The Weirdest, Wackiest Stories from Jobsites

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.