The Weirdest, Wackiest Stories from Jobsites

These are stories to which only installers can relate. You're in a client's home or on a commercial project and something completely outlandish is happening.

You struggle to keep your eyes on the task at hand. You try to remain professional. You muster the strength to get through it thanks to this thought: “I can't wait to tell the guys about this one.”

Well, we want to hear the stories too — and share them.

We asked CE pros to submit their most interesting job site stories. In return, we got some interesting reading. Much of it isn't appropriate to share (it's amazing how much nudity occurs on job sites).

We also recognize that CE pros want to protect their clients' privacy (even if the clients don't always seem all that concerned about it) so we have tried to minimize any incriminating details.

What remains are some good stories (and still a little bit of nudity). Without further ado, here are your stories. We couldn't wait to tell the guys about these.

Things Found Inside Walls

I was doing a security system retrofit. After drilling all my locations and dropping the wires down the holes I proceeded to access the crawl space to retrieve them. When I opened the crawl space door there were hundreds of used condoms! They had been flushed down the toilet and over time the septic tank had ruptured and everything in it had seeped up through the loose soil.

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I was working in a large commercial building, running wire through the hung ceiling from one end of the office space to the other. I used push-pull rods to avoid taking out every ceiling tile.

When I attached my wire at one end of the push-pull rod and started pulling my cable it got stuck. I pulled back and tried it again but it did the same thing. I started opening every other ceiling tile to find what was hanging up my cable.

When I opened one near the center of the office several stacks of $100 bills hit me in the head. My wire was wrapped up around several other stacks of bills.

I asked a woman in the office to come over and take a look. She had no idea whose money it could be, so she called the company owner.

In about 10 minutes he arrived at the office, looked up in the ceiling, picked up the rest of the bills and asked the girl to get him a bag.

At that point I just wanted to complete my wire run and get out of Dodge.

Two weeks later I received a $200 check in the mail from that company. There was a note thanking me for solving a theft problem at the office. Apparently, that money had been missing for some time. The person that broke into the office hid the money and was then in jail, according to the note.

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Naked Truths

I was working in a recently finished high-end house while the homeowners were home. After entering through the garage, I left my shoes at the door.

As I was working on a telephone system, the homeowner walked past me, apparently after a steam in the sauna, completely naked. The weird thing is he wasn't too concerned!
Needless to say, it was embarrassing, but apparently only for one of us.

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While visiting a client, the homeowner wanted to show me something that his universal remote was doing. When he turned the system on a full-blown porno movie began to play.

In his surprise, he frantically tried to stop it but ended up pausing it at a graphic point. That happened just as his teenage daughter walked into the room.

I have fielded some pretty uncomfortable situations in the past but this one was particularly awkward.

Funeral Home Fun

After working on a new-construction funeral home project I was called back a couple of weeks later to adjust a security camera. He asked me to meet him at the funeral home after hours.

I walked in and went right to the camera that needed adjustment. It was kind of dark, but I could see well enough to make my adjustments. After I was done and gathering up my tools, the funeral home owner came into the room and turned on the main light.

I turned around and notice that not 10 feet away from me was a body in an open casket. Imagine the surprise and shock.

There I was, working in a room by myself with a dead body and not knowing it. Needless to say, I quickly finished gathering my tools and didn't linger.

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While doing an installation at a funeral home, it was business as usual except when a few technicians had to repeatedly walk past dead bodies for some wire runs. They nearly gagged.

Seriously, they couldn't have cleared the area of dead bodies before we started?

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Here and There

A client of mine was having new floors put in, and his cable lines came directly through the floor. I was scheduled to reinstall his system, but the customer got impatient and attempted to move the cable lines himself and “fish” the lines in the wall. When I arrived, the customer told me that he attempted to move the lines himself but wasn't successful. He then left for work.

I checked it out and saw that he tried to use a fishing pole with the eyelets cut off to fish the cable up the wall.

I had never seen anyone use the term “fishing a wall” literally! The story is hard to believe but the photos prove it.

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A former big city police chief relocated his family. After getting one of our postcards in the mail, he called us to fix a botched installation by another company.

As we were moving equipment and reconfiguring his system, one of our installers, Sam Korey, found $500 behind the left channel speaker. We gave the $500 to the client who, in turn, told us that we “passed the test.”

Apparently, when the family relocated, some pieces of the wife's jewelry had disappeared and they suspected that the movers had sticky fingers.

We've been very good friends with the client ever since and have picked up 35 other clients by word of mouth at his development and at his country club.

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While installing a Crestron system in a client's new home, I was asked to test a TV that wasn't working in a different part of the house. As I was led to that room by the house manager, he told me to be very quiet while in the room because the client's dog was having a psychic reading in there.

I was told that the dog was not acting like himself for the past few weeks, so the client felt it may be the new surroundings and there may have been another dog living in the house previously.

They were trying to channel the old dog's spirit by having the new dog speak to him through a psychic. Here is a visual for you: picture a woman in a robe standing with the new dog's paws in her hands and she is making the dog howl to try and channel the spirits of the old dog.

I had to leave because I thought I was on a hidden camera.

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A local beer distributor client was having a problem with people stealing — beer, of course. He contracted my company to install a camera system to watch for suspicious activity. Since he didn't want anybody to know about the cameras, we did the installation after hours.

There was one person left in the building while we worked and she had no idea what we were doing. As we were finishing up the job and testing the security camera, we observed that employee sneak into a monitored area and take a six-pack of beer.

We couldn't believe we just witnessed the actual event the owner was attempting to prevent.

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One of our installers was called to service a problem on a phone line. When he arrived, the client claimed he could not hear the phone ring — yet, he still answered his calls.

The installer asked how he knew when to answer the calls and the client said that the dog howls when there is an incoming call.

So they tried it. Sure enough, the dog howled when a call was on the line.

The installer went to check the interface and there was the dog — on a metal chain attached to the phone ground and there was a short on the line. The dog was getting major volts when the phone rang.

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I was called in to bring some automation expertise on a new construction project. I talked to the client about the amount and types of wiring that would be appropriate for his new home.

After listening to my suggestions he said he had been studying online and wanted his automation to be wireless with the absolute minimum wire needed. His reason was that he didn't want his wife and himself to be exposed to the EMF that would radiate from the Cat 5 wires we suggested he got plenty of.

I was laughing on the inside and explained that the wireless technologies he wanted to install are nothing more than a controlled EMF. He wouldn't buy it.