Wonderful things to walk into work to...

[Dreamstalker]

At the game store, there was a hole in the office wall right into the foundation of the building, three guesses what happened with a heavy rain- or snowfall. Quite a few times I had come in to see a good portion of our shipping supplies ruined...each time, I moved the dry stuff into the downstairs back hall area, a day later it was moved back before all the water had been cleaned up

I wasn't there the day this happened, but one of the toilet pipes developed a leak, which sprayed half the office every time the toilet was flushed and it took half a day (why so damn long?) for someone to find the mess. We lost a few hundred dollars of ebay stock with that one; of course I wasn't notified of the issue and nothing was done to help dry everything off (water penetrated the shrinkwrap and was ignored; I was basically expected to ship damaged goods).

[crazylegs]

About two years ago we had some heavy rain while I was working at the <Music Shop>, however designed the store decided that the best place for a down pipe off the roof was through one of the support collums (sp?) on the shop floor. The inspection hatch for the waste water pipe is on the shop floor

This so far isn't very exciting.

However about a month previous some idiot managed to set fire to the roof of the building, which resulted in Trumpton attending and spraying lots of water onto the roof.

The drainage had never been intended to take multiple fire hoses worth of water all at once and it backed up, bursting at the inspction hatch on the collum (seperate to the other one on the floor).

As <Music Store> keeps stock physically on the floor you can see how much was ruined here, it took about 4 hours to sort the floor out remove water then clean). The easiest solution was to lift the inspection cover on the floor and sweep all the water into it

Back to the rain.

Remember the weak spot? The water did.

Not only did it burst at the same point but also came up through the floor as well resulting in more flooding and more lost stock.

It took <Music Store> more than 12 months to fully fix it, every time it rained we watched the floor expecting it to flood any minute.

[MystyGlyttyr]

At the Waffle House I used to work at, I was heading back into the back room to get...something...and upon opening the door, was greeted with the fact that it was RAINING. Indoors.

I looked at it for a minute, shut the door, and went and got the waiter to come and look with me.

He opened the door and it was, in fact, still raining.

We spent a little while deciding what to do about this, and finally decided to just go in and try and figure it out. As soon as we were in, we realized the rain was HOT.

Apparently, someone had run over one of our high-powered cleaning hoses with a sharp-wheeled cart and punctured it full of holes, and it was spraying hot water into the air so hard that it bounced off the ceiling and was making "rain".

By the time we figured out the problem and shut off the hose, we were both soaking wet and had to go hover by the stove to dry off. The manager made an interesting face when he walked in and saw his waiter and waitress both dripping water and huddling by the stove for warmth.

[wagegoth]

San Francisco Bay Area = earthquakes.

The one in 1984 gave us a good shake. I was working in housewares and a few things fell, but nothing broke. Scary part: one coworker was on the top of one of those huge rolling ladders in the back stockroom when it hit. She grabbed shelves on each side of the aisle and prayed. The next department over was the department that carried high-end china, silverware and crystal. They lost a shelf of Waterford and a few pieces of Lenox.



1989: It was weird. First there was a bang. I thought a delivery truck had hit the side of the building. It started to shake. I was with a customer and we both grabbed onto a low, round rack (big, heavy, full of clothes) and waited until it stopped. Then it started again, harder. We ran to the nearest doorway and waited it out. Not much damage, but people were freaking.

We found out how bad it was very quickly as there was a television set tuned to the World Series in the men's department. (I had a friend who was in Candlestick when it happened. He said he laid down on the ground under the seats and prayed.) We had to block off the elevators because we didn't know if there was damage. No one could remember how to find the stairs that could be used for evacuation. We ended up closing the store a bit later to make sure everything was in working order.

For the next few days, there were several aftershocks on the local fault line. One was big enough that people started freaking again. If the store had been full, people would have been hurt because they actually started running out of the store, dragging kids and strollers down the escalators and just being general idiots.

[cinema guy]

I used to work for a company that(among other things) manufactured and installed conservatories. We had a big conservatory along the front of the factory, partly to serve as a show room. When it rained, it leaked. Nice advert, that.

[Dreamstalker]

The AC unit at the repair shop happens to be directly over the sorry excuse for a bench. I've fought with the Assistant about placing running machines there while the AC is on* as condensation from the unit will drip on/into the cases...and I now have my suspicions about how the most recent repair job went from cheap-fix to possible-ruined-motherboard.

* Of course, her solution is to shut the AC off completely, so I as well as the computers overheat...

[smileyeagle1021]

the strangest that I can claim knowledge of (it happened where I worked at the time, but not while I was there) apparently the opening manager came in to see the co2 tank had exploded

[daleduke17]

I don't remember if I posted this before or not, so:

One night last summer I was sitting in my work station. It was quiet as it was summer and the students are gone. About 1245am I went on break and used the soda machine outside the front door of our office. Came back and went on my merry working way. About 215am I hear a ruffling noise coming from a surrounding room. I figured it was the AM/FM radio in the room across from where I am (it's always on for some reason). Around 315am I find out it was NOT the radio as I see water starting to advance into my work area (which has a partially carpetted floor, six computers and a radio console in it, along with various UPS systems and circuit strips on the floor). I get on the radio to maintenance to have someone come over as I am experiencing a leak. I look out into the hallway and find the source of the leak...a pipe in the ceiling near the soda machine busted and was pouring water out at the rate of several gallons a minute (on a guess).

Luckily we didn't lose any equipment and the water didn't get into the power outlet that is on the floor (it surrounded it though). That would have probably made the room turn a lot of pretty colors.

[Chromatix]

If you have a potential water-plus-electrics situation, I advise finding the relevant circuit breaker and throwing it. If you don't know which one is relevant, throw all of them.

[daleduke17]

If you have a potential water-plus-electrics situation, I advise finding the relevant circuit breaker and throwing it. If you don't know which one is relevant, throw all of them.

We were going to, but didn't know where the relevant box was for the room.

[Sirionan]

Back in August 2005, I was working for the Frozen North's equivalent to Tim Allen's favourite store, in a very large national-level distribution center. Due to the fact that the power supply in the area was a little.. fragile, a lightning strike in the area tended to kill the power system for up to 15 minutes at a time (This was to be resolved by the end of 2006, I was told, though I'm not sure--municipal/utility level, not the company). and the end of July and beginning of August had a large number of brief but annoying thunderstorms. This culminated into the disaster I will now relate.

Around the early middle of August, the most intense storm to hit my geographic region since Hurricane Hazel swept in. I'd barely made it to work in time to prevent drenching (it was raining as I ran through the parking lot). The first 30 minutes had multiple repeat lightning strikes kill the power over and over, and one lightning strike literally obliterated a utility pole right outside the building. and then.. it RAINED. In around an hour the storm dropped approximately 6 inches where I was (some areas got 4, others 8, often less than a mile apart).

Fun Fact: Acre of roof (more or less). 5 pipes to drain it. pipes not directly attached to wall, but hanging from brackets.

Yes, we're talking 12 inch pipes, but they just couldn't handle this kind of water. three snapped entirely, either where they entered the floor or snapped off at the top. We were using 4x8 boards used to attach the fashion rack poles as monolithic squeegees. The Fashion area lost oodles of money to water damage, and the lockup (where we kept all the really expensive small things like cosmetics) lost oodles more.

One particular idiot decided to try to clean up some miscellaneous debris near the base of the pipe that snapped most dramatically. 50 people screamed at him that the pipe was breaking and all he did was turn around and stare (and not run away like a smart person). The pipe snapped off in 4 places: base, 6 feet up, the corner where it bent to the floor, and 12 feet from the wall.. and this god-blessed fool only got something like a 50 gallon soaker shot. no pipe chunks hitting him.

Needless to say, they sent us home early. and I still got home an hour later than usual due to road flooding/destruction.

[Dreamstalker]

I don't even know where the relevant box is for the shop...I have a suspicion it's in one of the areas the assistant won't let me go in. Unfortunately she's always around, so I can't go exploring and find the breaker box myself.

Last week, her boneheadedness caused me to get shocked (luckily it was only through USB; that's painful, but fortunately for me not lethal). Based on her response to that ("what you doing?"...did you really not see what just happened?) I'm seriously questioning her ability to handle a real emergency situation.

[Chromatix]

Sounds like she's a safety liability as well as an operational one. Which, obviously, is Bad.

I'm not certain what your options are to deal with it, but I suggest you find out.

[mattm04]

Near the end of winter we had a bad snow storm, followed by a major rainstorm. Lets sya the weight from snow and rain was a little much for the roof to handle. At first it was one minor room leak, then another popped up, then another, than another, and another all over the store. AN engineer cam out and determined the roof to be sound, but we ended up closing the store because we had too many leaks. A few other area stores were closed for a few days to for inspection of the roof and then replacing all the damages ceiling tiles and merchandise/equipment.

[Dreamstalker]

One morning at the game store, I went down to the office to find that a bird had bumbled its way into the basement and was now trapped. Poor thing might have fled to safety during the huge storm the day before. It was basically up to me to herd the critter upstairs and outside again (we didn't have a net, which complicated matters a bit...ever try to catch a fluttering bird with a box?).

I eventually managed to do so, while the boss was....yes, trying to kill it because he was afraid it would crap on the boxes of shirts on top of the shelves (yeah, that'll help). The UPS guy was meanwhile trying to keep it from bashing its brains out on the window while herding it toward the door.

After all was said and done (birdie did manage to find the outdoors), I got berated by boss for wasting an hour...scuse me, it scared a few customers out and would have died in the store (which could be a huge problem if it died where nobody could find or get to it) if I didn't do anything.