Many of the buildings that existed in Spokane when I moved here in 1969 have been torn down and replaced.  Then again, several of the older buildings have been renovated and made new again.  One example is the often mentioned Davenport Hotel, but there are also other significant buildings.

When a multi-story building is torn down, safety requirements usually dictate blocking off foot traffic anywhere near the work site.  For one of the tear-down jobs I was on, it meant blocking off all access to the building right to the edge of the street; on all four sides of the building, taking up the whole block.

Some of the construction offices were placed on the edge of the street next to the building being torn down.  Often these construction offices were used for a lunchroom during break times and lunch time.

The electrical foreman heading our job was in his office one day reviewing the blue prints.  He got up from his chair, grabbed his hard-hat and was on his way out of the trailer to go on the job site itself.  Unbeknownst to him, a 2×4 had been knocked off an upper story and came down, end first on the construction trailer.  The 2×4 penetrated the construction office roof, AND the chair he had just vacated.

Usually when you work in the construction office you have your hard hat off.  The incident worried me quite a bit, so I started eating my lunch inside the construction site, wearing my hard hat.  I don’t know what all the other men did, but I decided the construction office was not a safe place to be.

Just lately I watched a television program about taking down multi-story buildings from the ground up, one floor at a time.  It was done to alleviate all the dust and debris from an implosion or other means of destruction.  I’m not sure how it was accomplished, but I would have liked to watch it.

Another instance of safety, from a different perspective, came from an incident with a couple of brothers that think of as troublemakers.  They were troublemakers in the sense that they would travel around and cause problems for the business owners.

For instance, one time on the job, one of the brothers was struck by a falling piece of wire.  The wire was about 18 inches long and about as big around as my thumb.  It struck him on the shoulder from the height of about 3 feet, and he was the person who had placed it on the shelf in the first place.  He “had to go to the hospital” for extensive medical care.  He wound up being compensated for numerous problems stemming from a small occurrence.

The brothers disappeared after that and I never came across them on another job.  But after I moved to Spokane years later, I was talking to one of my friends who owned an electrical contracting shop.  He was telling me about this guy that “amplified” an on the job injury and nearly cost him his business.  He had been sued for lost wages, hospital and doctor costs, etc.  When I asked him the name of the person who had done that to him, it was the same guy.

Trouble maker!

You could be working in a dangerous area, ignoring all the safety regulations and never wind up getting hurt.  Then again, you might be following all the safety regulations and be caught in a disaster.  But why take the chance?

Sometimes “Safety” is an assumed concept.

To work across a large geographical area requires planning, transportation, and the proper supplies for whatever you may come across.  Since an electrical job requires a lot of different parts and pieces (some would say the greatest single need amongst the trades) a proper form of transportation is needed.

Generally an electrical shop will provide a company vehicle for the electrician to work from.  Of course seniority usually plays a part in which vehicle a given employee is given.  In many cases I was the last man hired and the first man laid off, which tended to leave me with the “bone yard” vehicles.  One time I was given an old “re-commissioned” telephone repair truck.  That was totally inadequate.

The telephone trucks were not equipped to handle the 10 foot lengths of conduit that electricians use.  There is not a lot of “out of the weather” storage available for stock parts.   And the seating area, inside the cab, wasn’t conducive to giving your pregnant wife an emergency ride to the hospital.  But that’s another story.  I may have already told it.

In recent years work vans have been used for electrical work trucks.  A standard van type vehicle can be configured to hold a lot of parts, including 10 foot lengths of material.  However, one downfall of a standard type of work van is that there is little headroom when you are stocking or using parts off the shelves.

I have seen a lot of imagination used to set up a van for the electrical trade.  Today, our company uses either high top Sprinter Vans, or a large van type truck (similar to a bread delivery van).  Also, we can now have some parts (fixtures and the like) delivered to the job site by a supplier.

At one company we employees were directed to return from our jobs one hour early on Friday afternoons.  We were to clean out and restock our trucks for the next week.  That was always paid as shop time, and not charged to a specific customer.  That sounded like a good idea to me.

Of course if you were working on a job that had been bid at a specific price, it wouldn’t have mattered to the customer if you charged the time to the job or to the shop.  The customer’s price would have remained the same.  In the viewpoint of the customer, taking time which they perceive to be “on their job” to do necessary housekeeping or job related errands is objectionable.

We have had customers object when a workman would take off in the middle of the day to drive to a supply house for more material.  They feel it is being unwise with their money.  There may be some basis to this concern for a Time and Materials job, but for a bid job the only difference it would make would be to the Company’s bottom line.  (It’s good to note here, that Labor and Industries requires a company to pay for an employee’s time even if it is “windshield time.”)

I agree with the customer’s sentiment.  That is a good reason to have a well stocked work vehicle, with all the supplies you need for a job.  Sometimes it is prudent to have on hand supplies that can be re-purposed to substitute for missing parts and pieces.

It requires us as electricians to be adept at anticipating the needs for a job.  In an emergency, I have had the office help pick up material and run it to the job site.  Some larger shops even have someone hired as a parts runner.  Not a bad option if the demand is there.

With most of the guys I worked with, acceptance into their circle was indicated if they would pull a practical joke on you.  Many times I would walk into a shop and people would ask me for a joke.  I guess my reputation for telling stories preceded me.

For instance, in one shop where I worked, one of the office personnel in the drafting room was a man that, though young, was only able to get around with a walker.  He was no exception to having practical jokes played upon him.

I am all for employing people with disabilities.  It’s tough enough to get and keep a job without also having to fight a disability.  I believe that the young man (I’ll call him “Bob” – because I don’t remember his name anymore) appreciated that he was included.

“Bob” was working in a drafting room with about four other estimators and drafters.  I tried to avoid going in that room because you never knew what they were going to pull on you.  One day when I did go into the drafting room, one of the guys said: “Adrian, you should have been here about a half hour ago.”

I asked, “Why, what happened?”

He said; “Well, I was arguing with ‘Bob’ and he was being stubborn., so I walked across to his desk like this, and took his walker like this, and walked back across the room like this, opened the window like this, and threw his walker outside like this, and closed the window like this.”  All the while he was talking, he was demonstrating the process as he explained it.  (Usually that’s a good training method.)

After they had a good laugh and talked awhile, he went outside and retrieved the walker and returned it to “Bob’s” desk.

Those same guys knew that I was raising chickens at home.  They asked me to bring in a little bit of chicken manure.  I was suspicious about what they were planning.  (Maybe they were planning to do something to me?)

It turns out they had bigger fish to fry.  The big boss had a separate office with a window where he looked out at these estimators and drafters.  He had a picture in his office of a duck taking flight.  They intended to place the chicken dropping on the floor under the tail end of the duck.

I brought them a little box of chicken dung, making sure I left no fingerprints or other “crime scene evidence” on it.

I never knew how their plan turned out.

I was afraid to ask.