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.