I know there are lots of guys out there who do service work
More than a few of them read here. Share your worst field service story with me.
25 comments Og | Uncategorized
More than a few of them read here. Share your worst field service story with me.
25 comments Og | Uncategorized
Do you mean working in the trades? Work long enough and one will have many experience they wish to never again repeat.
Expensive and extensive remodel on a SFR. The owner was one of those guys who had rocks for brains but didn’t realize it. Somehow he was incredibly wealthy. Anyway, not only could he not stay out of our way, always wanting to insert himself as part of the crew. And he would come up with some BS idea for this or that which resulted in a change order. And that usually meant ripping out just completed work so the change could be made. Plus he would call me 9 or 10 PM in a panic to discuss something which turned out to be nothing at all. So many change orders that it was too much to take. It messes with the mind. Like 2 steps forward, 3 back. My guys and subs became discontent. Guys walked off the job. The electrician through an axe through a wall…from across the room…while having a late night pow wow with the owner and his wife. Sparky left and never looked back. My plumber complained that he was spending too much time on this job that his client base was drying up. Plus he had $40K of material that was no longer needed on the job (change orders). I finished the job months over deadline and with an entirely different crew. I had gone through 2 rotations of subs because no one could stand this guy. He was likeable but shit for brains. Always asking for just the absolute weird changes…like putting a convection oven above the fridge or extending a bar top another 10″ so he could set a wide screen TV to be watched while in the kitchen but absolutely no corbels or any visible support.
Then a few months after all work had been completed he threatens to sue me if I do not repair a marble floor because the half ton potted plant he had delivered was wheeled with a pallet jack without protection of the floor. He tried to lie about it, saying the damage happened during the remodel.
Remodeling a series of dorms for the local university, a much needed shipment had missed the delivery. Weeks late. When the truck finally did arrive, I found the driver using very expensive materials as the fulcrum while trying to break metal bands. Nearly the entire shipment was damaged by this gorilla. I had a payroll of $1,680/hour plus liquidated damages and failure to perform hovering over my head.
The chief officer for the university had offered a side deal to me that if I agree to liquid damages that he’ll give me more work with no bid. He wanted to do it on a handshake but I insisted on written, signed docs. So I completed that further work. When it came time for final payment, the university denied all claims on the basis that, first, because that officer was on 2 week vacation so I have to wait for his return. After his return, the university denied my claim based on that that officer was not authorized to let such work. This even though they had done that very thing before and continued to do so. Yes, we ended up with a court date. Yes, they waited it out until the very hour I had appeared in the court room. By phone they told me to come to their office within the next hour or else. I hurriedly got the judge to agree to a continuance.
I finally got all my money plus accrued interest and fees.
As a small business I was trying to break into public works. After a couple years of effort it was paying off. First, a new fire station on an AF base. Then new onbase enlisted housing.
First, the arch who drew the firehouse missed the specs. The plan checkers didn’t catch the errors. The plans I had used for bidding were not the same as the working plans. One wouldn’t expect that a primary element of building construction (the roof) would require a change order to come into compliance. But since work had already started, that is exactly what the feds did. But this work order shall not effect a change in bid. So much was wrong on that project. It was because the morons in D.C. kept changing stuff but they were apparently so far out of the loop that they neither had kept up with the pace or that they didn’t know how to do their jobs. Of course, the feds would not allow change in dollar amount or time due to change orders. That all will be tied up until after completion which then will be disputed.
The base housing was such a large project that it was divided into 5 phases. About 1/2 through the 3rd phase I couldn’t take it any longer. For it’s entire duration that project was a major cluster. Incredible turnover of labor.
A new FAA control tower and attached admin building: $180,000 for an entry floor featuring the FAA logo. Laser cut using 28 different types of stone. It was beautiful. And left uncovered. No, the fed inspectors actually insisted upon that. Imagine all the rolling traffic during a multimillion dollar project. Yep, no surprise, a damaged floor.
Let me tell you about the inspectors on that job. There were ten. Yes, ten inspectors. Most were various feds plus a couple from the city and county. I will never forget watching all 10 of them putting their faces right against an interior wall so they could examine the sheen in the freshly applied paint. The paint wasn’t even dry and they were making a huge hoopla over the ‘splotchy’ sheen. So, like ay good fed would demand, ALL walls of ALL office rooms shall be stripped then repainted. Meanwhile, hey, the office furniture has arrived where do you want it? Of course, it is not ‘accepted’ until delivered into the office rooms per contract.
The control tower itself is 11 stories tall. The internal stairway features a 3 bar tube hand rail from the cab to the ground floor. I myself repainted the ENTIRE handrail – after 5 other men had repainted it 3 times. Each time it gets stripped to bare metal before paint. Why? Because a fed inspector had found dip marks somewhere along the railing. Several times I caught that SOB running his finger along the bottom rail feeling for bumps in the paint.
I cheated when I used a thinner in the paint…even though the feds spec’d no thinner, no spraying. Who would know? I sure wouldn’t. Plus it looked gorgeous the way that paint flowed.
After the base housing project, I said I would never again take a contract for the feds or any govt.
Read about this one years ago.
IT guy gets a call from someone who has an odd problem with his computer terminal, if he sits down and types in his password it works, if he stands up and types in his password it doesn’t work. Yeah, right, thinks the tech. Goes to see what’s happening and sure enough, if the guy is standing in front of his keyboard and types in his password it doesn’t recognize it. If he sits in front of the keyboard, it works fine.
Scratch scratch.
Source of problem finally determined, two keys on the keyboard are reversed. When he sat, he touch-typed, so hit the correct key even though it had the wrong letter printed on it. When he stood, he hunted-and-pecked, hit the wrong key.
As a design Engineer I don’t travel with the field service engineers that often but sometimes I do.
We were doing a retrofit on a seamless pipe line at an unnamed steel maker. they kept moving up the production schedule so our 2 week outage becomes a one week outage. I was sent in because I had to create a special version of firmware for the drives for the piercer since it had a special transformer and bridge.
After we find that they left the neutral off the main contactor and took a day to fix that snafu we got the motor running and started to make pipe.
It started raining and I point out to the plant foreman that the water is leaking into this special one of a kind the only one on the planet transformer.
About a month later they call us up, help production is down!! The one of a kind transformer filled with water and shorted out. Help quick. With 2 semi loads of transformers jury rigged to take the place of the waterlogged transformer we were able to get them back into production until they got the original transformer back from the rebuilder.
We got rich off of that, and they could have fixed the problem with a little tar but you know how that goes.
Hmm. The one where I spent two days 20 feet below ground in a sewage lift station working on the manlift? That was like working in a space station module, except with gravity, no light, and an exquisite stench. Oh, and every time the pumps came on, we got sprayed.
The reason we were working on the manlift was because there had been a power failure and the shaft had flooded nearly to the top, with the lift down at the bottom for some unexplained reason. Luckily the motor and such were all explosion-proof equipment, but the external bits including the lift cable were ruined.
On top of all that, after day one we got our ass chewed because we needed another day. I felt like telling the boss that he could feel free to get his expensive three-piece suit and Italian shoes down there and do it himself. I did end up quitting a month later. What a racket that guy was running.
In the late 90’s I was a Field Engineer working for a Software vendor who did PC support on the side. One day we got a trouble ticket from a local appliance repair shop to fix a critial PC that ran a custom application they used for scheduling and time tracking of their field techs.
PC wasn’t booting at all. Did the normal customer interview on site and found out the PC was in the front office but the power was on the same circuit as the test bench in back. Yes, the PC went down hard when a tech plugged in a shorted out appliance. I started running disk repair utilities to recover the disk and told them they needed to get the system on a UPS immediately to prevent future problems.
“Oh no, that is too expensive”. Fine, have it your way.I finally got the PC booted but the application wasn’t coming up, so I asked if the programmer was still around.
“Yes, but he will only work on the system if we bring the whole PC to his shop and he wants $100/hour to even start. *YOU* need to fix the application.”
I did what I could to get things running but I repeated the need for a UPS to protect the system plus put it in writing on my service report for the manager to sign.
Customer refused to pay because I didn’t get their application up and running. AFAIK we took them to court to collect. Six months later we got another call, same shop, same problem. We told the dispatch agency we wouldn’t take the call…
Below is a snip from a work order I received a few years ago (back when I used to work as an independent contractor). I didn’t accept the work order, but some poor schmuck did.
***
Work Order #: 53323365
Service Task: Information Technology :: Printer :: Laser:
Black & White :: Diagnose & Repair
Service Time (local): Thu Mar 31 2011 9:00am MDT – 4:00pm MDT
Location: Sterling, CO 80751 (Commercial)
Estimated Driving Dist: 101 mi
Estimated Driving Time: 1 hr 37 min
Work Order Title
——————————
Mouse (animal) stuck in printer.
Work Description
——————————
Gruesome!!!! Need tech onsite to remove mouse parts seems mouse has been
smashed inside printer. Tech will need to bring plastic bag For any
(damaged parts), Pair of long gloves (to keep your self from touching
any mouse parts), and maybe pair of nose plugs.
Please call me from site with update. please let me know if any parts
are needed thanks
…
Oh where to start. Did get a chuckle out of some of the other guys though.
Went to Jamaica.
Barely saw anything but container ships and bars cut out of shipping containers.
Hot sweaty.
Did drive down that road from the Kinston airport from Dr. No, though.
Signs on walls “No Smoking! Ganga too!”.
Had to take a hydraulic pump with me and checked it in a bowling bag to get through customs.
It worked.
Not horrible, but my worst.
My ‘favorite’ when I ran a telecommunications company was getting a call from a major power plant that had ‘lost’ all the phones and connections. Called all available techs, hauled ass 1+ hour, found out they had cut the main fiber into the plant trying to ‘bury’ a gas line. 22 hours to splice the cable (rotating folks in the hole every hour), got it back up about 9am the next morning. Rebooted all systems, got them back on line. Three hours later, got woken from a sound sleep, plant was down AGAIN.
Back down there, they had cut the cable AGAIN, twenty feet from the last cut… AND had pulled the previous splices apart! Ran enough copper from the SLA to get them up on the main circuits, ordered replacement cable with enough length to do splices. Pulled two more 22 hour days. Customer told us, “Oh this is covered by the maintenance contract.”
It went to jury trial, and as the jury was deliberating, they settled for cost plus (a year later)… Needless to say, we did NOT renew that maintenance contract…
We did a 450 unit install in a fairly large hospital system. All these things are networked and every one had to be locked up so no chance of user scanning to a thumb drive, physical blocking, we had to remove every accessible usb port. All this was done in three weeks. We filled four 20yd dumpsters with packing materials, all sorted for the trash Nazi’s. All installs had to be coordinated with the previous vendor, every tech I worked with did a little dance on the way out. I took that as bad sign and worked my way into another territory asap, turned out a good move on my part.
Lol. Awesome stories, folks.
Here’s a story from my first consulting gig, at the local power company.
Company decides to send out a questionnaire to union members to see how they like their job. I’m given the task of extracting a certain number of employees from the active payroll database and creating mailing labels to be used for mailing the questionnaire. One such active employee who got questionnaire was a man named John Coffin (not making this up).
So a few days later my client gets a call from one of the VPs, who got a call from the union rep, who got a call from a woman who wanted to know why the company was bothering her, since her husband had died TWO years earlier. Union accuses management of harassing a poor widow. Management wants to know why the (expletive deleted) this person is still collecting a paycheck when he’s been dead two years. Everyone is looking at me, I’m looking at the payroll system and see Mr John Coffin there, at the indicated address, and still very much collecting a paycheck. On a whim I hit the key to go to the next record, and lo-and-behold there’s ANOTHER John Coffin at the same address, who is listed as deceased, with a different date-of-birth and employee number. They were father-and-son, and the son had moved out and not changed his address with the company, and the widow never thought “Oh, my son ALSO works for the same company my late husband did, and has the same (expletive deleted) name, so maybe THAT’S who they want to talk to.”
Dumbassery abounds.
Test Engineer at an electronics facility… Get a call that a cable continuity tester is passing bad assemblies… Test system operating fine, release back to production… Supervisor comes back in 20 minutes later saying machine is still passing bad assemblies… This time go out with the supervisor and tech to determine issue… Can’t identify a problem… Ask the supervisor as to failure mode… She says “It’s failing these assemblies, can’t you see ??, The red wire is where the blue wire should be and the blue wire is where the red where should be !!… Another hour of my life I’ll never get back
Went to Philly when an engineer called and need an instrument repaired ASAP. Drove down and fixed the problem in an hour. The engineer walked me over to purchasing to get a PO. The purchasing agent goes unhinged on me and tells me he is the only person that can contact vendors and he’s not paying for the repair. I say fine, walk back and remove the parts and leave. Next day the purchasing agent calls and wants me to come in ASAP. I say we are not available for two weeks. He says he’ll call the factory.
He calls back after the factory tells him it is us or ship the unit back to them. The ass still doesn’t realize I was the guy who had fixed the unit they day before. He says he needs this unit up or it will cost him a bunch of money in EPA fines. I say OK we’ll do it for 3X the amount it cost the day before and we’ll need a check on arrival, no net 30 for you! Hands me the check and we fixed the instrument. I told the office manager to always charge Allied 3X the cost as an asshole tax from that point on.
I was a tech for X-Ray company eons ago. Get a call from a hospital that is an 8 hour drive and one long ferry ride away. “Our X-Ray machine is down. Patients are waiting. Help!”
I ask the Radiographer “Have you checked the fuses?” “Yes, of course” he says. “OK then, is there power to the console?” “NO!” he says. “Anyone switched off main power” I ask. “NO!” he says. “OK, I’m coming” I say.
It’s January. Starting to snow. I get in my car and when I reach the ferry there is 4 inches down. Drive another 2 hours to hospital. Walk in. See the man. “Where is the fuse panel” I ask. I check. BLOWN FUSE. No breakers at that time. Change the fuse and Bob’s yer uncle.
Go to motel. Snowing like crazy. Stuck for 2 more days till plows clear record storm of the year.
Played a lot of pool at the pool table in the basement. By myself! Radiographer didn’t even say thanks.
Back in the ’80s I was a field eng. for a major medical mfr. of MRI equip.
Just prior to Thanksgiving, the operator of my scanner said I wouldn’t mind if this went down until after the New year. The NEXT day it went down for a broken coil in the interior of the bore. Had to bring in a forklift and deinstall the coil system. The replacement had to come from Europe. We were down thru Jan.1. 3 shifts working that entire time. Some nights I just slept at the hospital on the floor in the corner of the control room. Made more money in OT that holiday period. But my wife was so pissed she spent it all, and I missed out on it all.
I was chief engineer of a couple radio stations in Houston back in the early 90’s. One night, get a page from the remote control: low air pressure. The dry air we pumped into the coax was leaking out.
Drove 70 miles at 0200 to the site, BIG road kill about 5 miles from the site right in the middle of the road. I’ve seen things like that before, but it was big, not a white tail, maybe a small horse. Couldn’t see what it was tho, too mangled.
Troubleshooting the leaks, and need some dish soap to test with, drive back to town, and the road kill is just a huge wet spot in the road now. No meat, just blood. It’s been about 30 minutes. WOW! what could’ve moved that pile of meat and bone that quickly?
Coming back from the store with the soap, and that pile of meat is BACK IN THE ROAD!!!!!! Only 10 minutes later! Hackles on my neck were at full attention, and my eyes were on stems. I was scanning for anything that could’ve moved it. Nothing…..
Fix worked and I took the long way home so I didn’t have to pass that spot again.
East Texas…..
I have seen some ignorant situations via 20ish years in industrial manufacturing and construction. Mechanical and millwright stuff, but my older iron-worker friend has some better stories…
The guy is SHARP, taught me a lot, and is seriously in demand when work is being done. Fun part is he has done well, but really doesn’t have to go to work, but still prefers to. He can’t stand all the tedious minutiae of (continually growing) multiple planning meeting BS, and really does know what needs to be done. He does not want to be the supervisor- or main boss, but is content running a crew, so doesn’t need to be there… Course the customers usually demand that everybody be present. He will then point out all the (major)flaws and fiascos pending and of course the engineers don’t want to be told they are wrong, so he becomes persona non grata. It usually takes a week(5 days), and being right on every point, before they don’t ‘invite'(insist) that he show up for those repetitious idiot meetings. (If they wanted his corrections/valued his input) he would be fine with being there, but why waste your breath, when you have to solve/fix/clean up the screw up EVERY time TOO. So he gets to show up late daily (8-9am instead of 6-7am) LoL. He has had job bosses beg to get him there for full 8 hour day, but as he says, I can get their 8 hour day’s work done in 5. He is not contrary by nature at all, totally laid back as any old farmer!
With that background-
Story 1- GradeSchool expansion- which is going to be continuing when school goes into session. Certain portions MUST be done prior due to equipment and noise issues. Uh-huh- no time for delays… Multiple engineers. yahhh… They bring him in to oversee installing/emplacing structural strengtheners inside existing building- to connect additional structure to. Shows up for first planning meeting – tells them he is going home, call in a couple days… What? WHY? We are all ready for you/crew. everything is set up – tools and materials laid out in place,etctec… He says, “You have an 8″ 30′(thru 3 floors) tubular column you want emplaced inside.”
“Yes, yes, holes already drilled for you in each floor/ceiling. Tube is laid out on 3rd floor…” (I even saw this coming as he is telling story!)
HOW do you stick a 30’, 8″ pipe through an 8″ hole, when you have a ~10 foot ceiling???
Took a little further prodding to get them to “see” the problem… he went home to fish, do yard stuff for couple days. They punched a hole in roof and ordered a crane. He came back… LoL
2– Power plant build(one of those natural gas ‘peaker’ plants they started building when gas was cheap.(then halted a bunch as demand ramped up) They did finish this one, but tore down a second one they also started at same time, 30 miles over.
But this job, was first being run by construction company owner’s son (Dad was good hand, kid was spoiled ass, sad isn’t it?!)
Typical Mark, points out the obvious expensive and flawed processes, is not appreciated. (And don’t get me wrong, he is polite, and to the point, has no time or patience for continued bitching, backstabbing etc. Say it once and BE DONE.)But yah… Initial concrete support columns with major reinforcing. 2″ rebar in tied bundles. Kid says assemble these laid out on ground. Mark says can’t be done like that- must be done vertical. Kid is ass~ says do it HIS way or leave. Mark sticks around for couple days and walks off. Week later they try to lift this HUGE steel rebar “assembly” into vertical. Of course, the weight vs teh flexibility, blows all the ties, and the thing turns into a massive pile of tangled spaghetti. No injuries thankfully. Ol boy made sure all hands understood what would happen so everyone was prepared for this and could clearly see what was coming… Material was write off, all other units also completed horizontally- now must be disassembled… Behind by weeks now… Owner finally dispatched son, rehired Mark (twice more) before project was completed. All things do run smooth as possible when he is onboard. Wish I coulda worked with him daily, but instead we just do side projects(friends and family) :)
Oh- one more- He was on a new building job site, 5 years back. I was working elsewhere at same factory complex. Huge crews/equipment spent whole week chewing through 8’of bedrock to be able to get elevations right for join up/floor thickness correct for support strength. When ordering concrete- a flaw(typo)on print– To find out 8′ was 8″. Spent a couple more days hauling in gravel and compacting to pour much thinner floor! Holy Shit!
Ah, what the public and share holders don’t know…
Sam’s story reminded me of the days of yore, when you’d get a call for furnace or air conditioning service, and specifically ask the customer before you even left the shop if they’d checked the fuses first. “OF COURSE!”
And you’d arrive and, lo and behold, there would be a dead fuse in the SSU next to the furnace, or in the main fuse box, or in the disconnect outside next to the condensing unit.
And they’d have a fit when you charged them for a service call — especially if they provided the spare fuse. Mind you this was back in the 1970s when we charged $15/hour plus parts for a service call. (None of this “first 15 minutes free” crap that you see today.)
They’d have similar fits if you arrived on a “no heat” or “no a/c” call and found their filter completely clogged. “But all you did was change the filter!” Yeah, and I rolled a truck out here all the way from the shop and it took an hour round-trip.
Been out of that racket for two decades and haven’t missed it for a minute.
Oh what the hell, two more favorites.
Mark(spark-as he always has excellent solutions) has several brothers, all in trade too. Brother Dan (Bean-from childhood situation)told me a couple from a ‘higher end'(prestigious?) chem factory he worked at. My favorite gross out, Misc crew was clusterfck, boss was micromanager ass. Bean knew one other guy from prior. Bean always brought his own coffe in thermos(and ya lock your lunchbox so nobody jacks with it~ ya know?)he went in job trailer one day cause he had forgot his. Other ol boy had been tasked by assboss tofix teh coffee maker- was running slow and tasted funny. Those guys had been using it for weeks… Ol boy tells Bean with a smirk~ Don’t tell, but don’t ever drink from that coffee maker. He had removed an inch of dead fly slush inside water reservoir~ hence the slow filter thru! As rest of crew was jerkoffs~ bon apetite! I have never looked at a coffeemaker since that I don’t remember that story! GROSS!
Also from same jobsite trailer- It was Christmas- and there had been some rodent issues. Bean created a Nativity scene in corner with some small boxes and posed dead mice, various cloth scrap wrapped for period robes and positions–even a baby mouse in a matchbox for Jesus in manger. It was frigid so not a smell issue per se… Superintendent happened thru and saw it and had a HUGE cow over it. Sacrilegious and everything!!! Brief witchhunt for perpetrator came up empty. Guy asked regularly though for updates as to who got fired! Sorry- haven’t found him… Pretty funny really~ jobsite humor!
oh- last one,
Common prank for unlocked lunchbox–put a live pigeon inside! Someone did this to an upper supervisor who was not a bad guy, but had been annoying to someone-no bigge~. EXCEPT- he went out for lunch that day, and took box home, and his loving wife opened it to clean up and repack for him… Yah- exploding crapping pigeon in your kitchen! Wife bout died of freak out~
Oh, the boss was MOST wroth next day!
DOH!
Oh, the live pigeon is the best. I gotta do that.
Another critter prank.
I was laid off and then dispatched to a local(Seattle)shipyard which was in the middle of a huge Gov’t project building destroyers. One of the Navy inspectors got a shiny new pickup and not wanting any dents, parked across 3 parking places. Now parking on Harbor Island is a certified nightmare and if you didn’t get to work at least 2 hours early you had to park upwards of a mile from the front gate. At lunchtime it was a scene from hell. I ate lunch out on the dock most days so I was able to get to the remainder of my day quite easily. One day half the yard was out by the front gate and roars of laughter drifted in. I went to see what it was about. The inspector’s pickup was covered in seagulls and consequently ass deep in seagull shit, which being corrosive as hall and sticky as hot bubble gum was all over the pickup and the paint was coming off in sheets. The inspector, a Commander was “somewhat upset” and called the Shore Patrol and the Seattle Police. Both organizations were laughing their heads off as there had been no crime committed. Apparently one of the workmen was pissed about this arrogant asshat using three parking places so he tossed a couple large orders of Mickey Dee fries into the bed. This is known as “Supersizing”, it draws dozens and dozens of seagulls. Seagulls exist solely to shit and shit they do, by the ton.