Friday, January 27, 2006
Sparky
Whenever there is talk about electrical work, I am always reminded of my warehouse days and the summer I worked with an electrician called "Sparky". He earned the nickname as far as I could tell, and he did not seem to dispute it.
I spent one summer (I got a raise for this part of the job) travelling with an electrician, and a plummer going all over southern Saskatchewan replacing equipment and cupboards in 7-11s. It was a fun summer and I learned things about electrical work and plumming that I have long forgotten. I used to be able to do most of the electrical work to set up the machines (not the work in the fuse box though. I also did a lot of jobs with the plumming.
We understood the electrician's name when we were working in a 7-11 in Saskatoon and while we were putting in the cupboards we saw flashing lights from the backroom. It seems he had a 7-11 employee holding some wires away from the fuse box while he worked up above. When he finished what he was doing he said okay, planning to come down and start attaching the wires that were being held. When the 7-11 employee heard okay, he let go of the wires which flew into the fuse box and melted a lot of things back there. There was a bit of a fire, but no one was hurt. We actually shut down that 7-11 for a couple of hours. Sparky. The plummer told us that his job was better because if you make a mistake, you get out a mop, but when an electrician makes a mistake ...
Yesterday we had our whole fuse pannel replaced. Our house was shut down for the day, and we did not have any electricity. We decided that we would have the fire place on during this time to make sure that the house did not get cold. I guess I closed the flu at some point because the house was filled with smoke and we had to open windows and doors to let the smoke out. Everything settled down and we got the house fixed up, and the fire place working. Now when there is a problem, it throws a breaker instead of a fuse. I think that it is much easier that way. While we can't call this electrician "Sparky", we may be able to call someone here "Smokey".
I spent one summer (I got a raise for this part of the job) travelling with an electrician, and a plummer going all over southern Saskatchewan replacing equipment and cupboards in 7-11s. It was a fun summer and I learned things about electrical work and plumming that I have long forgotten. I used to be able to do most of the electrical work to set up the machines (not the work in the fuse box though. I also did a lot of jobs with the plumming.
We understood the electrician's name when we were working in a 7-11 in Saskatoon and while we were putting in the cupboards we saw flashing lights from the backroom. It seems he had a 7-11 employee holding some wires away from the fuse box while he worked up above. When he finished what he was doing he said okay, planning to come down and start attaching the wires that were being held. When the 7-11 employee heard okay, he let go of the wires which flew into the fuse box and melted a lot of things back there. There was a bit of a fire, but no one was hurt. We actually shut down that 7-11 for a couple of hours. Sparky. The plummer told us that his job was better because if you make a mistake, you get out a mop, but when an electrician makes a mistake ...
Yesterday we had our whole fuse pannel replaced. Our house was shut down for the day, and we did not have any electricity. We decided that we would have the fire place on during this time to make sure that the house did not get cold. I guess I closed the flu at some point because the house was filled with smoke and we had to open windows and doors to let the smoke out. Everything settled down and we got the house fixed up, and the fire place working. Now when there is a problem, it throws a breaker instead of a fuse. I think that it is much easier that way. While we can't call this electrician "Sparky", we may be able to call someone here "Smokey".
// posted by Eric @ 10:32 AM 
