My three worst jobs sites. What are yours?

Sewage treatment plant.

I have worked in a few. The first one I spent 3 weeks there in the tunnels running 1000'ft of 3/4" threaded aluminum conduit and pulling control wires. Most sewage plants use Aluminum conduit.

The last one I just looked at the job which was replacing 30' of 3" welded steam condensate.

The two guys I sent to the job were pissed at me for a week or so.

Old apartment with a rotted-out steam condensate line. You went in the crawl space, and it was probably 18" dirt to joist. They had dug trenches to crawl in for more clearance. This was built around 1900. Climing over old BX cable, broken glass, no lights. I usually rail against Mega Press & Propress but I was happy to have it that day. But the worst part of what I saw was it looked like the wood in the crawl space was rotten. I was afraid it would come down when I was in there.

Hard to pick the 3d one there are so many.

Went into a crawlspace to fix a floor furnace. After I got in there and was laying in some wet muddy crawlspace floor, someone flushed the toilet and I found out quickly that the sewage piping was broken, got out fast and went home to shower and change clothes. Never went back to that house.

Definitely been some gross places and encountered some odd things, like that time I found a severed hand under a 60 year old VA hospital steam boiler that was either pinched off when setting the boiler or tossed in there by a funny employee on their way to the morgue down the hall (same job site, rode the elevator down to the basement AKA morgue with a guy we called Dr Kevorkian who was eager to show us the freshly amputated leg on his cart), but I worked in a R&D facility for a world renowned college about 6-7 years ago and although I was not working in this particular area, another worker brought me over to the area where they were working on an artificial human nervous system. There were cadaver parts, ranging from just a hand to a full corpse, on various tables doing various maneuvers. The one that still haunts me to this day is a pair of legs severed at the waist, with the toes on one foot twiddling around while the other leg was bending at the knee up and down while the foot remained flat on the table. I could deal with the hands and fingers since I have seen enough Addams Family in my day, but the vision of that leg kicking around without an upper body attached will be burned in my mind forever.

@GroundUp not for me I would have run out of their like my A— was on fire.

Crawl spaces seem to be popular.

I had a no heat call on a gas fired furnace. Dirt crawl space about 40 inches high. Horizontal furnace of course. I'm working on it while the owner is near the entrance about 15 ft away. Its dark everywhere but where I am. I'm doing my thing, wondering why my old man couldn't be rich, when I hear a toilet flush from the living space above. The next thing I hear is spashing on the other side of the furnace. I wedge my head over the top of the furnace, shine my light, and see a cracked PVC waste line with a terrible attempt at repair. And lots of other cool stuff. I turned and shined my light at the owner and said "Are you f***ing kidding me?" There was no odor. I guess the dirt absorbed most of it, but I packed up and told him I'll be back when its fixed and de-grossed.

apparently people not giving a **** the toilet is just dumping directly under the house is also popular.

They would have been too had they know that was what it was before they crawled in to it. Maybe a corollary to never step in any unexplained liquids on the sidewalk when it hasn't rained recently.

This question took all of 3 seconds to remember. This was fifty years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was at that time an eager beaver Industrial Refrigeration Apprentice. We all know how hard it is to get on as an apprentice and I was very thankful for the job. In those days you worked or you starved. The ammonia trade at that time was of course all black pipe. In essence it was heavy pipefitting, very heavy. I remember thinking what use was I ever going to have for pipefitting black pipe, considering I have installed enough of the stuff to go from Winnipeg to Saskatoon' quite a lot. The shop I worked for was very heavily into the packing houses, at that time Winnipeg was a central hub for meat. I did only two jobs outside the packing houses in the entire time I was in the Ammonia trade. The shop took any piping job the packing houses wanted them to, work is work. Soooo, we got a job for repiping one of the lagoons; the pipe had rotted out. Little did I know that I was going to become a bit player in Dantes Inferno! I think most of the community do not know what lagoons are when you reference them to the meat industry. Canada Packers were more modern than Swifts they were stainless steel. Lagoons are just large holding /settling tanks meant to prevent anything other than water going into the public sewer system. The entire plants sewer system went into the lagoons first allowing all the animal products to rise to the surface and the "clean water" to be flushed to the city sewer. In the packing houses at that time it was required the floors be washed with 150 degree water so the lagoon was always hot.

So on the first day my foreman, Harvey, came up to me and said sorry kid? Now I don't think calling Harvey a hard **** really does him justice, he was an infantry sergeant in World War Two and he was a little rough. I was teamed up with some of the pipefitters and since I was going to do the welding I was going to be there until the bitter end. The opening to the lagoons was just that a cave mouth because it had a constant growth of sewer moss on it. Once past the opening you got to walk on this steel cat walk above the lagoons to what ever part of Hell you wanted to access. This excuse for a cat walk had more spring in it than a water mattress. The piping we had to change was of course at the far end of the lagoons, naturally. I thought at the time I was pretty well immune to the stink of the packing houses, Oh was I delusional. The crap from the plant was sitting on 150 degree water and it was cooking. The smell was not of this world. It wasn't a smell it was a living thing. The lagoons had no ventilation of any kind it was just still. The P.Eng. latter explained to me the smell would have gotten the packing house a law suit from the residents and no air was ever expelled. We starting working and it was all four inch black pipe. Worse yet you had to cut the pipe in five foot lengths because that was all the room you had which meant you were carrying the pipe on the cat walk. We got at it and slowly we started to make progress. One of the fitters was called off and sent to Swifts so the shop phoned the union hall and got another guy. This guy right from the get go was not going to work out, he was a "tough guy" nothing was too tough for him!!! So we took him down and you did not really smell anything until you were through the Hell hole. This guy was big in size, but probably not as his big as his ego. He gets into the lagoon and when the smell hit him he panicked, so much for tough. Now we had a two hundred and fifty pound idiot screaming and trying to leave with his eyes closed. The whole crew had to grab this bull and get him out, what a mess; all he kept screaming was he was blind. Well open your eyes sunshine. This job was bad enough but they hired a guy I had gone to high school with as a laborer, nice guy, but as green as grass. This poor guy on his second day was sent out to get some pipe alone, he was of course an eager beaver and he said sure. He brings the five foot length of pipe in through the Hell Hole and manages to get about half way down and he slips into the lagoon, luckily it was shallow. This was the days of the hippy and he had beautiful long blond hair. Once he was heard screaming we ran and hauled him out. He was covered in God only knows what and his hair was saturated in the crap floating at the top. He had to take the bus home and latter he told me when he got on the bus at the next stop every one else got off.

He tried everything to get the stink out but nothing worked on his hair, the next day he showed up bald, very bald. He only lasted about two more weeks and told us to go to Hell and at that time his head was no longer bald it just looked like a baby with its first hair. That was the worst job I ever had in the three years I spent in the packing houses. Thankfully, I was laid off from work shortage, and got hired by an HVAC shop and I never went back.

Funny aside: remember Harvey the foreman, well he was rough but he was really a guy with a heart of gold. The first day I started Harvey told me and Norm to put this length of ten inch on the pipe stands so he could cut it and weld on a 90 and a flange. Okay we thought how hard could it be? Yep how hard could it be, two stupid kids and a full length of ten inch easy right, sure sunshine. Norm and I fought for close to an hour and we couldn't get that pipe above our shins. Harvey came back from Swifts and said what hell have you two been doing for and hour. Well apart from trying to get hernias not much. Harvey says I told you to get the pipe on the @#$$^^& stands didn't I. We explained we couldn't lift it and we really tried. Harvey got this disgusted look on his face and told us to get out of the way. He puts one end on the stands and then goes to the opposite end and heaves that up. Muttering about weak **** kids and we should eat more. Harvey was the strongest man I ever worked with and he didn't think he was anything exceptional, different times to say the least. Harvey was really a very feeling guy, I had damaged one of the lenses in my glasses because I was too stupid to get a face shield. Harvey knew I did not have a pot to pee in or throw out the window, yeah I was pretty short of money. So he came up to me the next day and said I want to talk to you, I thought, Oh ****, he is going to give me one of his infantry chewing outs. He said you broke your glasses and I said yes and I had to wait till payday to get them fixed. He said "kid we both know you are broke right", and I said yeah. What he did next probably set the way I have treated other people over the years. He said get your specs fixed and give me the bill and don't you tell anyone or else. On the Monday I had repaired glasses and Harvey looked at the bill took out his wallet and gave me the full amount. True to Harvey, he then said, quit screwing around and get to work.

didn't osha exist by this time…