O.T. Strangest 2am call out

[OkiePC]

One of my favorites is the phone call I get to "just to wake you up and so you have a few minutes to get orientated before we find out if there is really a problem that we need help with, we'll call you back in 10 min if we cant fix it". Are you kidding me?

Wow, talk about ammo for a screaming match...I think I would stay calm until I got face to face in private with that individual, and the the spit would start flyin'

What kills me is when they call to say something is down and haven't even really done any checking, "We just wanted to pick your brain before would started working on the problem..."

 

[Tom@Pton]

Being an outside contractor, I bill from the moment I get the phone call until I am back in bed. Make enough money that I just say "Thank you!" after each call. Rarely have I chewed any one out for a mental block. Been there to many times myself.

 

[daba]

This didn't happen to me, but to a work colleague who was "on-call".

Just after 2 a.m., the call-out phone rang, waking him from his sleep.

There wasn't a problem on site, the supervisor who had just come on shift at 2 a.m. said he was "...just checking that this is the right number for the emergency call-out...".

The minimum billing was for 1 hour of engineer time too !!

 

[OkiePC]

Being an outside contractor, I bill from the moment I get the phone call until I am back in bed. Make enough money that I just say "Thank you!" after each call. Rarely have I chewed any one out for a mental block. Been there to many times myself.

Yes, I would be happy in that situation, I should add that my perspective is that of someone working for the same company.

 

[scalelar]

Gotta call from the shift production manager one Saturday. Asked if I could come in because the shift electrician was covered up.When I got there he was covered up grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for the shift. But they were good burgers!

 

[muttleydoo]

I've lost count of the times when the PLC program has been blamed; it's so easy to make it an excuse. Another one is the vision program is faulty and you go and find that the focus or aperture has been altered or the camera has been moved - normally another own goal.
But it does keep us all in a job!

 

[briancr]

Another one springs to mind, many years ago, before HMI's, we had a SCADA system running on a normal desktop computer. the only way to change screens was using the function keys, F4 being the alarm page.

Call from a seasoned operator, compressor wont start, "OK Christopher, what is on the alarm page", I asked. His reply is that the screen wont change. After many times asking him, is he pushing the F4 key. Yes was his reply, nothing happening.

So of i go to work, ask Christopher to show me what is wrong. He says the screen wont change. Show me I say. Low and behold he pushes the alpha F key then the numeric 4 key. . I couldnt believe what I was seeing, he had been in that job for like 5 years. I pushed the F4 key and said to him, and now. His reply was, isnt it the same thing?. I managed to contain my anger and say, no it isnt, there is your problem, compressor not full unloaded.

Did have a good laugh the next day with my work mates

 

[sthompson]

Bubba calles me in the middle of the night, and after I am awake, asks me a question about one of our systems. I say "Bubba, we went over all that, and you wrote it all down" (Obviously his name isn't Bubba, but I have changed it to protect the guilty). Bubba replies "I know, but the phone was closer than my notebook". I hung up on him, and put in an overtime charge the next day when I got in. (Yes, this is a true story!)


p.s. Kudos to whoever coined the term Bubba!

Stu....

 

[Clay B.]

Got called into a meeting with the owner of our comapny and some of the engineers. Once of our customers was having an issue with a certain type of conveyor we build. The conveyor cable kept breaking. Also the screens on the sifter were busting. I had only been at the company a few months so I asked what normally caused this to happen. I was told that the cable breaking usuallly happens when the machine is started with material in it. The same issue could be applied to the sifter. So I asked how the customer was stopping the machine and an enginner got real smug with me and said they were using the stop push button. He then asked if I knew what what a stop button looked like. I said yea it is usually an extended red push button. Then I looked at him and said so is the E-stop. Then asked the question forming in my mind. Does anybody know if the customer is using the E-stop for the stop button.

Needless to say this got some bewildered looks and phone calls started to be made.

I felt pretty good right up to the point the owner said " Since you seem to have a good idea of how to trouble shoot this kind of issue you are on the next plane out"..

Got to the customer's site. Programed in some traps to data log and sure enough the customer's operators would hit the E-stop om their way to lunch. It stopped the machine faster so they could get to their break faster. After showing the customer the logs they decided to foot the bill for my trip and pay some of the bill on parts we had sent them.

Also the smarta** engineer that asked me if I knew what a stop button looked like is no longer with the company.

 

[TConnolly]

If there are more than two syllables in the alarm message they refuse to actually read it in my experience.

Quoted cause its true.

--------------------------------

I had one recently where an oil sump overflowed so I got an assignment to investigate why the sump alarm didn't operate to tell the operator to drain it. First place I looked was the alarm log, found that a sump alarm occurred a couple of days earlier. Then I investigated to see if the float switch was working - I reached into the oil to move the float and discovered that a wrench had been placed on the float and the other end of the wrench had been wired up to a pipe so that it formed a lever to hold the float down. I removed it and immediately the sump alarm activated. It probably took the operator more time to rig the wrench than it would have taken to drain the sump. I told the shift supervisor that the alarm worked fine but I couldn't control if the operator ignored it, that was his responsibility. A month later the same sump overflowed again on the weekend. A weekend maintenance tech found another wrench rigged to the float again.

 

[OkiePC]

You can't fix stupid

 

[allscott]

I had a call in the middle of the night once from a shift supervisor with what should have been a rudimentary problem for the shift electrician to figure out. I asked to speak to bubba.

ss "Bubba doesn't want to talk right now he's crying"

me "Huh"

me "Can I speak to him please?"

bubba "I just don't know what to do sob..."

me "just reset the drive!"

bubba "I know, I'll try, where is it again?"

me "I'll be right there"

Got to play technician and DR. Phil on the same call!

 

[rguimond]

Anyone know where the Faroe Islands are? They're in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Iceland & Scotland. 50,000 people, 80,000 sheep. If you ask for directions to get there, you'll probably hear "you can't get there from here"...

Anyway, about 8 years ago, a recently-delivered fishing vessel developed an electrical problem. Looked like a Hall-effect sensor on leads to one of the navigation lights (to sense whether the filaments were intact) wasn't working, triggering the stand-by light to come on, even though the main bulb was OK. If I remember correctly, we had a TWIDO PLC in the lighting control panel, but GSM modems were still in their infancy back then, so we had no remote troubleshooting ability. Sounds trivial, right? After about a week on the phone with a "technician" (Bubba) who spoke Icelandic, Faroese, Danish & German, but very little English, I was able to deduce that it wasn't the sensor, and that the MCR wasn't energizing when the PLC was on, likely indicating a burnt fuse or a burnt coil in the MCR. After several days of trying to explain to the technician where the relay was (a simple 8-pin) and where the six spare relays were, I decided to jump on a plane.

Well, you really can't get there from here - at least not easily. The first leg of the flight to London was delayed by 4 hours. Missed my flight to Copenhagen by 30 minutes. Spent the night in airport hotel. Not cheap. Begged another airline to accept my ticket from the previous day and jumped on a little plane to Vagar. Arrived OK, rented a car, drove through miles of tunnels and along the side of countless cliffs, found the boat, changed the relay and returned to Vagar the same day. outgoing flight delayed due to fog. Finally left 8 hours later. 15 minutes from Copenhagen, a kidney stone decided it was time to come out. Nearly died before I landed. Spent the night in hospital (thankful for travel insurance). Managed to get on the flight to London later the next day, then off to Canada.

The St. John's airport we were supposed clear customs was closed due to fog. Flew to Halifax, instead, where we waited on the runway for several hours because there were no customs agents available. Finally flew back to St. John's, cleared customs, flew back to Halifax and made it home the next day.

All for a 20-second relay change!

 

[bernie_carlton]

I nominate rguimond's story as the best. Anyone want to start a poll?

 

[Tom@Pton]

No need. Just send him the trophy.