Wonderful things to walk into work to...

[technical.angel]

So, I walked into work, and our housekeeping guy was walking out of the Helpdesk area towards our parts room where the utility sink lives. As he walked, I noticed that there was a rather large trail of water following him....

Then I walked into my area, and my entire corner was... WATER.

Due to some miracle of water flow, the water flowed away from my computers. Of course, that left it flowing around the power strip my mac and laptop was plugged into, but I think they escaped unharmed.

Four of us have offices in the helpdesk. All four of us got flooded. The new boss's new furniture and rug took the brunt of the water, and I saved my manager's computer from a watery grave.

So, any other stories of walking into something floody, disasterious, or just... odd?

[Horsetuna]

At a department store I worked for, the roof leaked after a bad rainstorm, right over Ladies' Wear.

By some stroke of luck, the employees who did Ladies' wear had just moved the racks to make a new 'pathway' to go around some renovations for people to get through.

And that was EXACTLY Where the water came down through the leak. not a single shirt got ruined.

Sadly, this did not occur in Intimate Apparel where several boxes were soaked. Fortunately for some strange reason, the people who make underwear send the coat hangered ones in packages of 5 in a plastic bag, then fill a huge box with said packages. So they were mostly saved.

[LibraryLady]

Some years ago we had a particular collection of books and pamphlets temporarily stored in an vacant office.

Without telling us it was going to happen, or even a walk through of the library to identify particular trouble spots, the front of the building was power-washed. Of course, that office had a window that nobody bothered sealing. I walked in to get a book and found the water coming to meet me.

We were extremely lucky that the water came in from around the window and went straight down. None of the material was damaged but it was a heart stopper.

[Bandit]

Many years ago, I was maintaining a pretty big phone system.

The room it was in was directly below a men's room.

Alas, more than once, the decision to have a tarp permanently strung up over the system was proven to be the correct decision.

About once every 2 years, there would be an <ahem> incident that resulted in an overflow.

Ick.

B

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

When I was in 4th grade, a water main in the basement of my elementary school broke, sending water gushing into the library and the computer lab.

As a result I got an unplanned 5-day weekend. But we made it up by adding on an hour to the school day every day for a week later in the year.

The day we got back to school, we were taken down to the basement. Everything was a sodden mess.

[SteeleDragon78]

water involved but not flooded

i was passed by 3 fire engines one morning on the way to work, then 2 ambulances and a slew of police. pulled up to the lot only to find the restaurant a smoking burnt out husk.... turns out one of the pilot lights went out and filled the kitchen and dining room with natural gas and when the opening manager turned on the lights it went up. she survived and was only blown back through the doorway into a bush. that was an interesting mourning.

[Rapscallion]

Ow, TA. Didn't you get flooded out earlier this year? I thought they fixed that?

Rapscallion

[Emrld]

mourning.

SD - were you sad about it? Or did you mean morning and just went for the pun?

[draftermatt]

Had a power surge hit the building one weekend, and all of our power supplies were fried.

Once the silo where we store cement was too full but someone decided to put more cement in (cement is dry and powdery, not wet). So up it went out the top of the silo, all over the buildings, cars etc.

There was a good 1/2" thick coating of it everywhere, and everyone got a free car was out of it.

Except me, I didn't get to work till 10 that morning (early morning appointment)

[SteeleDragon78]

SD - were you sad about it? Or did you mean morning and just went for the pun?

the spellcheck for the forum is on crack thats all

[freeatlast]

When I worked in the Call Center from hell, a ladies room was located on the 2nd floor right above the area where my workstation was located. One afternoon, a puddle developed on the floor in the hallway right around the corner from my workstation. Before long, water was running down the walls and the suspended ceiling in the area I worked in was developing HUGE wet spots and was starting to drip. My supervisor called maintenance and they said that there was a flood taking place in the ladies room above us. I packed up all my personal stuff and moved it to another area because I didn't want it to be drenched with toilet water. It took several days for everything to dry out once they stopped the flooding.

[technical.angel]

Ow, TA. Didn't you get flooded out earlier this year? I thought they fixed that?

Rapscallion

Yep and yep, but apparently their fix wasn't set for hurricane.

Maintenance is now planning on resealing our entire side of the foundation.

[Rapscallion]

Yep and yep, but apparently their fix wasn't set for hurricane.

Ah yes, it has been rather moist of late. We've been getting showers of heavy rain over here, which is jolly annoying.

Rapscallion

[PepperElf]

well the first night i worked security, someone accidentally triggered one of the "fire alarms"... one that triggers firefighting foam. it filled at least 2 floors of an equipment elevator shaft and a lounge.

ever see people try to clean up that foam? it's kinda messy.

Thankfully I didn't have to clean it up. My job was to just keep other people out who weren't involved... easy enough considering how late it was - about 95% of the people who came through were involved in cleanup.

[Jay 2K Winger]

The only things I can think of happening like that at the store were the time this jackass employee -- he was an idiot and an evil little prankster -- set off a stinkbomb in the men's bathroom. I come into work the next day, wondering why the men's room smells so ... bleachy, and find out about the stinkbomb, and that the managers and several employees had had to stay after work the day before to clean the ENTIRE bathroom to get the smell out.

(Needless to say, Stink Boy got FIRED.)

The second... a little explanation. The vestibule in our store has had problems with leaks a few times in the past. One of them was right over the electric sliding doors that lead out of the vestibule, and messed up the mechanism. For several months we had the doors bolted shut and placed a stack of empty pallets in front of it, and just had that part of the vestibule roped off until we got the leak fixed.

More recently, a much larger leak opened on the other side of the vestibule, so if it rained with any ferocity, it POURED into the building from this hole, to the point where we'd have to rope off that part of the vestibule and keep people AWAY from it, lest the ceiling come down on them or something.

But apart from that, nothing like what's been described here.