Story Submissions: 2005

Enough to put you in a padded room

From Trevor Gough, February

Trevor complains that some things are easier said than done at the school board where he works. His maintenance department recently received a request to install foam padding on the mullions of every door in the school!

As you might guess, the request arose because a student had been injured bumping into a doorframe (probably because someone was fooling around). The request also arose because somebody in the administration wasn't thinking...either about the cost or the appearance of a school with foam bumper pads everywhere.

Trevor says, "I thought this only happened in Psych wards." He suggests it might be better to teach students that horseplay can hurt you. After all, schools are supposed to be in the business of education...

Even the doctor was stumped

From Dave Merrington, February

Dave was Maintenance Director of the Brooks General Hospital when a young boy was admitted into the emergency. Apparently he'd been sitting on the gym floor at his school and wiggled his fingers into a brass plate on the floor. Then he found he couldn't get his finger out.

The plate was about half an inch thick and ten inches around. The boy's finger was stuck in a very tight hole. First, the plate had to be pulled out of the floor. Then, when no one could free the boy's swollen cut finger, he was taken to the hospital's emergency area.

The doctor had no idea what to do...so he called Maintenance. The boy was wheeled down to Dave's maintenance shop on a bed, along with an IV pole, a nurse, a doctor, the boy's mother...

Maintenance staff put the plate into a vice and carefully cut a nice V toward the center hole using their best hacksaw. The boy's finger had been frozen with anesthetic so he wouldn't have felt a thing if the sawing hadn't gone perfectly. However, Dave and his crew succeeded in removing the stuck finger without further complications.

Dave finishes by saying, "I've been in maintenance for 30 years and found there is never a dull moment. Who knows what's coming next?"

Smokey's first "on-call"

From Dat Lu, posted March 10

Dat says it was his first time "on call" after only a few weeks in his new job. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until one very cold evening (-42 degrees in mid-December). Building Security called to say the garage door was jammed open. Even worse, the forced air heater by the door wasn't running.

Dat got the garage door fixed, then spent more than half an hour tracking down the circuit breaker for the heater. It was in the secondary switch room located on the upper level of the opposite side of the garage. After a few tests, he replaced the fuses; and everything seemed fine at the panel.

When he returned to the garage entrance, he found the heater element was red hot and the fan wasn't running at all. It burst into flames right before his eyes. The fire spread quickly to the insulation around it, filling the entire garage with smoke. Dat immediately got a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. Luckily the fire was easily put under control.

After all this excitement, Dat worked up the nerve to call the operations manager at home. The manager laughed, telling Dat he wasn’t supposed to have received that call. It should have gone to the garage operator. He then explained how the heater was scheduled to be fixed in a few days.

Meanwhile, the building cleaner had brought the "Do Not Operate" sign to the security office. He'd found it on the floor near the heater; he'd assumed it had been dropped by someone from operations.

Oops...

New worker, new problems

From Hugo Morales, posted March 9

Hugo reports on a coworker's first week on the job. That week, the team was told that tools and material had to be transported on service elevators, never passenger elevators. But the new worker got confused and used a passenger elevator to transport paint to where he was working.

As he was getting out of the elevator, a wheel on his cart got caught on the elevator tracks. A can of paint fell off the cart, all over the elevator carpet and the floor outside the elevator.

Hugo and his team got a frantic call over the radio to come and help...but the new guy didn't want to say what the problem was. He sounded so worried the whole team rushed to the rescue. When they got there, the new guy had one foot on the elevator door and one foot outside the elevator, trying to scoop up paint with both hands. Everybody helped clean up the mess, and got the elevator back in service.

To this day, Hugo says, the team still laughs over the whole thing.

One man's shortcut is another's flood

From Wallace Logan, posted March 9

Wallace tells us that during a cold snap, a drainpipe froze at ground level. Unfortunately, the pipe was still open on higher floors. Water flowing down started to back up and flooded several building tenants.

Plumbers worked on replacing the frozen pipes. Meanwhile, the maintenance crew diverted the water into a barrel and started cleaning up the mess. People on the crew took turns emptying the barrel.

At the end of the day, the last worker had to empty the barrel before he left. Plumbers were still on site. The worker decided that instead of dragging the barrel all the way to the janitor closet, he would empty it into the floor drain right beside him.

Wouldn’t you know...the plumbers were replacing the pipe attached to the drain. Five minutes later the door burst open and there was a plumber soaked from head to foot. Oops!

The "Main" Break

From the maintenance department at Marlborough Mall, posted July 18

The staff at Marlborough Mall sent us a wonderful scrapbook, complete with pictures, of a series of events they experienced this past winter.

It all started when water began flooding out of the electrical duct manhole in the mall's parking lot. The staff vacuumed out the water and began looking for the source of the leak:

They dug near the manhole to find the leak...

...and they dug...

...until they dug into a hydrant line and got a second leak.

And a storm line broke...

...and they continued to dig back through their parking lot...

...until they finally found the leak:

...at the connection with the city's feed pipe.