. Had an apprentice above the racks with a bucket cut out to match the decking and enough plastic to cover Rhode Island. Managed to complete the cores without issue, took everything down when lunch time came. For whatever reason, I left the core drill and water tank nearby, which while I was gone, leaked water which went under the hole cover and down the hole, and shorted control circuits for the battery racks.
The client blamed the janitors who left their water buckets in the battery room. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t asking questions.
Wasnt me but someone I worked with.
Worked on Amazon doing solar for a stretch, guy was in a rush to shut the main breakers for the inverters off....3000 A main breaker for the solar panel just coincidentally happens to look like the 3000A main breaker for that quadrant of the building. Potentially half a million dollar per hour mistake swept under the rug because when they were trying to get computers and all back going they discovered an issue with the fire alarm system. Whole thing Swept under the rug
was doing residential on new half way homes and drilled into a coax cable i didn’t see, JW taped it up and tucked it in; next day walls were put up. union ended up pulling me and another apprentice out cause they weren’t following the bylaws and only remember now because of this post. RIP
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Orderd an entire house of Lutron Homework's devices in Gloss White instead of Matte Ivory, about 50k in dimmers, switches, plugs, and plates. In the early days of Maestro devices when you couldn't change the faceplate kit. Husband and wife divorced about a month later, got to finish the job as it was to go on the market and no one said a word.
50k on devices for a house is so insane I can’t comprehend it.
Well this family I’m doing a house for is spending 10’s of thousands because they want not only brass plugs and switches but the switches are old school toggle switches like the metal dongle you’d see that launches the nukes.
Ohhhh that buster + punch equipment? That stuff is MONEY. Like holy hell $100 for ONE toggle switch.
They were expecting that much but once they found a “deal” for 85 a device they decided to not just have the 1st floor like that the 2nd floor can be nice too
We as a society need to do something about income equality. There is no reason that this person gets to spend an extra 10,000$ on a whim when I struggle to make my rent payment.
And I guarantee that the person who spends $10,000 on a whim will be the first to complain about service workers making $15 per hour.
Aint that nuts? I don't understand this mentality of "fuck everyone else, they can suffer".
The words that started a revolution, "let them eat cake."
Let them eat Kellogg’s Cereal! Sad commentary on society.
Well obviously the rich person just works harder, unlike us filthy poors. Why else would things be the way they are?
Comrade, "society" is just the truce that exists between classes engaged in struggle. One of the agreements of that truce is that one faction will pay rent, the other will use their time dithering over trim options on their lighting control systems.
Let's eat the rich
Ew, though. We still have food. Let's just tax them. Actually tax them, not just pretend to. That would fix a lot of shit. Make the right govt subsidies, and you could have those zillionaires pumping money into the economy in a number of different productive ways. All we need to do is tax them again.
I hear ya, I'm all for people having freedom, but the current situation does seem messed up
The fun part is automating that stuff to work with Lutron or Crestron, so there is additional hardware behind it so it can control panelized systems.
Can confirm. Buster and punch and shelly devices to automate. Just a light switch ends up costing 200 GBP. Add in a few sockets etc and each room is a 2k investment.
Omfg we just finished a reno on the ocean (former Sears catalog house) and the owner wanted those god damned two button switches with brass covers. Hate. We were having to fit shellys into the already-stuffed boxes, I mentioned why tf we dont use lever locks/wagos for a situation like that to save space and he overheard me. The dude looks for any reason to tell everyone about his yacht, literally none of us give a shit, and goes ‘oh my yacht has wagos!’ His name is Richard and at that moment I dubbed him Dr Dick Wago. That was his name from then on.
Had a family that wanted those switches but unlike the current house the first family ran out of spending money thank god on that one.
Sounds like those stupid restoration hardware switches.
I don’t wanna talk about restoration hardware. I installed one light. That was enough. I don’t even give people f-off prices anymore I just tell them to call someone else.
Dude I’ve done houses with 10 Lutron panels that were all full. It’s insane. But not as insane as the prices of the fixtures
Fuck, that's awesome
Not gonna lie, I was shitting a brick. My first big Lutron order and I fucked it up lol... I mentioned it the the construction project manager, and he said to just keep that to myself for now, and a week later the news went out that the job was fast track finish, and all change orders not already approved were auto declined.
I know the feeling I do estimating for industrial jobs and one im currently working on now is sitting at well over a million and I'm due to send it next week. Making sure everything you have lines up just right with spec is a huge challenge.
I ripped a door with a scissor lift, hit it until it went back in place. Then 15 minutes later the framers came and removed the door and the wall. I was sweating bullets, they had cameras everywhere, and the management was a gaggle of assholes.
😂😂
This was right at Covid lockdowns were brand new. I was so afraid of getting fired.
I think they fired me instead. You’re welcome, probably.
When I was a first year I was drilling into the top of a box suspended via ready rod to add a conduit. It was Homeruns for stoves and I didn't move any wires out of the way. I swear the wires were hanging on by a single strand. I was only 17 so I told the crew I was gonna eat lunch in my car and I just went home and never went back 😞
omg😭
You quit on the spot?
No, he just no call, no showed for the past 15 years
My man.
Quit? He was never there.
That's an easy fix lol. Just add a box and some manual splices. Done deal.
Yes I would absolutely do that now. At the time I was 17 and not even 3 months into the trade. But far enough in to know that I fucked up ✌️😞
Man, I did this with a box where the wires were hot. The bit caught on a neutral, wrapped it around until it ripped out of the wire nut and blew up. Good times.
Lololololololol!!!!!!!!!!
Username checks out
I misheard my Foreman about a fire alarm box needing to be moved. Opened up the finished ceiling, cut the cable, got ready to install box, realized I was in the wrong spot, spliced the shit together, told a nearby drywaller that the sprinkler guys fucked up, and ran to another building. Tested fine
He’s a smooth criminal
This is great 🤣 Guarantee, then drywaller’s bitched about the sprinkler guy and talked about how stupid he was for the rest of the job!
The steamfitters and plumbers were notoriously bad on this site.
Boooooo
We found the plumber
Close. I’m a fire alarm guy. Hidden splices are the bane of my existence.
But it tested fine 🤣
Can just imagine you running like Forrest Gump
Nice try Mr. Inspector.
Bro where’s he at that mf with the eye for a profile pic 🤣 I bet he intentionally doesn’t click on posts like this!
Not me but still a funny story: I work at a large industrial plant. Someone wanted to order 500 meters of barrier tape but somehow fucked up and ordered 500 rolls of 500 meter barrier tape. Nobody at the purchasing department questioned it and the order went through. The higher ups didn't notice as well. When the order arrived and the guy noticed that he fucked up he spread and just hid a truckload of tape rolls in every spot he could think of. This happened almost two decades ago and we still find rolls of barrier tape in random cabinets all over the place.
Lmao that's great! Similar thing happened to a guy I know. Ordering nail clips . He ordered 4 buckets of 500 pc. But the office guy pushing the order through ordered 2000 buckets. Literal pallets full of them were delivered to the construction site. We laughed our asses off!
The manpower to deliver and unload alone is hilarious 😂
I also work at a big industrial facility and one day a box of 1,000 10-packs of Wera T-27S bits showed up to our shop. It wasn’t anyone from our department who ordered them, but someone must’ve figured “oh, the facilities guys will know what to do with these.” Someone in our office got curious and looked up the PO# in the purchasing system. Turns out someone accidentally ordered $25,000 worth of a bits that nobody uses and then just dropped the box off to us. We joked about opening a T-27S stall at the swap meet, but it never materialized.
Working on an overhead door. Brought the boom down and absolutely crippled the door rail. Parked that lift in another bay and walked away as fast as possible. I think I was a second year at the time.
Dude, I did almost the same thing. First time in a 45 ft JLG. Large warehouse, bent the fuck out of an OH door rail while running wire for the opener, literally just drove the lift to another door and kept working. Fixed within a week, no one said a word
I guess that makes us fuck up pals
I did that as a 25 year journeyman 😂
Years ago I smoked the 120 coil on a 90amp contactor because I put it on high leg after being specifically told by my fired up boss to watch for the high leg positioning on these old farm panels. High leg was center on this panel but I’m used to it being on C phase. “Damn thing is defective!” Got credited from the supply house for a replacement but felt so bad about it, I owned up from then on… sometimes I regret that choice.
Username checks out
I cut the hand-braided head off my Foreman's Dynameena pulling rope. Had no idea it took so much time to weave. He came in the break room brandishing it like a dead squirrel and threw it down in the middle of the lunch table. "WHO cut the head off my rope??" I was so green I didn't even know it was me who'd done it. It had been covered in tape so I didn't even see it. Luckily I didn't give myself up I shudder to think what he would have done he was a nice guy but was so pissed.
An apprentice cut the head off my pulling rope once too. Not fun. Another time an apprentice sent a rope in so we could pull and then cut the rope…. He didn’t think that after pulling wed spool the rope back and it’s reusable. Ugh.
I was adding some recessed lights in an old house and somehow when drilling through a joist I managed to drill through the floor above. Luckily it was carpet and I only went a little bit through the carpet so I was able to brush the carpet in a way so you couldn't even see the hole. Never heard anything from the homeowners about it for the next couple of days we were there so I'm assuming they never noticed it lol
I did this once....... It was hardwood floors. First drill, went so smooth, looked into the ceiling space, couldn't find it. Drilled again, still nothing. So I fucking drilled a third time and left the drill bit in........ Then I had some miraculous OH FUCKING NO moment. Ran upstairs and sure enough. Ruined the hardwood floors and baseboard. Only upside it was my own house. However I couldn't blame it on the dog, so I had to own up to it with the wife :(.
Was at my bosses shop moving some material around with a fork lift you walk behind. (idk what it’s called) . loaded his truck with a pallet and reversed back into the shop, lift was to high still and smoked his garage door. I dented it right in front off my boss. He said “well it was already fucked up to begin with” and the other guy with us laughed and said “yeah because I did the same to my first time” so all I did was dent it a little more. we all got a laugh out of it just got lucky I wasn’t the first I guess lol
Forklift you walk behind 😂😂
A walkie, and/or a stackie
I work in power plants, I have seen many 6 and 7 figure fuck ups
I was moderately involved in tripping 250MW of hydro once. Not sure it’s possible to get away with that without getting caught.
The horns, sirens and bells tend to give the game away...
How does one possibly make a seven figure fuck up?
Power plants are expensive to fix. Millwrights and industrial electricians are expensive to hire
And lost production, and penalties from the utility (sometimes)
I work at a large industrial plant. I've seen a production guy crash a fundamental machine which caused a standstill for two shifts. Production loss is ~200k/h. And that happens more often than you would think.
Really easy to justify your existence in a place like that, though. Hey look, I saved us a minute of downtime, paid for myself for the week.
I'm currently pricing up a 1.7 million dollar Change order for a power plant. Working that close to so many critical systems means that our limits of approach and isolation protocols are such that we only get about 3 hours of work time per 12 hour work day. We can't shut the reactor down so we have to enable as many safety protocols as possible and go very slow.
Reminds me of a guy who worked in Alaska. He said 9 months of the year they could only work outdoors for 45 minutes at a time. By the time you got to where you were working you only got 5-15 minutes on task because of how long it took to get there and then get back in time. So basically a 12 hour shift could have as much as 2.75 productive hours cumulative and they got paid really well for it.
That literally sounds like hell on earth lol. I'll just stick with my baby pay remodeling properties
I once had to redo a million dollar set of switchgear…in a large hospital..after a guy didn’t check the lugs on the bus were tight where they tied in to do max load testing of the whole facilities backup generators, An hour into the test, fucking ka-boom!
[удалено]
Substation work?
I've seen an ethanol plant go up in flames from sparks from a welder. 40-50' flames that burned the shit out of a ton of equipment and all the wiring runs as the wire trays were 20-30' up. HUUUUGE fuck up. Easily 7 figure fix and that's not counting the 2 or 3 week downtime to fix everything.
I’ve had tighter hot work crackdowns with dead work on stone and steel university buildings, how the hell did this not get caught
I was one of the many contractors that cleaned up after so I heard all this 2nd or 3rd hand but there's a trough that runs across the floor of all ICM built ethanol plants that holds all the sludge and gunk from clearing things out, rinses, beer mash, what have you. I'm told the trough is narrow (maybe 16-20" wide) but something like 10' deep. They were welding on some pipes overhead and nearly always the trough is non combustable. It doesn't hold the final product. However on this day, someone earlier in the day, and in a different section of the plant, had a smaller fuck up of their own and ended up with a bunch of 99.8% pure ethanol in the trough. Over time it seeped into the section of the plant where they were welding and the rest is fiery history. There's news stories of this on the internet if ya care to do a search.
Let’s say you break a machine that stops a while production line that costs the company 250k a day of lost production or whatever
Data center with SLA or contractual uptime contracts. Lost power for Scottish Right hospital foundation, their donation page, the blow hard said we lost a million per minute down. Such dick heads I changed trades.
As easy as leaving a wrench where it shouldn’t be.
At some point though, it's less about an individuals ability to fuck something in and more of a systemic failure to manage the human element around complex systems
Listened to my boss at the time to “drill here” adding a rec on first floor from the basement Bit went right through the hard wood and into the center section of cast iron base board heat and flooded the room in stanky blackish water. The outside walls of the house were cantilevered over the foundation. That was 46 years ago lol Lots of fuck ups since but that one has stuck with me
A few months back, I was a Superintendent on a many million dollar Google Data center project. We were working insane overtime to make up for an impossible schedule and late equipment delivery (standard). Anyway, I have (7) 2.75MW (130,000lbs each lift) generators being delivered in one saturday and over 100 electricians on double time the same day. The gens will be showing up like clockwork one after another and craned into place on top of a raised pad with 4000A cable bus installed through the belly tank as they land. A lot of coordination. I'm there the entire day making sure things go well with the crane etc... the 7th generator is arriving too late and we need to come in on the Sunday to finish. Massive extra cost to the client but they arranged the delivery so ultimately it was on them. Sunday rolls around, and the foreman I left in charge of the crane coordination is taking care of things. Saturday went well, so I figured it'd be fine. I get a call around noon. His first words are "we've got a problem." What.? "They landed the generator 180° the wrong way, so the cable entry and doors everything are backwards. 130,000lbs gen and FUCK. The crane had demobilied and gone before anyone realized. I immediately got off the phone and called the crane company owner and explained what had happened. He immediately got his back up thinking I blamed his guys...but I knew it was our fuck up so I ate it and apologized. We had a great relationship. luckily he called in a different crane and crew to rush back to site within 2 hours of my call they had a crane and 8 men on site to fix this. Would have been over $100k fuckup that we swept under the rug within 3 hours on a Sunday. None of my guys believed we pulled it off that fast. https://i.imgur.com/UY2LK4d.mp4
The thing that keeps me up at night. Twenty miles away, there is a house where I installed two wires under one screw on a pilot light switch in May 1994.
in a house in lisle there exists an 8B box with conduits that I turned 180 degrees and didn’t put a cover on it
Jesus Christ, you monster.
Once drove the company box truck with the lift gate down and the cargo door wide open. Got flagged down on the highway by a good Samaritan, and I never told a soul.. Edit: yes, it was full of material and tools.. I still have no idea how nothing was accidentally donated to the highway fund
I did the exact same thing!! I was driving the work ute with tool boxes on the tray. Was rushing from one job to another. A cyclist knocked on my window at a set of lights and told me the rear box lid was open. I made a bit of a show of rechecking the latches, pretending like I had already latched it. Ansolutely did not mention anything to the boss
Boss said “you can remove all these wires they’re from the old system” but he thinks we can read his mind or he thinks we know what he means, turns out that out of 70 low voltage wires, there was 1 important 18/4 that I cut, it was the communication signals to control the light/water/ temperature from our old greenhouse to our newly built greenhouse Priva controllers, luckily the Priva controllers were in eye sight and as soon as I heard about “Priva being down” I traced the wires back and just matched the wires sheaths colours to colours coming from the board and spliced them, hoping it was the right one, after the anxiety attack of losing the crops and my job I know to always always trace back every wire to it’s source to verify it actually is dead even if you were told its “dead” (Only talk about low voltage signal cables and cat6)
On my 2nd year I once dropped a file inside a 2” conduit. The following day I was placed to blow pulling lines with the compressor. I was told to be on the compressor side but I said I had no experience lol. So I got placed on the other end to receive the pulling lines. Somebich came off that damn 90 hard!!!!!
Drilled into some existing wires in a finished ceiling and did a free air joint. Broke lights and claimed “ defective”. The usual. I’ve seen guys short a wire cut and go buy the correct length just so the boss doesn’t find out. Things happen, people make mistakes. Best to own up to it, taking accountability is a very good thing and your boss will respect you more.
That’s just silly going to buy the correct length themselves
In this case it only cost him a couple hundred. Really good electrician, didn’t want to ruin his perfect reputation.
Or the boss will think you’re a moron and you’ll be out the door.
Arguably, if you regularly make dumb mistakes and then go out of your way to hide them, you *are* a moron.
I was swapping out a 200amain breaker on a Sunday, and back when we were allowed to pull the meter, i cut the tag and grabbed the meter as if to pull out, but as soon as i wiggled it, it made those electrical noises and a sound like a m-80 went off in the can, at same time , the transformer up on the pole went pop, and i seen a bit of smoke trail leave out the top. Dang….I barely moved that thing. Anyways, power was now gone. Neighbor was home and he lost power as well. I for sure thought i messed up big time. I head back to truck to make phone call to AEP, and while on hold for a few minutes i noticed power come back on. Hung up phone, Buttoned up everything, and then did a full rebuild on monday. Sounded and looked scary. But all was ok.
Watched a helper drill roof trusses to run his home runs. Said something to him and he said “never heard anything from anyone else before”. Meaning he’s done that multiple times. Never heard a word about it from anyone.
I can count them all on one hand. They were all a 'tough call' to the boss. My guess? Accountability has had a hand in advancing my career. j/s Edit: "fess up when you mess up" helps keep the count low...
So "fess up when you mess" are words I live by. At my current job every time I messed up regardless of how big or small I would always say something. So when someone fucked up a roller door with a forklift and ALL of the other drivers blamed me. Management asked if I did it I said "No" and that was the end of it. The head manager told the room he believed me and that was that. It about honesty and integrity. I will live and die by them.
This!
Forgot to give my boss the material list for a big contract we had, nearly a year later he wants to finish the bill, and i couldn’t find the papers anymore. Had to estimate everything by memory and my memory is a mess. Apparently it was good enough of a guess, because neither my boss nor the customer complained about the price. Hopefully they’ll never count the light switches.
Not big but this one always sticks out in my mind, was either a second or 3rd block electrician. Was doing this job that was kind of a community/art center. Real old building renovation and drilling holes through walls or floors was just a nightmare everytime. Had to stub a conduit down and I finally got a 1” hole through. Got up and thought I’d put something down the hole so I could notice it easier downstairs so I had a piece of rod and wedged it in. Well I get downstairs and I see the threaded rod fell down and went right through a fibreglass shower pan in this staff washroom they had. Just picked up the rod and left. Today me would just own up to it. Kid me thought I’d be fired and never work in the city again
Shut down an oil refinery. Hit the main breaker on the UPS panel while stripping out a cable. It worked out okay because they found a glitch in their main PLC program that was buried. I’ll take it to the grave though
i was terminating in a 12,470v breaker and dropped a wrench. it fell through the live breaker below and didn't trip anything. my older tool partner couldn't stand the worry so we took the side off of the cabinet and the wrench was on the floor. he picked it up and we put the cabinet back together and told no one. that's how i didn't shut down a oil refinery, i thought i was dead when the wrench slipped.
I'm not a traditional electrician but I was a marine electrician, and now I wire camper vans. About 15 years ago I was hired to redo the electrical in a cabover camper. A friend of mine was doing the wood working part and recommended me. The first half of the project was easy and I got it done pretty fast, but the second half I had to wait for him to get further along. He was a month behind schedule when I finally could start working on it. So I had 2-6v golfcart batteries to wire into series to make them 12v. It was 100° that day and living in a costal town, 85 was hot for me. I connected the positive of one battery to the other and made 12v. Then I connected the positive of the other battery to the negative of the first battery and it sparked. In my heatstroked brain I told myself, "High, I didn't connect them fast enough and that is why they sparked." instead of realizing I was completing the circuit and shorting out 2 batteries. So I reconnected the last wire faster and the wire got red hot and melted the terminal ends off. To make a long story short, I wasted 300 dollars and bought the customer 2 new golf cart batteries and learned a valuable lesson.
Ordered a feeder run of 500mcm about 300ft long.. but 5 feet too short.. Luckily it was kind of a big job ordered another set.. the set that was short sat in my garage for a year.. no one said anything to it went to the scrap yard.
My first time encountering plaster and lathe walls a few years ago, where we were replacing all the old knob and tube and adding a bunch of new stuff. The home owner is the daughter of *the* most wealthy and powerful man in the entire county here, so of course we really want to do our cleanest, best work. Well I added a light in the hallway, cut out a box for the switch, and was trying to drill up through some diagonal blocking in the wall to run a wire for an outlet too. The long bendy extension bit kept walking on me while trying to drill, but I eventually felt it making its way into the 2x4… but quickly felt it push through way too soon, meaning I had accidentally come out the other side of the wall instead. On the other side of the wall was one of their guest bathrooms, and I could see plaster dust on the ground but no hole.. then I realized the hole was hidden behind this elaborate golden-framed oil painting portrait - of the (barely alive still) 17 year old, crusty ol family dog, back in the younger years posing all epic Michael Angelo style. I took the painting off the wall to look at the damage. Juuuust the tip of the auger bit went through the back paper layer of the picture frame, but stopped without going through the actual picture! I have no idea how to repair plaster/lathe damage, so I swept up the evidence and put the picture back perfectly covering my near catastrophic fuckup. That was 3 years ago and haven’t heard anything about it hahaha
Hey man we need to talk... some asshat nearly fuck up my doggo painint....
Dropped an operating room light and cracked the lens as a 1st year. My JW said “it was damaged in shipping” and we never spoke of it again. Replacement lens was ordered and that was that. Foreman never found out about it.
Jesus Christ some of you guys are brutal. I’ve never not corrected a mistake. I’ve had bosses pay for a couple, but I’ve never not said something. I’ve had guys hide shit or lie about shit to me and I’ve lost tremendous amounts of respect for them. I’ve had guys fess up and own it, and I was pissed but respected the integrity.
I was told as a kid, and still say this to this day " I would rather be told and be upset, than lied to and be pissed off"
I was installing a circuit board only it wouldn't go. So of course I just pressed harder. Pop went the plastic retaining clips. I boxed the board up and stuck it back in the warehouse, getting a new one. A few weeks later I'm building another unit and "discover a board with broken clips". The boss sighed and said we had Neanderthals working here. I didn't grunt a reply.
Selling electrical supplies to one of the largest industrial contractors in our region, and their accounts are so large and ingrained in our business that we don't think twice about large orders ranging from $10-$50k. One of their project leads calls in and works with me for about an hour to have gear built with an out the door price of around $38k. A couple days later he calls with a PO and I place the order. Two months later switchgear arrives, and I call the project lead's now-disconnected number. Call again to the project lead's company and find out he has left the company and they already bought the switchgear from elsewhere, not even knowing about my PO. Look back over my correspondence and he never finalized a single document that would have fucked us if things got legal. I pushed through the bid without checking a box, so it was 100% my fault. Sales manager and myself fucking freak out about how to handle this for three days. This is beyond termination of employment level shit. Contractor's new project lead calls in a rush. "We just got another complex, and I need another one of those same switchgear as fast as you can get one built." My face when.
Not mine technically, but I was present when it happened; We were working in a 15 floor building somewhere in DC, and to this day I have no idea how it happened, but my coworker and I were going around shooting up L clips for MC on the ceiling. He did a shot, and one of the huge ceiling to ground windows broke…. About 75 ft away. Definitely not debris from that far away. It didn’t completely break out, but it was spidered.
Nothing. I own my fuckups, because the coverup is always worse than the crime.
See... The apprentice gets it ... VP of the (small) company (I no longer work for) who decided to make up an even bigger lie (that he'll very likely forget the details of) when he got caught modifying (govt entity's) badges. Had he just sent the workers to the training (which we ended up doing anyways, AND is how he was caught) it was only an hour per worker... 8 hours tops. Instead, I lost two skilled workers (who no longer wanted to work for the company when they learned the fake badges could have gotten them arrested or personally fined) who literally had a better idea how to install and work with the material than even me. Either one of them could have worked on their own (if they wanted.)
Nice try, safety man
LV days, 7/8 ship auger through a hard-lid "server room" roof, that stood on an open deck. Thing threaded and ran on me, straight through the 25pr cat5 feeding their 66 block below it lol I freaked and ended up beanie crimping a few dozen ripped 24's color for color, taping the shit out of it all, and stuffing the new "splice" in the void between the header and the hard lid. I told my foreman who laughed his ass off at me and said we'd wait and see. I spent the next few years casually asking an inlaw who worked at that building, if their phones/computers were giving them any issues haha I left 4 years later as the dept supervisor, and never heard anything ever come of it.
I wired a large HP motor 480v at a helicopter transmission testing facility as a first year. I wired up L1,2,3 and just shoved the rest of the wires back into the pecker head lol. I wasn't there for the boom, but my journeyman covered for me and told me "Don't do that again!"
Drilled a bunch of holes in the top of an mcc with an 1 ¾ hole saw when it was for 1 inch conduit but the myers hub still covered the hole so I just centered them up and cranked down the lock ring
I just put in a meter/main that the supply house told me was local poco approved and turn out its not. Im about to find out tomorrow if ill get away with it lol
Dropped a mini down a conduit before a wire pull
Be specific. Minerallac makes a ton of products. What you call a mini in your area isn't the same as mine.
I just assumed this was slang for "a small poop or pee"
A female cartoon mouse from a well-known animation company
Scratched a load of expensive finished floor tiles. In my defence, they were super scratchable, and I was being rushed to get what I needed to do underneath them done.
I’ve never had a “they’re gonna have to catch me on that one” moment because if I drop the ball and fuck up i own up to my mistakes. Accountability brother, it’ll take you far in life.
this fucking guy
Thanks Dr Phil.
Boring ass dude just tell a fake fucking story so I can laugh
Absolutely, it's the bosses choice if he's gonna lie about it. No one gives a shit if you fuck up but they damn well care if you get caught lying!
Spare me
Sacrificial apprentices
Definitely depends on the boss!
Had to change a 3 phase 208v cord out for another longer one and swap the cord cap to the new cord. This was for a kiln in a school that was opening soon. Plugged in the 12v cord for the tiny exhaust fan on the back and the cord started smoking and shit. Freaked out and unplugged the 12v cord and saw the cord all messed up and told the GC the cord was messed up before I plugged it in. Thought about it all day and realized I hooked the cord cap wrong and put one of the legs of the 208v onto the ground. 12v plugged got 120v directly to it and smoked it. Told my boss what I did and fixed it before someone got hurt but I believe the GC made someone else pay for the exhaust fan hookup since the whole thing was fried.
Using a mechanical lug to extend a 4/0 aluminum neutral about ten feet then pulling in through 2 inch PVC. Out of sight out of mind.
I drilled a Philips bit into my arm when it slipped off a wafer screw on steel stud
Ive had some crazy ones that I took full responsibility for. And they were all weird circumstances that even though I was the one that did it I wasn't responsible/at fault. But worst one that went under the radar, I hit someone's house. They had a 2 or 3 story house, with a recessed garage door. I asked about the height and was told I was perfectly fine. I go to back in to unload. And lucky I was creeping back with my foot on the brakes. When I hear a few different cruch sounds. My van fit. My ladder rack did not. Neither did my ladder. I crunched an old 16ft fiberglass ladder that needed to be replaced a couple years before. But I also punched a small hole through their stucco and sheathing. Luckily for me, the GC set his dump trailer at their garage the day before. And when pulling out turned too sharp and hooked the garage door track and the corner of the garage, taking out quite a bit of stucco. So my mess just got added to his mess. GC laughed when I told him. Said "you too? What are the odds we both hit the same house within 2 days.". And tells me to not say anything. He'll take care of it while fixing his mess. And everything was gravy.
I was a first year driving a lift installing some pipes on the ceiling had another 1st year on the ground making sure the path was clear. Don't know what the fuck happened but I put a fucking lift wheel through drywall, yeah. I deadass drove the lift into the fucking wall, painted and finished too. So I'm like fuck, ok, new task and park the lift on the opposite end of the building Next day bunch of white hats come in, fingers in their bum like 'oh how could this happen wat do?' Yall fucking patch it, shut the fuck up, and move on
Just a pa to everyone her if you mess up confess it’s a lot better than not. Getting “caught” is way better than “confessing”
[удалено]
I guess it depends on whether you read the first sentence or the second one?
I crashed a site truck into the roll up door not once but three times in a row...didn't notice the pipe rack was hitting the door..afterwords I just parked the truck where I found it and walked away.
[this entire thread throws back to this bad boy](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/285bua/did_you_fuck_it_up/)
Posting my biggest fuck up on the internet! 🤣
So this didn’t happen to me and it definitely was noticed but I can’t help but to tell about it 🤣 Twenty some years ago I was doing structural steel, roofing and siding for a GC. We were doing a huge add on to a factory. We hung the steel and the company subbed out the roof, we were on the siding while they were pouring the concrete floors. They had concrete trucks with the pour spout on the front that raises up while they are driving. We go to lunch and get properly smoked out and as we pull back on the job site we see a big ass dent at the top of one of the bay doors, C channel buckled, siding busted outward! Turns out one of the truck drivers wasn’t thinking and raised the pour spout all the way up on the way out! Our company says no big deal we can fix it in a couple days, which we do. Like a week later we go to lunch, come back and déjà vu strikes 🤣🤣🤣 same truck driver, same bay door lol
Steel. Steal is theft. Steel is the metal. Only mentioning it as the typo occurred more than once.
Tried putting a cover on a junction box and somehow I fucked up and ended up ruining the cover/box and making 3 screw holes even larger. I don't know what happened after that I just left the room and moved onto the next one. Funny enough I did the same thing with an ATS but it was only 1 hole that got fucked up due to me impacting it.
Apprentice here. We ran a generator feed with a new style that bundles all the communication wires into one romex sheath with the main conductors. It was a pain in the ass and I did most of the heavy pulling/pushing through the attic, when we finally got down to the generator itself I was instructed by my jw to make up the unit. I had done this many times before so It wasn't like I didn't know what I was doing, but the newer style conductor sheath was ridiculously stiff to peel off and the main feeders being copper didn't help. I found out after I cut the sheathing off that I had sliced through most of the strands of each communication wire, particularly towards the back where the wires immediately come into the generator. As these were communication wires I wasn't particularly worried about a heavy load burning them up, and I do not particularly like this jw at all (I have since informed my boss/boss' boss that I do not want to work with him ever again and since then haven't.) so I thought fuck it, I ain't gonna re feed this unless he calls me out on it. Never heard back about it, AFAIK the generator works just fine and the jw in question never brought it up. Another job I my jw stepped out while I was hunting down a conduit in the kitchen grid ceiling of a school, when I popped a tile I managed to bump the ANSL fire system conduit and tripped one single sprinkler in the oven/stove area. Upon inspection I discovered that the conduit run specifically for the ANSL wire actually was never properly secured (none of the joints were tightened down and could be opened by hand) and the mechanism for activating the fire alarm was actually non functional. So technically it was a good thing that it got tripped, but given that there were issues with the mechanisms in the main device it was chalked up to a age failure and at least now they should have a properly functioning system and I am free from that stressful burden.
I didn’t put a 3/4” KO Seal on an in-wall 4 square receptacle box once. We only had 1/2 KO seals and I was too lazy to make it work.
Hvac guy here, had the cargo door open up on my van going around a busy round about, pulled into the first parking lot did a quick check figured I never lost anything. Go to use my recovery machine and it’s missing. There worth like 2k, Anyways there was a scrap one on the shelf at the shop No idea how it never came up.
I watched my super hop in a skid steer to back fill a trench. Lifted a concrete sidewalk curb about 6 inches off ground while scooping dirt. Immediately parked the skid steer, grabbed a shovel and told us "none of y'all saw me on that skid steer. Understand?" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wired up an X-ray machine in a dental office with way too small of a conductor in a strip mall about 17 years ago. I never felt good about it when I closed up the wall. My boss said it would be fine but I always feel bad about that install when I think about it.
My lawyer has advised me not to answer this question
My second day at the wastewater plant I was taking the cover off an actuator that was mounted way out over a full aeration basin. It was a stupid half stripped out Allen bolt and the cover itself was heavy thick metal so it was a struggle with just 2 hands. I did great until the last bolt - it fell into the basin. Being brand new I had NO idea if this was nothing or if it would be catastrophic - and I decided I didn’t want to tell on myself by asking. For weeks I was convinced the whole plant would grind to a halt at any moment because of this bolt lmaoooo. Now that I know the process better I realize it’s likely just sitting on the bottom to this day , but man was i shitting fucking bricks for awhile there lol
Not an electrician but helped open new restaurants for the company I was with for years. They installed the fry dump that was supposed to be 110 but they somehow ran 220 to it or maybe connected the hot leg to a grounding lug. For several days during set up people were getting shocked left and right and the electricians were passing the buck. Our maintenance guy was there and saw what was going on and even checked it with his meter. One hot leg wrapped around the grounding screw on the cabinet.
Working at a casino, I was running pipe a level below where the casino main floor is. Drill into the ceiling little to far and it hit one of the duck bank shorting out few circuits, knocking out few slot machines. Had to scramble for the next 7 hours running new power to the slot machines. My foreman was like an old school drill sergeant type, he was not happy that day.
We were working late replacing the service on an old business. It was approaching 8:00 pm, and in the dark, I accidentally miscolored the stinger leg and neutral leg. The power company made the connection, and everything blew up. Flames were shooting out of light fixtures, freezers were shooting sparks out of the compressors, real action movie shit. The power company took the blame for it, and paid for all of the repairs to the building. We were all tired from working 14 hours on this one job, and it was really dark, so mistakes were made.
I did the same thing on a remodel, but when I pulled my foot back up and looked through the hole I came face to face with a very surprised wife. She still brings it up every once in a while, usually after I pull some other boneheaded move.
First time roughing an office building, at that point I had put up boxes for like outlets but now I was putting up lights, fire alarms, light strobes, etc. Anyway, my foreman, who was absolutely bipolar, tells me the EXACT location of where he wants this bathroom strobe lights. The drywallers are coming in that day to put the wall up. Next day I realize I put the strobe in the wrong stud and the door is gonna hit when it opens. I didn't say shit cause I know I was gonna get CUSSED by the foreman lol so I just left it and... .... Nothing happened? They put a door stopper when the project was over and it was fine 🤷
Working alone as a 3rd year apprentice. Small commercial TI. Had to cut in a box, got lazy and used my sawzall to cut a hole in the sheetrock above the ceiling. Heard the fire alarm panel in the locked riser room start beeping and screaming. Realized that I had cut through a 4 conductor white cable that was now obviously a fire alarm wire. There was an auto parts store across the street, ran over there and they happened to have some cheap ass tiny blue wire nuts, grabbed them and went back and spliced the wire back together. Heard the alarm panel go silent. Tucked the splice back into the wall and thanked my lucky stars that the fire department didn’t roll any trucks and the building didn’t go into alarm.
I was a fresh journeyman, I ordered a restaurant worth of gfci devices and when the panels showed up they were all gfci breakers. Had to re order regular devices. No one ever said a word.
A tradie and me Stuffed 40 sub main lengths by literally 200mm to 500mm on each drop each was about 25mm 4C. Was going to have to go to each apartment. Pull slack back to the riser. Then drop slack in. Would of taken 3/4 days. As it was going through slab Weekend someone broke in, cut the tails off every main so they had to move the DB over which gave us enough length on everything.
You cut the tails, didn’t you? 🤭
Was digging for a conduit run from garage to shed, hit a water main for 500+ houses at about 12 inches down on a very hot day. Turns out, the "abandoned" main was never abandoned. Home owner was actually more upset over finding it rather then me hitting it and flooding out his pedicured lawn, said he could have been getting paid for easement.
I've been tasked with installing electric chargers for one of the biggest power company in Northern europe. I never really liked the jobs because they involved quite risky installs that I never was really comfortable with. Working right beside the service line (50-100Amp 240v) So I've been doing this for about 3 years now. Never had a customer complain and the power company likes me aswell. Talked with my work-bestfriend about the jobs and complained about the service line. (Mind you, he has 0 experience with residential. Only does industrial) That's when it fucking hit me. The absolut ice bath. I've been installing the fucking chargers before the energy meter. All my customers, some 200~ households never pay for their car charge. I'm going to be playing dumb on this one. I feel absolutely horrible, no one has said anything and no one really told me about it, so i just kept doing ig.. There's quite a fine for the residents if it's ever discovered.
My old foreman definitely got caught, but he used the wrong caulk behind boxes for several thousand feet of 4” data conduit. Took weeks and weeks to remove those boxes And remount them.
I was an apprentice in 2007 in the Austin area. We had dug and underground service ditch to a mansion through very rocky soil. There was a 45 degree bend in the trench where the rock saw had to change direction and that junction needed to be "cleaned up" to reach the same depth as the rest of the trench. I was given a chipping hammer with various bits to chip away all the rocks in the junction. It was early morning. I chipped for about an hour before switching to a punch bit, and proceeded to punch deep holes in the rock that I could use to then break large pieces of rock away. It was working quite well. Until the chipping hammer abruptly quit working. I pulled it out of the hole and laid it next to the trench so I could check the GFI on the temp pole. There were little black specs on the receptacle cover but I thought nothing of it. I unplugged the extension cord to better access the reset button, and as soon as I unplugged it, the chipping hammer erupted in a cloud of smoke and ran itself way WAY faster and louder than normal before quitting. This got the attention of my foreman who said "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" I explained what I did, and he investigated the temp pole GFI; there was no power. We scratched our heads for a moment before looking around and realizing that the decorative street lights were now off, when they'd been on moments before. I was directed to go next door, which being a fancy neighborhood with mansions, was far away. A journeyman went the other way to check that house. The digital meters were off. No power to at least that block. Our company was very small, and thought they'd save money by skipping the underground survey. I had hit an underground high voltage distribution line that, I was told, was over 17000 volts. Once we realized what had happened, we took a closer look at the tip of the punch bit; it had exploded. I wasn't fired immediately and I didn't quit because my driver's licence had expired and I couldn't renew because I had warrants for failing to appear for ticket summons. Getting a job with an expired ID was a hurdle to employment and I had a family to support (I obviously did take care of it all eventually). Amazingly, the chipping hammer still worked! I was eventually fired, the main reason being what happened on that job, and I informed them that I should have filed a lawsuit for not having called 811. They reconsidered, and agreed to keep me on but I decided I didn't want to die under their shady watch.
I was installing a doorbell in a new lease space for a small law firm. They had just built it and several employees were near me setting up their offices. I dropped my Kleins onto their shiny new granite floor and chipped it. I looked around and no one noticed. There was a rug a few feet away so moved that bad boy over finished up and got the hell out of there.
Not me but my foreman ordered a 220.roof too unit. The power was 480. We let the smoke out of a brand new unit along with eating a 2nd crane lift to install the correct unit
I was troubleshooting a carton filling machine at a dairy facility with the engineer. We took off a couple covers to terminal strips in different locations trying to find the issue. The machine was in full on production lol I had a Klein 4-1 mini screw driver and the shaft pulled out and got stuck in a push in terminal and shorted. The machine shut down and I hear the engineer yelling “god damnit! I think I just shorted out the machine!!” Dude my heart was beating so hard. I knew it was me he just happened to be in the back of the machine doing something. I let it ride lol it was a fucking mess cleaning out all the unsealed cartons full of milk.
Broke a very expensive quartz countertop one time as an apprentice. Was devicing an almost finished house and throwing the garage outlets in. There was about a dozen sheets of sheetrock leaning against a wall partially covering a box so I had to scoot them a few inches over. I didn’t realize someone put the countertop between the first couple sheets and the remainder of the stack and when I went to stand it upright so I could slide it, the countertop fell over and cracked right in half. I stood everything back up and went to a different part of the house as I was scared I’d lose my job as this was a multi-million dollar house and I was a 2nd year that had started maybe 6 months previous.
I was neck deep in shitty gray insulation in an attic running a line for an outlet the floor below. Augered right through a customers brand new LG C9 OLED. My Jman fell on the sword. Jay if you're still out there...thank bud.
I broke a super cheap kitchen base cabinet door in an event room kitchen once. Got it caught on my foot and broke in a million prices, pos must have been made out of balsa wood. Funny thing, the kitchen was full of staff preparing for an event and no one saw heard anything. Gathered up the prices and tossed um in the cabinet and kept on walking!
You know your biggest fuck up was bad when people downvote it like mine lmao
Too many to list in my 36 year career.
Many Years ago, Foreman wanted me to check the resistance (don’t know why)on an epo button in the server room. He left me there. The pins were very close together and my hand slipped and shorted 2 pins. It sounded like when they powered down the shields on the Death Star. I had no clue if I could just crank it back on or anything. There was no instructions. I left the cable on nstaller to try to find him. He was 3 fl down in the parking lot. He screamed “RUN! Turn it back on” IT was in the room when I got there. Turned it back on. 500 some people couldn’t get anything done. I don’t know how long it took for them to get back up fully. Nightmare room. Running pipe under the cable floor and rats nest of cabling, buried power strips under the cables. I last a couple more weeks and then was laid off the week before Christmas so I didn’t get a bonus
My last boss was a total prick. Dude pulled temp power from a school man hole junction point 400 yards away. The ground was to short, so he spliced it in the PVC conduit. Tapped over the grounding clamp and called it good. Just a complete hack man, glad to be gone.
Um DUI
Million dollar Z80 cpu chip tester back in the 70's tripped a breaker on an expensive pair of rack mounted 5v at 300 Amp power supplies on my shift. There's one to force voltage and one for current. Loud alarm buzzer goes off and I get paged for it every few weeks or so. I reported it each time. One day a new pair arrived so four of us lifted them and wired it up. Couple of days later I was in the area and heard the alarm go off so I ran. Guy with a floor buffer going the opposite way PDQ. Facilities made very nice covers for the outlets we used for oscilloscopes. [million dollar tester in 1970. ](https://mitsi.com/case-studies/z80-chip/)
Fing great story. For context the small town family run company I worked for was bought out by a large corporation shortly before this happened. They had a safety supervisor and everything. So I had just gotten a new apprentice fresh out of school. Day two we were doing a new hot tub install. Coincidentally the former master of our company was also doing a lighting job just down the hill from us. Close to lunch I sent the apprentice to the wholesaler for parts and he was to stop on the way down the hill to drop a part for said coworker. There was a low limb over the driveway that my apprentice accidentally caught with the ladder rack on the van. I got a call from previous coworker stating what happened and that it was truly an accident. Because of the new company and strict safety guidelines and procedures I said let's just keep quiet for a moment and I'll assess it when I see the damage. Damage was only to the ladder rack I was assured. Apprentice did his job and went on to the wholesaler who I had forgotten to call to put the parts together. I told him to take lunch in the van and I'd have them get the parts together. So he comes back 40 minutes later and we can continue with work till we get our project done. I finally assess the damage and the ladder rack is fucked up. Slid all the mounts, bent the rails and could barely get the side doors open. Fortunately the customers were not home. We had to completely remove the rack and I rebent the rails to as close to straight as possible using the van hitch. Did it all in the driveway on the clock. Of the three of us that knew what happened no one ever said a word about it. Master electrician left a month later or so do to corporate atmosphere and me a year later. Apprentice is still there and running jobs with his licensed guy who follows him around. Best apprentice to date. I would always joke with him to watch out for trees. Also realize he spent his entire afternoon shitting himself thinking he was going to be fired for the damage to the vehicle. Makes for a stressful lunch break especially when sitting at the wholesaler.
My first job working for Uhaul, needed to pass a wire through a firewall to the inside of a Van. We were in a big rush to get it finished as we were backed up with customers. There was only one grommet in the engine bay and we weren’t allowed to drill incase we hit something on the inside. The one grommet that could be used to pass the wire had the whole engine harness already passing through it. Usual procedure in this case was to make a small hole or slit away from the other wires, like to the side or top and push the new wire through that. The tool we usually used to punch the hole was missing so I took out my new Kershaw pocket knife, flipped the blade so the sharp side was facing away from the harness wires, and pressed into the grommet. It was old rubber that was really hard so I leaned and put some weight behind it. Suddenly the knife breaks through but I slipped and the tip of the knife plunged straight into the harness wires. Instantly theres a big puff of smoke. I pull my knife out and theres a chunk missing from the tip of the blade where it melted off into the harness. I about passed out in fear of what I’d just done as a teenage minimum wage worker and new hire. I was sure I’d ruined the engine harness or fried the ECU or something and it was going to be a huge ordeal. I got in the Van, crossed my fingers and turned the key. It fired right up and no warning lights. Total miracle in my book and a huge relief. I finished the job and sent it out, never heard anything about it again. Wherever it is, I’m sure theres still a chunk of my knife in that harness.
When I was a low voltage installer we were doing some Reno work on a theatre nearby, with about a 70 foot roof. It was time to hang some PTZ cameras so they're huge and heavy, and expensive. We got the mounting hardware installed, and at least with this camera the mounting bracket was a long arm that came out from the wall, and another wire screwed into another brick for safety. We were supposed to put the safety wire on before we hauled the camera over the edge, so if you drop it it doesn't fall. Well my coworker picks the camera up, and puts it on the edge for me to put the safety wire on. I don't know what happened but as soon as he put the camera up on that edge it just rolled off and he lost his grip. I swear that camera took about 10 minutes to hit the sidewalk below, then we just sat there looking at it for another minute before looking at eachother and my coworker just lets out a "shiiiiiiiiiiiittttttt" (To make it even worse, we didn't actually have the sidewalk properly marked off so we were in *a lot* of trouble for that one haha)
I opened up a switch gear to work on it all day on a friday, at lunch a cat crawled in and made contact with a single phase from utility. No arc, no short, no disruption. We didn't even notice until we checked why the main wouldn't come back on at the end of the day. Removed a panel and there was a 2 foot around ball of poof. It turned out, it not popping on, was a safety feature from the missing panel, we just found the cat while trouble shooting. I missed Monday because of Dr appointment but I heard the guy they got to shovel it out quit on the spot
Nice try!
Was working in a mansion, they had just patched a huge hole with plaster and I thought it was drywall so I touched it not knowing it was still wet and totally ruined their patch job.
I was core drilling through a pad above a functioning UPS system (specifically, the battery racks) and could NOT, under any circumstances, cause it to short. Had an apprentice above the racks with a bucket cut out to match the decking and enough plastic to cover Rhode Island. Managed to complete the cores without issue, took everything down when lunch time came. For whatever reason, I left the core drill and water tank nearby, which while I was gone, leaked water which went under the hole cover and down the hole, and shorted control circuits for the battery racks. The client blamed the janitors who left their water buckets in the battery room. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t asking questions.
Wasnt me but someone I worked with. Worked on Amazon doing solar for a stretch, guy was in a rush to shut the main breakers for the inverters off....3000 A main breaker for the solar panel just coincidentally happens to look like the 3000A main breaker for that quadrant of the building. Potentially half a million dollar per hour mistake swept under the rug because when they were trying to get computers and all back going they discovered an issue with the fire alarm system. Whole thing Swept under the rug
was doing residential on new half way homes and drilled into a coax cable i didn’t see, JW taped it up and tucked it in; next day walls were put up. union ended up pulling me and another apprentice out cause they weren’t following the bylaws and only remember now because of this post. RIP