Open Season on Pranksters
Dave Smith has been an Industrial Maintenance Electrician since 1975. He has taught maintenance, troubleshooting and safety courses to thousands of electricians in mines, mills, refineries, factories, plants, power stations and offshore platforms throughout North America and the Middle East. Dave is a hands-on guy and teache...
Frank left work that day and never came back, the memory of that incident still vivid in his mind 40 years later.
In the second year of my apprenticeship, my journeyman pulled the same stunt, but the shock was just across my right hand. It’s amazing the extent of pain and fright caused by 120vAC running amok across your nerves and muscles.
It is mind-boggling and amazing to think that these pranks were actually pulled off by our journeymen—the people to whom we were indentured. Then I learned that pulling these kinds of dangerous stunts is actually a century-old tradition, bequeathed from one generation of electrician to the next.
EBMag’s editor wrote about one such incident in Alberta in his “From the Editor” in the April 2006 edition. In that case, a worker had the leads of a megohmeter applied to his hands, which sent current racing through one of his hands to the other. Of course, that current passed through his heart along the way. The worker was young and in good physical condition, with no known previous cardiac issues, yet he was hospitalized and treated as though he had suffered a heart attack. He was eventually discharged from the hospital but subsequently re-admitted for further treatment and monitoring due to continuing cardiac problems.
According to Work Safe Alberta’s “Workplace Health and Safety Bulletin”, applying the leads of a meggar to an unsuspecting worker is known to occur in the electrical trade: typically to first-year apprentices as a kind of initiation.
It’s bad enough inflicting pain on yourself (and we’ve all been buzzed at some point), but you have to question the sanity of some people when the pain is intentionally inflicted—especially by someone in authority.
At every course I teach to electrical workers, I ask: Who’s ever had an idiot come up behind you while you were in a live panel and startle you? And, in every class, at least 80% confirm it has happened to them.
Many years ago, an electrician told me a story of a prankster who snuck up behind a 61-year-old journeyman tightening screws in a live panel, and startled him. Intent on his work, the journeyman—who was also a husband, father and grandfather—was so startled, he went into cardiac arrest and died.
Arguably, the prankster did not expect this outcome, but is there ever a ‘right time’ for pranks, especially when you consider the fact we work with lethal energy?
The time has come for this industry to mature to the point where immaturity of this kind is simply not tolerated, and grounds for immediate dismissal. Health & safety is top-of-mind these days, which is where, incidentally, it should have always been; and not just because someone might take us to court, but because it is the right thing to do.
Not a person among us wants to be the one to send a coworker—perhaps our friend—to the burn unit or worse: the morgue. There’s nothing simple about a ‘small’ shock. You have no idea what effect it will have on the prank’s victim. Then there are the long-term health effects of being shocked, which are often completely misunderstood by the medical community.
We should all be helping one another work safely so we can all go home to our families and friends at the end of our shift. As for pranksters—whom every electrician, including me, has encountered—there should be a special season for them: somewhere between moose and deer, with no bag limit.
Until next time, be ready, be careful and be safe.