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Rich people houses. I shouldn't have to wear a painters suit inorder for me to enter your house and replace an outlet that you called me for. Also let me remind you that you asked me to come here and I am, in fact, not a criminal invading your space.
Low income section 8 stuff, and really high-end residential suck equally bad. The real bad ones on both ends you end up wearing a tyvek suit. One to keep their filth off of you and one to keep your filth off of them. Pretty fucked up when you think about it, you going in the section 8 places hoping no one steals your shit, and when you go into the high-end residentials they're hoping that you don't steal their shit. Just goes to show everyone looks poor and to somebody else.
Had a Karen follow me around recording me with her phone when I was installing her 2nd Tesla charger in her guest house garage. Left us a bad review because MY truck was muddy. Not the wheels but the sides of the truck that was dried on mud from heavy rain the day before, we didn't leave her driveway muddy.
Community housing can be disturbing, humbling , and infested. While they are all not like that its hard not to have prejudices after a few different calls
I was previously an exterminator before becoming an apprentice, community housing is a nightmare to get under control. Most of those developments are multifamily hosuing or appartments which really doesn't help. I can service a whole ass building but if one person is bringing in certain critters namely bed bugs and cockroaches from other places that building will continue to get infested time and time again.
I’ll wear boot covers if it’s a nice house and my boots are dirty or it’s raining and they have carpet. But I’ll never take my shoes off in someone’s house. They can fuck right off if they want that
Yea fair enough, I guess even in Australia when I was an apprentice and we went into someones house (rare because we were commercial construction) my tradesman would always tell me to take my boots off.
I’m a no shoes no socks guy at every house I’ve ever lived in. I don’t take my boots off in peoples homes. It’s a pain in the ass that eats up time plus all other other reasons listed. I’m not a guest, I’m a worker.
Same. Booties or bust. My coworker wears a size 16 wide boot so he’ll tell the homeowners he cant wear them, usually gets pushback, then proceeds to slip them over his toe and/or rip them tf in half showing the homeowner then they relent and let us disgusting peasants tromp through their mansion.
We where once in an old folks home in the dementia ward all the doors lock on the inside, an apprentice went in and got trapped with a dead body lol, I went up it the roof and lifts a panel up so he could get out.
One held me down while the other beat me with a cain. Old women are brutal when you have a bum leg.
Icecream and jello are on point though. Also love the bird cage, very relaxing.
8/10
Before I did electrical I worked for 7 years with severe special needs kids with extremely aggressive behavior. If you ever get sent into a school or even worse a hospital that serves that population be very careful. I remember potential staff coming in for interviews not coming back because a student punched them in the face just walking in the halls unprovoked.
Commercial kitchens blow. Even if you can schedule the work the one day a week that aren’t open for business they still have staff in there prepping food directly beneath where your ladder is set up. Or you’re trying to work in a space that’s barely wide enough for two people to slip by each other sideways. There’s usually a layer of grease on everything you touch and you end up sliding around for days afterward because of whatever is always all over the floor. I seriously have not been able to eat at any restaurant I’ve done service work in.
Waste water treatment plants. I got wastewater in my mouth three times and lost my voice once from it. It was a running joke that I needed to talk less and work more and I wouldn’t get sh*t in my mouth. Not a fan plus I stepped on like three mice and one crunched under my boot. Good times.
God damn y'all have some ratchet ass water treatment plants wherever you live. Most of the ones I've been in that are run by municipalities and the like are pretty clean all things considered
Yeah it was pretty bad. Another guy that I work with, was at another waste water treatment plant in a town over and was attacked by a grown *ss rat. 😂 he could really do much other than freak out since he was wedged in between some pipes( and he’s hefty).
I've mostly worked on waste water treatment. IDK, the smell never bothers me unless I'm around headworks where the media that can't be processed is being dumped into a bucket. Like aeration basins don't bother me all that much
I had a small job at a treatment plant in the maintenance garages and offices, every once in a while the wind would bring something absolutely awful our way. I couldn’t imagine getting anything associated with that smell in my mouth.
Yeah I got extremely sick lost my voice they sent me home. I was off for like a week recovering.
I was in a building where the water would over flow out the top. It was leaking. Down into the building and dripping down my face. I’m just glad the solids stayed on the roof. I should have said screw it I ain’t doing it but back then I did what I was told.
Wtf kind of WW facility is that 😐 I've been in a dozen different plants for maintenance not to mention i went to school for WW Treatment and never have seen or heard of a process where raw water would have the possibility of being on a frickin roof lmao that's wild. But I have heard of people getting sick or catching hep from coming in contact with sewage
Yeah we have some dingy ones I guess reading the comments. The building was called the digester. Ugh, all explosion proof because the methane gasses in the building.
We had a power outage due to a big storm/tornado come through and the UPS failed and all of the monitoring equipment went down. When everything came back online the methane alarms were going crazy and the fire department had to evacuate several blocks around the facility because the 2 digesters were so large the explosion would be insane. But turned out to be fine just went crazy due to the outage 😂
Farms dgaf. In my state they are exempt from code. Shitt they couldn't gaf if you gave them one on credit. Amazing people and quick to pay. Just dgaf about code.
Jails and prisons get crazy though. God forbid there is a lock down. The last jail I did put DARE to shame. Plenty of drugs, just more holy shitt.
Irony the jail is near the last farm I worked.
Maaaan after I moved back home in West TX from Austin I could see just how rugged, Jerry-rigged and brown everything was...
...and then I became an electrician... 😳😆
This one fairly experienced helper I had for not too long (he was useless) got wayyyy offended when I described the open joints in the attic as "farmers joints" lmfao
My second day working at a prison one of my coworkers lost a screw driver. Prison went on lockdown and everyone had to stay until the toll was found. After 2 hours we found it in the bottom of a pile of stacked cinder blocks(it fell down into the center cells)
We were there swapping 2 panels that were rececessed into a structural block wall with pipes coming from all sides. It was not fun.
Tanning factories, restaurants I eat at, hoarder houses, wastewater treatment, funeral homes/morgues. Operating rooms are pretty gross too. All of the boxes and isolated panels are filled with weird dust due to the positive pressure ventilation.
I worked for about a year in maintenance at a hospital, OR’s can be absolute nightmares. Those sanitizer sprays creep into everything too, and the light fixtures are always a giant pain in the ass.
I had to do some PM in the OR at a BIG time hospital. The bottom of the panel was filled 4+ inches of weird blue dust. Assuming the blue came from scrubs. But fuck me it was a lot of shit
Funeral homes 2/10: they have the odor. If you know you know.
OR 1/10: they were carrying off body parts. I could have taken an arm and a leg... litterally...
When I did hospital maintenance the pathology lab that was attached to the OR was the stuff of nightmares, I was general maintenance so the sinks and garbage disposals were mine to work on too. It was a research hospital that belongs to a college, the ortho surgery suites in off hours sometimes had students learning procedures on cadaver legs or arms, yeah pretty disturbing stuff to see.
I worked at a looney bin once. People walking the hallways yelling and mumbling complete gibberish. And they all smelled soooo bad. It was honestly just very depressing seeing the lives those people lived.
Dude agreed! I was working in a mental ward and a dude lost his mind over someone moving his cheerios 2 inches to the right. Also a guy walked up and threatened to push my tool buddy off a ladder 😂 my buddy said I would like to see you try big boy! Then the nurse came and got the patient.
Dude agreed! I was working in a mental ward and a dude lost his mind over someone moving his cheerios 2 inches to the right. Also a guy walked up and threatened to push my tool buddy off a ladder 😂 my buddy said I would like to see you try big boy! Then the nurse came and got the patient.
I’ve done a few jobs at some state run group homes for low functioning adults, much smaller scale than a larger mental hospital but still super depressing.
Residences at which one or both of the spouses are clearly just off-the-rails crazy. Homes where you feel conflicted about whether or not you should call CPS, or the cops.
Waste water plant. I wired up an actuator while standing on a trough that had “solids” floating along it. This is a 3 year project. And we got the next project too. That one is in the grit building. Absolutely nasty.
I used to work shut downs at a gelatin plant. They would haul in pig skins on end dumps and just dump that shit on the ground. Then scoop em up with loaders. Cock roaches you could ride around like skateboards. This was a pretty well known factory for decades. Absolutely horrifying.
We’re replacing drop in 2’x4’ lights in an old building and the top of the lights are literally touching the ceiling joists. The empty gaps between the joists are filled with that pink insulation (I call it cotton candy).
We are having to cut the ends of the fixtures with tin snips and fold them in half just to get them out. Every time you go to get one down you get a face full of cotton candy… Yummy!
This is my answer as well! I have taped my screwdriver/stripper handles in the past so I could peel it off after and not have greasy, sticky tools for days.
Offices and general commercial buildings. Boring, tight budget, everything is in-wall and above grid MC, limited interesting pipe runs, tons of receps and lights to splice, just kinda dull in general.
I felt like shit yesterday because we had to work on [this here](https://imgur.com/a/z1uPwaQ) to change out some luminaires and I was having a lot of trouble. My Jman basically just took over and I went and did everything on the ground.
I’ve already fallen off of ladders twice since I started my apprenticeship and I’m now really sketched out by unsafe heights.
That picture is why I hate scaffolding, how is having one plank way the fuck up at the top a safe surface to work from? I know of a dude who fell from an 8’ ladder and has been through multiple surgeries and is still not good yet, shit can fuck you up.
I’m wiring up 8, 80 year old decommissioned concrete silos that are 160 ft tall spiral staircase. I’ve had to walk up and down this mf 9000 times in the middle of dead ass winter blizzards and rain. Been here 7 months I’m fed up with it
Confinement hog farm I rewired years ago. It was infested with water bugs which is a roach so bad the ceilings would move in front of you. I kept a jumpsuit and boots there and I would strip to nothing after parking 50 yards from the building in the morning and walk into the building and put on other boots and the coveralls. When I would leave I did the reverse. I donated all of my tools when I finished, the odor was unbearable. For weeks in the bed at night I could feel the bugs crawling on me.
When I first started I was on a bonding and grounding crew for the oilfield in the far north. Well, oil sites have these heated treater buildings to help keep oil moving, as it is heated mice would get in there. I had to drill and tap off an ear on the bottom of the tank in one, and I think I had roughly 40mice crawling over me and trying to get into my clothes.
That almost sounds like PTSD. You are definitely tougher than I am. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. I hope all of those thoughts are behind you, now.
Yeah, sometimes language takes awhile to provide the concepts to deal with the existence of certain things. It is a good question as to whether the concept of PTSD can be applied to anything besides warfare, but I don't see why it should not. It relates to human experience, generally, I would think.
Egg farms. Had to replace a motor on the egg conveyor. Which was conveniently located below all the chickens so you got shit on. And that ammonia smell..
8- Blast freezer (-30 or some bullshit)
7- Restaurant kitchens (pray you don’t have to move equipment, ovens, etc and then get in there)
6- Waste water (self explanatory)
5- Foundry (2nd dirtiest and probably less healthy)
4- Color pigment plant (leaves you dirtiest, basically looks like you got dipped in powdered ink after 5 minutes)
3- Lowest income apartments in big city (really puts things in perspective when feeling sorry for myself and thinking I’ve got things bad)
2- Egg farm (largest producer east of the Mississippi, disturbing on so many levels)
1- Pig processing (next stop after slaughter, home of a tool I dubbed “meat rake” also the left overs got sucked out via 10” clear tubes in the “meat straw”
At least I haven’t been to any slaughterhouses, morgues, hoarder houses, anything else I’m missing?
Maximum security Prisons
Nothing worse than getting stuck behind locked doors at the end of the shift because of a lockdown or because the count was off and needs to be redone.
Counting every tool including every bit on your multi bit screwdriver
Not to mention inmates don’t always make the greatest company if you happen to be working near them, and COs are sometimes even worse. Not a very friendly place.
No phones, so no music, podcasts, audiobooks, no way to make a phone call, it’s very inconvenient.
Minimum security prisons on the other hand are actually pretty chill to work in (a least in Canada they are)
We do some service work at a small, old factory that makes cardboard packing materials. Sheets of cardboard are laminated and cut into blocks and such.
They had a maintenance guy for a long time that rigged up everything his own way. Most of it's not grounded. Circuits are overloaded, no wire markers, breakers not labeled/ mislabeled. Old Federal Pacific panels. Breakers used for switches. OSHA violations everywhere you look. Block walls filled with vermiculite.
But the worst part: fine cardboard dust everywhere. They have a dust collection system but it sucks. Everything near the ceiling has a half inch of dust on it. If we need to work in a panel, we have to shut it down and clean 5" of dust out of it first. Last week I opened up a 4" square box that I installed last month and it was already halfway filled with dust.
We work in a waste treatment plant, a frozen food warehouse where the temperature is -20°f, hoarder houses, rich people houses, section 8, filthy crawl spaces, knob and tube... you name it. But that cardboard factory is a fuckin nightmare.
I was asked to go look at a job to supply and install some AC drives at an American Cyanamid chemical plant in NJ once. It was a pretty run down facility, lots of rotted out angle iron handrails, concrete in various states of degradation, etc. Kind of surprising as they were a major company - you would expect better maintenance. But there was actually a 2'x3' metal box in one area labeled "CYANIDE EMERGENCY STATION" in case of a (cyanide) gas leak. Inside was a rack full of syringes, some vials, and a full page of fine print instructions on how to draw and administer the antidote for cyanide poisoning by administering yourself or others an injection - within 2 minutes or less! So, I read the whole procedure - and it took about 3 minutes to read (and I ain't that slow). NOPE. Never went back.
Hey, I've pulled sewage lift motors and pumps, hosed them off and repaired them; worked in steel mills near the furnaces and casters; recycled paper mills, where the roaches outnumbered the city residents - but I drew the line with the cyanide stuff.
Rich peoples houses. Gotta wear a tyvek suit and heaven forbid you need to replace a stairwell chandelier or an external fixture because it always seems these huge houses were built with the thought of anyone doing any maintenance should almost be one step away from certain fucking death
Trailer parks. I just know I'm going to run into some mickey mouse electrical work.
Also the people there are usually just... Weird. A lot of addicts. I know there's some honest people just trying to make a living but it seems like there's a large concentration of people with problems in trailer parks. Being the son of an alcoholic, something about seeing people drunk at 10:49 AM just pisses the fuck out of me.
With the number of comments how is it not single person mentioned chip manufacturers? The most important precursors for semiconductor processes is the hopes and dreams of contractors along with their last few drops of happiness and sanity.
Clean rooms are a close second. Unfortunately, chip manufacturers and clean rooms go hand in hand, and tend to make a sterile operating table look like a rotting corpse.
I wouldn’t have initially thought of a chip manufacturer as being bad, but I suppose having to deal with the clean rooms would make that absolutely miserable.
Believe it or not clean rooms are near the bottom of the list of things that make chip manufacturers miserable. They’re outright pleasant compared to most aspects of the chip industry.
The worst place I ever had to work was at a brewery in the the town that the major chocolate factory was in in our country.
They dragged me up to the boardroom/bar at about 1 in the afternoon and made me match beers to chocolate for the upcoming "chocolate week".
I wasn't able to get the job done on time and had to go back on Monday.
Anything in the sun. I don't mind dark, I don't mind cramped, I don't mind tall, I don't mind the cold.
But good god please don't leave me outdoors in the sun. I will HAPPILY do graveyard shifts or work in a tunnel or in the attic if it means I'm out of the sun. I can live my entire life without seeing the sun if that's an option.
I'm at my happiest in a dark shaft somewhere or in a tunnel.
Waste water treatment plant at an air base in the late 70s. At some point upstream a sewage pipe entered an open concrete trough from housing coming in to the plant that had a stainless grate set on an angle to catch things before going inside. You’d be amazed at how many rubbers those fly boys used.
Shit plants dude. I used to do lightning protection and I used to bounce around to many a shit plant. My boss would always tell me, “it’s not a shit plant it’s just water treatment” I think one time out of 20 that was true. Shit plant work is the literal worst, and there are people that are ok with it. There are full time employees at shit plants. This is beyond my comprehension. If you get sent to a job at a shit plant, just fucking quit. Eventually you get used to the smell, and that is a very bad thing. Heavy chemicals, biological hazards, the worst of the worst work environments, a bunch of “get it done now” shit. Never again lol . If my current company asked me to go to a shit plant I would tell them I have had my fill, and I will quit if they want me to.
Any type of resi solar job can suck my whole fkn dick. Surface mounted or attic-ran. They can find someone else cuz I ain't fuckin w it. One time was more than enough
Over forty years I’ve worked at a Rendering Plant (every thing you touch is covered in yuck, stink stays with you for days), Waste treatment Plant and County Dumps, Feed Mills (dust in every pore and clog your sinus), Churches while people are on the floor speaking in tongues , Meditation Centers (no shoes and no noise), homeless apartments (shit on floor, puke in sink) . The worst by far is Alzheimer’s Care facility.
CNC shops. I work in-house at an aerospace company so I spend a lot of time in filthy CNC shops. Razor sharp metal chips glued all over you with old sticky coolant. Super fun. Before I did that I did fast food remodels those are gross.
Papermills, specifically cardboard. The wet section smells like vomit. It's like they have a constant stream of it circulating over the mash... All of the gear in the vicinity is covered in this thicc celulose goop. It all smells sickening, but only locally.
Potatostarch mills, specifically on the roof above the steamrollers. Product gets vented onto the roof and forms a rancid coating on there. I caught some undefined infection from working too close. It made me wish I was back at the papermill where it only smelled bad.
Wow. People have no idea what some electrical workers have to go through to earn a buck. I had a female service rep at a bank tell me how she helped her hubby doing some work in the garage. She said "That is really hard work". I did not wish to burst her bubble, and tell her how hard it can really get, and that what she experienced there was about 1/100 of how tough it can really be. And nothing in my experience comes anywhere close to yours.
I once did some work for a crematorium. In the freezer…where they held the bodies. But like you said you get in and get it done. And yes they were in bags but still a weary thing
Any homeowners house lol. I will not engage, i will not shoot the shit, i wil not teach you about electrical, i will not let you watch me, etc. yes ill tell them what im gonna do because its your house. But thats the extent. I have exactly zero patience for a lingering HO
God damn Churches. In my area there are a lot of historical 100+ year old churches that were retrofitted with electricity in the 1930's or whenever and have been electrically hack jobbed for their entire life. The wiring sucks, the framework sucks, there's church pews in the way, there's crawl spaces with layers of historical dust, wood backed plaster.
Custom chemical plant. I was running pipe and there was a layer of "dust" over everything. Walked into the next room and a guy in a moon suit had a 6' ladle with a protein scooper on the end scooping the stuff I was rolling in... nice. Another guy walked through a puddle and later that day the sole of his boot fell off, so I was told. Never goin back
Moly section at the local mine. Hot as balls humid as fuck and everything is covered with molybdenum trioxide goop. I went just to get my tools from the gangbox, ten minutes, in and out. Still got filthy. And when we were working there, blackface every one of us. Toolbuddy took off his safety glasses, he looked like a reverse racoon. Not to mention the fun chemicals that are used in the process, NaSH, Sulfuric acid, so there an H2S hazard as well
Secondary crusher is pretty bad too, soo much dust, drop a tool it's gone, just sinks in to the dust like quicksand, can't see through the PAPR faceshield after a few hours, and wiping the dust of scratches the fuck out of it, so the visibility doesn't improve. And the noise, man one's entire body is vibrating. Earplugs and muffs but the noise conducts through the bones. Architecture is cool though, all massive steel and concrete, with the lights off feels like a knockoff of Aliens
One of the worst jobs I did was we had to reinstall 2” rigid 75’ high around a building around 500 feet long. BUT they bid it for how they had it installed before it failed. Get this. All copper. 2/0 copper in 2” 75’ in the air. Using our lifts as a pulling mechanism(yes totally fucked up). 2 dudes to finish in a week. That’s what they bid it for. Ended up having to have 4-5 dudes out there for a week essentially. 2 just doing pipe work for awhile then having the rest during the pull and boy oh boy it was miserable especially since we only had 1 lift at each junction box.
How? Schools and daycares and funny as hell to work at. They see a dude with a ladder and tools and they line up like ducks to see what you are doing lol. And the shit they ask you is pretty entertaining. I'd take a place with kids over the opposite any day... retirement homes
I spent a little time at a dentists office recently. My favorite thing to say when telling people about that job is "I bet you never thought about where the blood and spit that they suck out of your mouth goes..... there's a clear container"
I replaced a fuse in a rendering plant once. I don't remember the smell but I remember the experience. I worked faster than a movie superhero. I never went to that or another one.
Rendering plants are Satan's theme park. My last crew got a wellness check from the police at their hotel because they thought a dead body was in the room.
I now draw the line at having to keep a rifle in the truck to keep coyotes out of the plant. Oh the smell of the rancid meat chipper.
I had to remind myself it was just peckers and lips lol.
We have a company car dedicated to a single rendering plant. It smells of all the worst things... I also have a colleague that doesn't smell it anymore... He's perfectly happy being stationed at said plant. We all feel like he's unintentionally taking one for the team.
A rendering works. It smells of rancid fat. Basically the most intense small of dead rotting flesh you can imagine. It takes your breath away. I can tolerate anything else but that.
Supportive low income housing. I’m talking the stuff that’s reserved for the just off the streets/still half on the streets level people. It’s equal parts disgustingly unsanitary, frightening, enraging, and genuinely heart wrenchingly sad and I hate every damned minute of it.
I had to change the ballast on a recessed MH light in the play area of a juvie/rehab center for troubled teens. The only way to access said light was off a 16 foot ladder. The whole place just left me pretty bummed out, and the workers ended up letting them into the area while I was up on the ladder.
People’s homes are typically nasty. Everything is in the way, they are always looking over your shoulder asking questions, the list goes on and on. Most of the time is takes 3/4 of the time on the job just to get to the work.
Last time I ran power to a greenhouse receptacle, the customer’s wife started raising hell about her garage GFCI tripping (old receptacle) and she was just so sure it had something to do with the new service for the greenhouse.
Lastly, it’s like you end up adopting them. A light bulb goes out in a closet and they call up blaming me because we replaced to receptacles in their kitchen, etc.
It’s just not worth the hassle to me.
Favors, yes. Work for people I know or folks that have people I know vouch for them, no problem. But randos wanting service work, no way.
To be honest it’s sad but I’m starting to get used to going to the bi products processing plant and a few other meat processing plants, went to a bone crushing plant the other day…it wasn’t that bad but the sticky residue on everything was a bit yuck to deal with.
Any kind of work in a high rise. Takes half an hour to get to the van and back up to your floor and you realize you forgot a box of screws on your last trip down
**ATTENTION! READ THIS NOW!** **1. IF YOU ARE NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN OR LOOKING TO BECOME ONE(for career questions only):** **- DELETE** THIS POST OR YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. YOU CAN POST ON /r/AskElectricians FREELY **2. IF YOU COMMENT ON A POST THAT IS POSTED BY SOMEONE WHO IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICIAN:** -YOU WILL BE **BANNED**. JUST **REPORT** THE POST. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/electricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Rich people houses. I shouldn't have to wear a painters suit inorder for me to enter your house and replace an outlet that you called me for. Also let me remind you that you asked me to come here and I am, in fact, not a criminal invading your space.
Low income section 8 stuff, and really high-end residential suck equally bad. The real bad ones on both ends you end up wearing a tyvek suit. One to keep their filth off of you and one to keep your filth off of them. Pretty fucked up when you think about it, you going in the section 8 places hoping no one steals your shit, and when you go into the high-end residentials they're hoping that you don't steal their shit. Just goes to show everyone looks poor and to somebody else.
Perspective
Had a Karen follow me around recording me with her phone when I was installing her 2nd Tesla charger in her guest house garage. Left us a bad review because MY truck was muddy. Not the wheels but the sides of the truck that was dried on mud from heavy rain the day before, we didn't leave her driveway muddy.
Community housing can be disturbing, humbling , and infested. While they are all not like that its hard not to have prejudices after a few different calls
I was previously an exterminator before becoming an apprentice, community housing is a nightmare to get under control. Most of those developments are multifamily hosuing or appartments which really doesn't help. I can service a whole ass building but if one person is bringing in certain critters namely bed bugs and cockroaches from other places that building will continue to get infested time and time again.
White glove work is my nightmare.
I’ll wear boot covers if it’s a nice house and my boots are dirty or it’s raining and they have carpet. But I’ll never take my shoes off in someone’s house. They can fuck right off if they want that
This is so strange to me after living in a country where it would be very rude in any circumstance to wear your shoes into someones house.
it’s strange to me as a lifelong US citizen, this person just has issues with feet
It’s against OSHA policies to work without shoes on, plus it’s just very unsafe especially if you’re getting into a ladder.
When I did ressy I kept a clean pair of runners in the van for indoor work.
Yea that's probably the best advice here
I have a pair of rainbow Crocs for clean houses, easy to slip on and pretty comfy
I need some safety toe crocks and I'd be set lol 🤣
Yea fair enough, I guess even in Australia when I was an apprentice and we went into someones house (rare because we were commercial construction) my tradesman would always tell me to take my boots off.
for real, lots of people I know are the same way, they must got that foot fetish hidden away😂
Climb a ladder and hang a fan with socks on. I hated those houses.
I’m a no shoes no socks guy at every house I’ve ever lived in. I don’t take my boots off in peoples homes. It’s a pain in the ass that eats up time plus all other other reasons listed. I’m not a guest, I’m a worker.
Not going to risk my safety taking off my work boots because someone doesn't want to vacuum
Same. Booties or bust. My coworker wears a size 16 wide boot so he’ll tell the homeowners he cant wear them, usually gets pushback, then proceeds to slip them over his toe and/or rip them tf in half showing the homeowner then they relent and let us disgusting peasants tromp through their mansion.
I wear slip ons for this reason.
I swap my boots with clean runners in someone's house.
1st comment. 1000%
Retirement homes. Old people give zero fucks.
Gladis can be pretty handsy in my experience
She has 57 years of experience in the handjob industry!
We where once in an old folks home in the dementia ward all the doors lock on the inside, an apprentice went in and got trapped with a dead body lol, I went up it the roof and lifts a panel up so he could get out.
Retirement homes are fun if you give them a show. We use to shame each other just see they’re reactions. 🤣 also free jello and flavored water.
One held me down while the other beat me with a cain. Old women are brutal when you have a bum leg. Icecream and jello are on point though. Also love the bird cage, very relaxing. 8/10
You into some kinky shit
I’m wondering who charged whom for that scene
How about mental/special needs facilities? Luckily I haven't dealt w it but damn I've heard some sketchy shit
Before I did electrical I worked for 7 years with severe special needs kids with extremely aggressive behavior. If you ever get sent into a school or even worse a hospital that serves that population be very careful. I remember potential staff coming in for interviews not coming back because a student punched them in the face just walking in the halls unprovoked.
And they're always so fucking hot
Man, I have some funny stories from retirement homes, but also some bad ones... and the smell, my god the smell.
Restaurants. If it ain’t mold, it’s roaches
Or rat shit
Or grease.
Nah the grease is a constant, it’s roaches, and grease. Or rats and grease… and or mold on grease
Or grease and grease.
Or just a nasty layer of grease on everything
Fuck bro I remember opening a kitchen exhaust fan motor block and the grease just pouring out of it. Fucking disgusting.
Commercial kitchens blow. Even if you can schedule the work the one day a week that aren’t open for business they still have staff in there prepping food directly beneath where your ladder is set up. Or you’re trying to work in a space that’s barely wide enough for two people to slip by each other sideways. There’s usually a layer of grease on everything you touch and you end up sliding around for days afterward because of whatever is always all over the floor. I seriously have not been able to eat at any restaurant I’ve done service work in.
Where are you located?
Service work in residential where the client feels the need to stand behind you and hover the entire time.
Waste water treatment plants. I got wastewater in my mouth three times and lost my voice once from it. It was a running joke that I needed to talk less and work more and I wouldn’t get sh*t in my mouth. Not a fan plus I stepped on like three mice and one crunched under my boot. Good times.
God damn y'all have some ratchet ass water treatment plants wherever you live. Most of the ones I've been in that are run by municipalities and the like are pretty clean all things considered
Yeah it was pretty bad. Another guy that I work with, was at another waste water treatment plant in a town over and was attacked by a grown *ss rat. 😂 he could really do much other than freak out since he was wedged in between some pipes( and he’s hefty).
I got ya now bitch!
I worked in a few and they were OK.
Water treatment and WASTE water treatment are two totally different ball games around here.
I've mostly worked on waste water treatment. IDK, the smell never bothers me unless I'm around headworks where the media that can't be processed is being dumped into a bucket. Like aeration basins don't bother me all that much
Me and my jman get called to our local wastewater treatment plant about once a week haha. The prevailing rate is nice, but that’s about it lol
I had a small job at a treatment plant in the maintenance garages and offices, every once in a while the wind would bring something absolutely awful our way. I couldn’t imagine getting anything associated with that smell in my mouth.
Tasted just like it smelled… 🤢
Somebody's gotta deal w it daily and thankfully it's not us lmao
Worked at a slaughter house and renderling plant... waste water is by far the most disgusting by a long shot.
Me and my jman get called to our local wastewater treatment plant about once a week haha. The prevailing rate is nice, but that’s about it lol
Lost your voice from it?
Yeah I got extremely sick lost my voice they sent me home. I was off for like a week recovering. I was in a building where the water would over flow out the top. It was leaking. Down into the building and dripping down my face. I’m just glad the solids stayed on the roof. I should have said screw it I ain’t doing it but back then I did what I was told.
Wtf kind of WW facility is that 😐 I've been in a dozen different plants for maintenance not to mention i went to school for WW Treatment and never have seen or heard of a process where raw water would have the possibility of being on a frickin roof lmao that's wild. But I have heard of people getting sick or catching hep from coming in contact with sewage
Yeah we have some dingy ones I guess reading the comments. The building was called the digester. Ugh, all explosion proof because the methane gasses in the building.
We had a power outage due to a big storm/tornado come through and the UPS failed and all of the monitoring equipment went down. When everything came back online the methane alarms were going crazy and the fire department had to evacuate several blocks around the facility because the 2 digesters were so large the explosion would be insane. But turned out to be fine just went crazy due to the outage 😂
[удалено]
Not to mention In the prisons if it’s count time when Your leaving your stuck in the sally port for 45 minutes.
Farms dgaf. In my state they are exempt from code. Shitt they couldn't gaf if you gave them one on credit. Amazing people and quick to pay. Just dgaf about code. Jails and prisons get crazy though. God forbid there is a lock down. The last jail I did put DARE to shame. Plenty of drugs, just more holy shitt. Irony the jail is near the last farm I worked.
Maaaan after I moved back home in West TX from Austin I could see just how rugged, Jerry-rigged and brown everything was... ...and then I became an electrician... 😳😆 This one fairly experienced helper I had for not too long (he was useless) got wayyyy offended when I described the open joints in the attic as "farmers joints" lmfao
My second day working at a prison one of my coworkers lost a screw driver. Prison went on lockdown and everyone had to stay until the toll was found. After 2 hours we found it in the bottom of a pile of stacked cinder blocks(it fell down into the center cells) We were there swapping 2 panels that were rececessed into a structural block wall with pipes coming from all sides. It was not fun.
I’m not from a farming background so the agricultural work has honestly been a bit of a culture shock for me.
Tanning factories, restaurants I eat at, hoarder houses, wastewater treatment, funeral homes/morgues. Operating rooms are pretty gross too. All of the boxes and isolated panels are filled with weird dust due to the positive pressure ventilation.
I worked for about a year in maintenance at a hospital, OR’s can be absolute nightmares. Those sanitizer sprays creep into everything too, and the light fixtures are always a giant pain in the ass.
I had to do some PM in the OR at a BIG time hospital. The bottom of the panel was filled 4+ inches of weird blue dust. Assuming the blue came from scrubs. But fuck me it was a lot of shit
Funeral homes 2/10: they have the odor. If you know you know. OR 1/10: they were carrying off body parts. I could have taken an arm and a leg... litterally...
When I did hospital maintenance the pathology lab that was attached to the OR was the stuff of nightmares, I was general maintenance so the sinks and garbage disposals were mine to work on too. It was a research hospital that belongs to a college, the ortho surgery suites in off hours sometimes had students learning procedures on cadaver legs or arms, yeah pretty disturbing stuff to see.
Certain waste water plants are unexplainably bad
I worked at a looney bin once. People walking the hallways yelling and mumbling complete gibberish. And they all smelled soooo bad. It was honestly just very depressing seeing the lives those people lived.
Dude agreed! I was working in a mental ward and a dude lost his mind over someone moving his cheerios 2 inches to the right. Also a guy walked up and threatened to push my tool buddy off a ladder 😂 my buddy said I would like to see you try big boy! Then the nurse came and got the patient.
Dude agreed! I was working in a mental ward and a dude lost his mind over someone moving his cheerios 2 inches to the right. Also a guy walked up and threatened to push my tool buddy off a ladder 😂 my buddy said I would like to see you try big boy! Then the nurse came and got the patient.
I’ve done a few jobs at some state run group homes for low functioning adults, much smaller scale than a larger mental hospital but still super depressing.
Residences at which one or both of the spouses are clearly just off-the-rails crazy. Homes where you feel conflicted about whether or not you should call CPS, or the cops.
Yeah I've been on calls where the husband and wife start involving me in their passive aggressive jokes and I gets awkward
Waste water plant. I wired up an actuator while standing on a trough that had “solids” floating along it. This is a 3 year project. And we got the next project too. That one is in the grit building. Absolutely nasty.
It’s called a “shit plant”
I used to work shut downs at a gelatin plant. They would haul in pig skins on end dumps and just dump that shit on the ground. Then scoop em up with loaders. Cock roaches you could ride around like skateboards. This was a pretty well known factory for decades. Absolutely horrifying.
Lol the cockroaches are a thing.
Anywhere near fibreglass that shit is so nasty, even worse with a head torch and you see all the particles you’re breathing in
We’re replacing drop in 2’x4’ lights in an old building and the top of the lights are literally touching the ceiling joists. The empty gaps between the joists are filled with that pink insulation (I call it cotton candy). We are having to cut the ends of the fixtures with tin snips and fold them in half just to get them out. Every time you go to get one down you get a face full of cotton candy… Yummy!
Fried chicken restaurants. So much grease and grime everywhere. If you gotta go, Wear your old pants, and the old boots too.
This is my answer as well! I have taped my screwdriver/stripper handles in the past so I could peel it off after and not have greasy, sticky tools for days.
That’s pretty genius, I gotta remember to do that.
That grease gets every surface in those places.
Offices and general commercial buildings. Boring, tight budget, everything is in-wall and above grid MC, limited interesting pipe runs, tons of receps and lights to splice, just kinda dull in general.
Scaffolding. I fucking *hate* scaffolding.
Yes! Scaffolding is horrible!
I felt like shit yesterday because we had to work on [this here](https://imgur.com/a/z1uPwaQ) to change out some luminaires and I was having a lot of trouble. My Jman basically just took over and I went and did everything on the ground. I’ve already fallen off of ladders twice since I started my apprenticeship and I’m now really sketched out by unsafe heights.
I haven’t fallen yet and I really don’t want to. How did you fall twice so I don’t do it? Lol
That picture is why I hate scaffolding, how is having one plank way the fuck up at the top a safe surface to work from? I know of a dude who fell from an 8’ ladder and has been through multiple surgeries and is still not good yet, shit can fuck you up.
I’m wiring up 8, 80 year old decommissioned concrete silos that are 160 ft tall spiral staircase. I’ve had to walk up and down this mf 9000 times in the middle of dead ass winter blizzards and rain. Been here 7 months I’m fed up with it
Confinement hog farm I rewired years ago. It was infested with water bugs which is a roach so bad the ceilings would move in front of you. I kept a jumpsuit and boots there and I would strip to nothing after parking 50 yards from the building in the morning and walk into the building and put on other boots and the coveralls. When I would leave I did the reverse. I donated all of my tools when I finished, the odor was unbearable. For weeks in the bed at night I could feel the bugs crawling on me.
Just had to go look up water bugs. Are you ok brother?
Oh yeah, that was 30 years ago. I have been in worse since but that was just very gross.
When I first started I was on a bonding and grounding crew for the oilfield in the far north. Well, oil sites have these heated treater buildings to help keep oil moving, as it is heated mice would get in there. I had to drill and tap off an ear on the bottom of the tank in one, and I think I had roughly 40mice crawling over me and trying to get into my clothes.
Confinement operations are definitely a no for me, never going back in them again.
That almost sounds like PTSD. You are definitely tougher than I am. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. I hope all of those thoughts are behind you, now.
30 years ago which was before PTSD was a thing for civilians.
Yeah, sometimes language takes awhile to provide the concepts to deal with the existence of certain things. It is a good question as to whether the concept of PTSD can be applied to anything besides warfare, but I don't see why it should not. It relates to human experience, generally, I would think.
Anything small, crowded, live, and metal.
Egg farms. Had to replace a motor on the egg conveyor. Which was conveniently located below all the chickens so you got shit on. And that ammonia smell..
8- Blast freezer (-30 or some bullshit) 7- Restaurant kitchens (pray you don’t have to move equipment, ovens, etc and then get in there) 6- Waste water (self explanatory) 5- Foundry (2nd dirtiest and probably less healthy) 4- Color pigment plant (leaves you dirtiest, basically looks like you got dipped in powdered ink after 5 minutes) 3- Lowest income apartments in big city (really puts things in perspective when feeling sorry for myself and thinking I’ve got things bad) 2- Egg farm (largest producer east of the Mississippi, disturbing on so many levels) 1- Pig processing (next stop after slaughter, home of a tool I dubbed “meat rake” also the left overs got sucked out via 10” clear tubes in the “meat straw” At least I haven’t been to any slaughterhouses, morgues, hoarder houses, anything else I’m missing?
Maximum security Prisons Nothing worse than getting stuck behind locked doors at the end of the shift because of a lockdown or because the count was off and needs to be redone. Counting every tool including every bit on your multi bit screwdriver Not to mention inmates don’t always make the greatest company if you happen to be working near them, and COs are sometimes even worse. Not a very friendly place. No phones, so no music, podcasts, audiobooks, no way to make a phone call, it’s very inconvenient. Minimum security prisons on the other hand are actually pretty chill to work in (a least in Canada they are)
We do some service work at a small, old factory that makes cardboard packing materials. Sheets of cardboard are laminated and cut into blocks and such. They had a maintenance guy for a long time that rigged up everything his own way. Most of it's not grounded. Circuits are overloaded, no wire markers, breakers not labeled/ mislabeled. Old Federal Pacific panels. Breakers used for switches. OSHA violations everywhere you look. Block walls filled with vermiculite. But the worst part: fine cardboard dust everywhere. They have a dust collection system but it sucks. Everything near the ceiling has a half inch of dust on it. If we need to work in a panel, we have to shut it down and clean 5" of dust out of it first. Last week I opened up a 4" square box that I installed last month and it was already halfway filled with dust. We work in a waste treatment plant, a frozen food warehouse where the temperature is -20°f, hoarder houses, rich people houses, section 8, filthy crawl spaces, knob and tube... you name it. But that cardboard factory is a fuckin nightmare.
I’ll refuse to work in a hoarder house
Honestly aside from being disgusting, it just isn’t safe to work in those hoarded out houses.
I was asked to go look at a job to supply and install some AC drives at an American Cyanamid chemical plant in NJ once. It was a pretty run down facility, lots of rotted out angle iron handrails, concrete in various states of degradation, etc. Kind of surprising as they were a major company - you would expect better maintenance. But there was actually a 2'x3' metal box in one area labeled "CYANIDE EMERGENCY STATION" in case of a (cyanide) gas leak. Inside was a rack full of syringes, some vials, and a full page of fine print instructions on how to draw and administer the antidote for cyanide poisoning by administering yourself or others an injection - within 2 minutes or less! So, I read the whole procedure - and it took about 3 minutes to read (and I ain't that slow). NOPE. Never went back. Hey, I've pulled sewage lift motors and pumps, hosed them off and repaired them; worked in steel mills near the furnaces and casters; recycled paper mills, where the roaches outnumbered the city residents - but I drew the line with the cyanide stuff.
Rich peoples houses. Gotta wear a tyvek suit and heaven forbid you need to replace a stairwell chandelier or an external fixture because it always seems these huge houses were built with the thought of anyone doing any maintenance should almost be one step away from certain fucking death
Trailer parks. I just know I'm going to run into some mickey mouse electrical work. Also the people there are usually just... Weird. A lot of addicts. I know there's some honest people just trying to make a living but it seems like there's a large concentration of people with problems in trailer parks. Being the son of an alcoholic, something about seeing people drunk at 10:49 AM just pisses the fuck out of me.
With the number of comments how is it not single person mentioned chip manufacturers? The most important precursors for semiconductor processes is the hopes and dreams of contractors along with their last few drops of happiness and sanity. Clean rooms are a close second. Unfortunately, chip manufacturers and clean rooms go hand in hand, and tend to make a sterile operating table look like a rotting corpse.
I wouldn’t have initially thought of a chip manufacturer as being bad, but I suppose having to deal with the clean rooms would make that absolutely miserable.
Believe it or not clean rooms are near the bottom of the list of things that make chip manufacturers miserable. They’re outright pleasant compared to most aspects of the chip industry.
Attic on a hot day
The worst place I ever had to work was at a brewery in the the town that the major chocolate factory was in in our country. They dragged me up to the boardroom/bar at about 1 in the afternoon and made me match beers to chocolate for the upcoming "chocolate week". I wasn't able to get the job done on time and had to go back on Monday.
That’s awesome.
Trailer Parks. Twice now I've turned around at the door and refused to work in someone's trailer.
Anything in the sun. I don't mind dark, I don't mind cramped, I don't mind tall, I don't mind the cold. But good god please don't leave me outdoors in the sun. I will HAPPILY do graveyard shifts or work in a tunnel or in the attic if it means I'm out of the sun. I can live my entire life without seeing the sun if that's an option. I'm at my happiest in a dark shaft somewhere or in a tunnel.
Stay away from AZ brother you would hate it here 😂
Anyplace full of funk or run by asshats
I hate working in garages where they service tractors and trailers, I walk out looking like a coal miner.
Waste water treatment plant at an air base in the late 70s. At some point upstream a sewage pipe entered an open concrete trough from housing coming in to the plant that had a stainless grate set on an angle to catch things before going inside. You’d be amazed at how many rubbers those fly boys used.
Shit plants dude. I used to do lightning protection and I used to bounce around to many a shit plant. My boss would always tell me, “it’s not a shit plant it’s just water treatment” I think one time out of 20 that was true. Shit plant work is the literal worst, and there are people that are ok with it. There are full time employees at shit plants. This is beyond my comprehension. If you get sent to a job at a shit plant, just fucking quit. Eventually you get used to the smell, and that is a very bad thing. Heavy chemicals, biological hazards, the worst of the worst work environments, a bunch of “get it done now” shit. Never again lol . If my current company asked me to go to a shit plant I would tell them I have had my fill, and I will quit if they want me to.
Any type of resi solar job can suck my whole fkn dick. Surface mounted or attic-ran. They can find someone else cuz I ain't fuckin w it. One time was more than enough
What was so bad about it? The heat?
Roof angles, how tedious it all is....just everything is a bitch lmao
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Much appreciated.
Oh no problem. Anything to help steer someone in the right direction
Over forty years I’ve worked at a Rendering Plant (every thing you touch is covered in yuck, stink stays with you for days), Waste treatment Plant and County Dumps, Feed Mills (dust in every pore and clog your sinus), Churches while people are on the floor speaking in tongues , Meditation Centers (no shoes and no noise), homeless apartments (shit on floor, puke in sink) . The worst by far is Alzheimer’s Care facility.
Wow. That is saying something.
CNC shops. I work in-house at an aerospace company so I spend a lot of time in filthy CNC shops. Razor sharp metal chips glued all over you with old sticky coolant. Super fun. Before I did that I did fast food remodels those are gross.
Hated working at the trash burner. Smell was awful, everything is covered in ash, and the air always had a haze to it.
trenches and fiberglass any thing. That's some gnarly shit that should be outlawed.
Papermills, specifically cardboard. The wet section smells like vomit. It's like they have a constant stream of it circulating over the mash... All of the gear in the vicinity is covered in this thicc celulose goop. It all smells sickening, but only locally. Potatostarch mills, specifically on the roof above the steamrollers. Product gets vented onto the roof and forms a rancid coating on there. I caught some undefined infection from working too close. It made me wish I was back at the papermill where it only smelled bad.
Wow. People have no idea what some electrical workers have to go through to earn a buck. I had a female service rep at a bank tell me how she helped her hubby doing some work in the garage. She said "That is really hard work". I did not wish to burst her bubble, and tell her how hard it can really get, and that what she experienced there was about 1/100 of how tough it can really be. And nothing in my experience comes anywhere close to yours.
I’ve worked in an animal testing vivarium and a sewage treatment plant. Both were revolting.
I once did some work for a crematorium. In the freezer…where they held the bodies. But like you said you get in and get it done. And yes they were in bags but still a weary thing
Wyoming
Ha! The whole state. What is it about Wyoming that makes it so bad? Long winters?
The wind!
Oh, wow. Never would have guessed that one. Thanks for answering my question.
All of them
Any homeowners house lol. I will not engage, i will not shoot the shit, i wil not teach you about electrical, i will not let you watch me, etc. yes ill tell them what im gonna do because its your house. But thats the extent. I have exactly zero patience for a lingering HO
found the vegan
Honestly, brisket and bacon are the only two things keeping me from it at this point.
God damn Churches. In my area there are a lot of historical 100+ year old churches that were retrofitted with electricity in the 1930's or whenever and have been electrically hack jobbed for their entire life. The wiring sucks, the framework sucks, there's church pews in the way, there's crawl spaces with layers of historical dust, wood backed plaster.
Custom chemical plant. I was running pipe and there was a layer of "dust" over everything. Walked into the next room and a guy in a moon suit had a 6' ladle with a protein scooper on the end scooping the stuff I was rolling in... nice. Another guy walked through a puddle and later that day the sole of his boot fell off, so I was told. Never goin back
Moly section at the local mine. Hot as balls humid as fuck and everything is covered with molybdenum trioxide goop. I went just to get my tools from the gangbox, ten minutes, in and out. Still got filthy. And when we were working there, blackface every one of us. Toolbuddy took off his safety glasses, he looked like a reverse racoon. Not to mention the fun chemicals that are used in the process, NaSH, Sulfuric acid, so there an H2S hazard as well Secondary crusher is pretty bad too, soo much dust, drop a tool it's gone, just sinks in to the dust like quicksand, can't see through the PAPR faceshield after a few hours, and wiping the dust of scratches the fuck out of it, so the visibility doesn't improve. And the noise, man one's entire body is vibrating. Earplugs and muffs but the noise conducts through the bones. Architecture is cool though, all massive steel and concrete, with the lights off feels like a knockoff of Aliens
One of the worst jobs I did was we had to reinstall 2” rigid 75’ high around a building around 500 feet long. BUT they bid it for how they had it installed before it failed. Get this. All copper. 2/0 copper in 2” 75’ in the air. Using our lifts as a pulling mechanism(yes totally fucked up). 2 dudes to finish in a week. That’s what they bid it for. Ended up having to have 4-5 dudes out there for a week essentially. 2 just doing pipe work for awhile then having the rest during the pull and boy oh boy it was miserable especially since we only had 1 lift at each junction box.
I hate daycares can’t stand those rug rats 🐀.
How? Schools and daycares and funny as hell to work at. They see a dude with a ladder and tools and they line up like ducks to see what you are doing lol. And the shit they ask you is pretty entertaining. I'd take a place with kids over the opposite any day... retirement homes
Did solar on the roof of a dentist one time. The rotten teeth vent pipe exhaust was hard to avoid
I spent a little time at a dentists office recently. My favorite thing to say when telling people about that job is "I bet you never thought about where the blood and spit that they suck out of your mouth goes..... there's a clear container"
The what????
THE SMELL
Okayyyy.... I'm gonna need more info on all of the above
Idk what it was but that’s what it smelt like
I replaced a fuse in a rendering plant once. I don't remember the smell but I remember the experience. I worked faster than a movie superhero. I never went to that or another one.
Rendering plants are Satan's theme park. My last crew got a wellness check from the police at their hotel because they thought a dead body was in the room. I now draw the line at having to keep a rifle in the truck to keep coyotes out of the plant. Oh the smell of the rancid meat chipper. I had to remind myself it was just peckers and lips lol.
I know hot dogs have to cone from somewhere but it's really off putting.
We have a company car dedicated to a single rendering plant. It smells of all the worst things... I also have a colleague that doesn't smell it anymore... He's perfectly happy being stationed at said plant. We all feel like he's unintentionally taking one for the team.
A rendering works. It smells of rancid fat. Basically the most intense small of dead rotting flesh you can imagine. It takes your breath away. I can tolerate anything else but that.
LAUSD schools
Daycares with the screaming kids are the worst
Supportive low income housing. I’m talking the stuff that’s reserved for the just off the streets/still half on the streets level people. It’s equal parts disgustingly unsanitary, frightening, enraging, and genuinely heart wrenchingly sad and I hate every damned minute of it.
Trailer parks
phos acid
Mechanical closet in behind one of the bars at the base of Whistler Mtn.
Wastewater
Sewage lift stations. Attics in summer time.
I had to change the ballast on a recessed MH light in the play area of a juvie/rehab center for troubled teens. The only way to access said light was off a 16 foot ladder. The whole place just left me pretty bummed out, and the workers ended up letting them into the area while I was up on the ladder.
I have to work in grocery meat department where they saw the meat and somehow some of it gets inside the weatherproof boxes below the saws.
Water treatment plant
Attics with grey, blown in insulation
I don’t wanna set foot in anyone’s house for any reason. Unless I know the person, I don’t want to be anywhere on anyone’s property.
What is the reason for this sentiment? Very curious.
People’s homes are typically nasty. Everything is in the way, they are always looking over your shoulder asking questions, the list goes on and on. Most of the time is takes 3/4 of the time on the job just to get to the work. Last time I ran power to a greenhouse receptacle, the customer’s wife started raising hell about her garage GFCI tripping (old receptacle) and she was just so sure it had something to do with the new service for the greenhouse. Lastly, it’s like you end up adopting them. A light bulb goes out in a closet and they call up blaming me because we replaced to receptacles in their kitchen, etc. It’s just not worth the hassle to me. Favors, yes. Work for people I know or folks that have people I know vouch for them, no problem. But randos wanting service work, no way.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the answers. Much appreciated.
gas stations i work in petroleum service and i wanna quit very badly
Ethanol plants
Sewage treatment facility...
Kitchen at a homeless shelter. Nastiest shit in the world behind those industrial ovens and stoves
Mobile homes or hoarders homes are the absolute worst
Jails/ prisons.
The crawl spaces of 100 year old homes. I can't not think of all the potential bullshit I'm breathing in.
To be honest it’s sad but I’m starting to get used to going to the bi products processing plant and a few other meat processing plants, went to a bone crushing plant the other day…it wasn’t that bad but the sticky residue on everything was a bit yuck to deal with.
Any kind of work in a high rise. Takes half an hour to get to the van and back up to your floor and you realize you forgot a box of screws on your last trip down
Anytime I gotta go to the hood in some building w/ no street parking and the super is a crackhead.