Jobsite Chaos & Customer Fails | Ep. 3: TechTrain Solutions Podcast

Jobsite chaos, difficult customers, and real electrician stories—this episode of the Power Effects Podcast dives into the wild side of working in the trades.
From residential service calls gone wrong to commercial jobsite failures, we break down the funniest, most frustrating, and most relatable moments every electrician, apprentice, and tradesman has experienced.
Whether you're in electrical, HVAC, plumbing, or construction, these customer fails and jobsite mistakes will hit close to home.
⚡ In this episode:

Crazy jobsite stories from the field
Difficult customers and real-world challenges
Lessons learned in residential and commercial work
The reality of working in the skilled trades

If you're an electrician, apprentice, or work in the trades, this podcast is for you.
👉 Subscribe for weekly episodes on electrical work, tools, training, and life in the trades.

Transcript

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to episode three with the Tech Train Solutions. Today we're gonna talk about job chaos. The customer fails, the horror stories. The customer, you're like, why am I still here? And also Apprentices Fails. The failures, what they've done wrong, the funny stuff. We're gonna talk about that today at my episode three. Let's begin. Have you ever had a customer say something so crazy? They're like, what the hell are you talking about? Today we're also talking about job site disasters. Let's begin. You ever had that one customer that stands over you, the micromanager? What are you doing that for? Oh, what's that? How do you do that? Oh, can you show me? Have you had that customer? I know people have had, they're following them from job all the way over to jobs, or they come to the home, residential home, and just hang out with you the whole time. You're trying to work, you're trying to finish, but he's around you. They're around you hanging out, and you're like, what is going on? I've had that very much. Oh, there it goes. I got it finally. All right, got the chat up. This is what we're talking about. I've had customers where I'll let you know, I was trying to start my own electrical contracting business many years ago because I got laid off many times. So I'm starting my own electrical contracting. I am hanging out with the general general contractor. He gave me a job. I'm going into a house. It was in uh Sheltenham. All the walls were so delicate. They were just falling apart from the mildew, the moisture. And I'm trying to work, and the customer goes, uh, make sure you don't damage the wall anymore than it is. I'm well, the wall's kind of messed up now. I think you might need to fix this. I'll do my best, but it's not working right. So I'm doing it, and it's falling apart in my hands. I finally got it in with no problem. Luckily, there was a stud there, but that wall was destroying. So I get that. I'm getting the house done, I'm wiring up the panel, and then I see them by a TV. I'm seeing a brand new car. I'm going, Oh, I'm not getting paid. I am not getting any money. This is what I'm seeing. I'm not getting anything. There you go. I'm getting nothing. So what happened? The general foreman, after the job was done, comes up to me and goes, Sean, I apologize. You're not gonna get the other $500. They said they spent it all. I'm like, what? Sorry, we we they spent it all and uh they feel bad, but I'll get you the next job. I'm like, I'm good. You can just get out. Uh I stopped that contracting right there and then. I said, I'm good, I'll see you. And then I went to another job. Finally went to work again, but man, that was a it was a pain in the butt. Losing that customer doing that to me. I'm seeing that by the TVs coming into the thing, right? I'm seeing it. My gosh, I lost $650 on that job. Now, another time in Philadelphia, I was working at Rohome, trying to get this house done. I'm wiring it up, I'm doing all this, all ripped apart, right? HVAC's doing her job, plumber's doing theirs, I'm doing my work, I get it all done, I leave, and then I get the again, I get the call. Oh, uh, the homeowner doesn't have any money, he can't pay you guys. I'm gonna try to help you out, but I don't know what to do. I'm like, darn it. So I'm like, I'm gonna go back and grab all my wire. I'm just gonna grab it all, and I'm gonna at least make some money out of the copper. I go back, all the wire is gone, everything is gone. Apparently, other trades grab my wire to make the money back, so they get their money back, but I get get ripped off. So I just stopped being a contractor. Like I said, I just stopped. That was a tough that was before the other job. Um, this is the two horror stories I've had. I'm I was too naive, too nice. Nice doesn't do anything for you. You need to be assertive and you have to price the job right, and you should get paid a percentage prior to starting, and should get a percentage halfway through and a percentage at the end. That way you don't lose any money, you gain money. But I didn't learn that. I learned the hard way. Being nice throws you in the bus, in the back, ripped off. That's when I tried in my contracting world. Now, let me tell you other horror stories in the trades, right? Other job sites. You ever been up a crane lift, lifting up you about 120 feet, 130 feet? Well, if you're not afraid of heights, this is great for you. But for those who are afraid of heights, you're on a regular lift, they go up uh maybe 50 feet max, maybe a little bit har further, but this is 128 feet taking you up on a crane. I was puckering. Now I'm not afraid of heights, but no offense. 128 feet, 128 feet. I'm tied off, thank goodness, but you don't know what's gonna happen to that crane. Make sure the the inspections were done that day, make sure everything's up to date. You're going up there just to repair some lights. That's all you're doing. That was a scary time. That not a horror story, but a scary time. Now, there's other times that I've had some really bad uh moments in the contracting world, not just me, but working as a worker, where so I almost got buried once in in the dirt. That was pretty scary, didn't cave in, just didn't see me and started bearing. I'm like, oh no, I run out. They said, Oh, I didn't see you there. Didn't look. That almost happened to me once. The other time, back in the day, we didn't really have NFP 70E. Nah. I would wear t-shirts, shorts. I'll be working electrical panels, 480 hot, right? 575 hot, 277 hot. I'll be in there working. I had to put CTs in, right? CTs, you had to pull the wire off, put this thing around this around the wire, put the wire back in. Why the whole panel's hot? This is what you're doing. That's what you're doing. Now I'm doing that, and then I needed to make holes. I needed to continue running circuits in this live active panel. Well, no one's shutting it off. It was a school. Going, I need you to work on this hot. I'm a journeyman. Back in the day, you didn't say no, you had to get the job done. So I'm like, all right, no problem. So what you do is you make a duct tape with plywood, cardboard, and you make it so much that when it falls, it goes uh right into it, right? And it stops, and you get all collected, and then you're just puckering when you're drilling a hole, going, uh oh, hopefully the middle fibers going there. Because I I look, NFP wasn't a thing, but I know something would happen, something explosion, all that. So I was very careful. I got the metal fibers out. I was fortunate. I slipped on a screwdriver once. Thank goodness. I taped it up, it didn't go on the hots on the 480 pound. Oh, thank goodness. I could have got killed. That was not a good experience. That was a tough job. Um, now that's no problem. 480 working hot. I have my NFP 70 gear. I could do it now, but I have to. Now, you're not supposed to work on anything hot unless you're troubleshooting, experimenting, and if it's gonna cause some kind of life, death, or something, then you have to work it. You can work on it hot. That's the only main reasons. Any other time you should be able to shut it off. Shut the darn thing off. Push back. No, I'm not working on hot. Whoa, they want their AC. Well, suck it up, turn that damn AC off. Give me five minutes, I'll fix it, and then you can turn it back on. I've had that where they're forcing me to try to turn it back on. I've been on a working residential, we're working on a circuit. Homeowner comes in, right? I don't know why he feels like he has to do this. He goes down there, he's like, oh, this is off. He turns on the breaker on my friend, almost uh, gosh, he got hurt pretty bad on that one because it was uh double pull. Uh and he got hurt pretty bad because a homeowner walks in, thinks he owns the place, and turns it on. Oh, I need this on. Because this was new installation. He was moving in that day, from my understanding, uh, and he turned it on him. Hurt him pretty bad. These are some of the stories that happen out there, they are nightmares. Now, I've had this one job, not really a nightmare, but pretty crazy. This homeowner, he had his outside lighting not work for over for over. He apparently hired a handyman to help fix his lights. He got everything working except for this one, and it did not work. And I'm like, all right, it was a buddy of mine. All right, give me some time. I go over there within seconds. I found the problem. Apparently, whoever this handyman is doesn't know anything about three ways. It took me less than 20 seconds to put everything wrapped back. He was out outdoor light for a year. He's got lived in a dark area. He needs that light for safety and security and also not to get hurt. Safety. And he lived with that for a year, and it was a there's a simple problem. He's poor, he can't really afford an electrician. I can understand that. So a buddy of mine took care of him for a whole darn year. There's times in some job sites, some homeowners, where they're gonna be awesome, they're gonna be awesome, amazing, and you're gonna be cool with them. Next thing you become friends. I've had a few of those experiences, but you're still gonna have those nightmare people, the ones who can why is that so expensive? What can you get any lower than that? And you give them a discount already, and they will still want more of a discount. Or near the end of the job, it doesn't look like that job is worth that much. No, I don't know why. I'm I'm not gonna pay you that much, and then I won't pay you all because they felt like that job should have been done cheaper. But they hired you. I've had those nightmares. Um, I wasn't thank goodness I was a success electrician, then the company had to deal with that, but that was tough. Seeing that and being annoyed as hell. Oh, this other nightmare I'm about to tell you. This one was unique. I don't know if you had dealt with rich people, very expensive homes. We did all these recess lights on all this big house. The homeowner, this South African CEO, comes in and says, I don't like the look of these. Take them all down, and then he shows us what he wants. We take them all down, he's paying for it, but as a guy working, what the hell is this crap? If I was the company, I understand. Shoot, I'll do it. I'll I'll charge you more. I'm gonna upcharge you. But as a worker, I'm like, what the hell is this crap? We take all the recess, put all the new recesses up, and that took a long time because all that recess was done during roughing. We had to take it out during the final and reinstall new ones during the final. Take the wires out, put them back in. It was a pain. We had that happen where you got all that done. This guy was so unique. He's looking at the pitch of the roof, and he goes to the uh general contractor and goes, I don't like the pitch of the roof. I want this pitch. The general contractor took everything down, repitched it, and he paid for it. I I guess if you're okay with him paying for it, that's fine. But as again, a worker that drove me crazy. I'm like, what the hell is this crap? I've had that now. Let's talk about other instants where you're working and you leave, you're done. I've had this happen. You leave, you're done. And they're calling you. Hey, um, hey, Sean, uh, I'm getting shocked. What do you mean, shocked? I'm getting shocked here. So I'm like, uh, not recently, this is further further back. There was one recent, but he knew what it was. The one further back, he said he was keep getting shocked. And and I'm sure he was. You're never gonna discount that. But then when he described where it was, I was never near there. And it's not metal boxes, I don't know how that area could be affected. So I go down there, I'm checking it out. First thing, I check my stuff again. Perfect, nothing wrong. Everything's fine. I am not sure that nothing. I'm good. So then I go check his stuff again. This was like 10 years ago. I go check his stuff, and I'm looking, I don't see anything. I'm checking pipes, I'm checking everything. I could not find anything, and then I decided let me check the uh exterior wall, right? It's metal mesh with stucco. I go there and I'm like, I run extension cord out. I put my neutral, my um one lead into the neutral. I hit the metal of the stucco, and I had 120 volts. 120 volts. I'm like, oh dude, you got 120 volts in this man. We gotta figure this shit out. So we're calling people in, we had mass people come, we're looking everywhere, we're trying to figure this out, and then we see we look in there, we put a flashlight with a service cable in there, and we see it looks like a nail. So when they did the stucco, they put a nail, they put a nail into the service cable, didn't drip, didn't nothing. It was fine, it wasn't burning, I guess, with just enough resistance where it's just pulling 120 volts. Uh and apparently he was like that for three or four months. And he's like, I got shocked a lot. So that's what it was. The guy doing stucco, nail right into the service cable. It happens. That was a unique, never seen before situation. Which, if you had that, please let me know. Because again, that is a very unique thing. Wow, who does it? I'm gonna go check to make sure we're good on my podcast because I got nobody, man. I need some people. I want some love. You know, need some love here, guys. Ladies and gentlemen, I was even gonna go live today. Let's see here. Alright. What's this control room? I want to try that. There you go. Alright. I see it now. I put this control room up. That's so neat. Alright, I got nobody chatting. That's fine. Alright, so let's continue. Let's talk about the other things. Let's talk about the blame game. I've had that. Where you do something, you do it right, and they already know that it wasn't your fault. But they wanted to one, get some money. Two, to be able to lower your costs. Not me, it was another contractor worked for. So what happened was another person, maybe a relative, they're like, right, destroyed it. And try to blame us. He went in there and said, Oh, no, no, it's because of these screws, and we used the right screws, but he showed us drywall screws. We're like, we don't use drywall screws. The contractor before I did, but they were horrible. But this one, I we didn't do that. We did everything the right way, and he tried to sue us, and we were going down that path. Next thing is somehow we caught Wynn and we confronted him and he backed off. That was a stupid wanted to make money off of this contractor, which I was working for, because he he just a sneak, right? He's just a sneak trying to make money from us. Uh, it was just tough. I've had jobs where I'm you're done, three o'clock, you're about to leave. This is side work. I'm done, three o'clock, about to leave the door. Customer comes in and they go, Oh, I I forgot. Can you do A and B and C? I'm like, A and B and C is gonna take me forever. Oh, please. They're begging me. I'm like, look, I really want to get out of here. They begged me and they threw money in my face. I'm like, oh gosh. Last minute, you got to make sure you have the material, right? You got to make sure you have everything. So I get everything set up. I'm making sure I have it because the money was too good, and I'm missing stuff. So what have I got to do? I hate it. I always hate going to the local stores, Home Depot and Lowe's and Ace, because I just want to finish the job. So I go to, I think one was a Home Depot, it's one of those small ones. Didn't have everything. So my gosh, I got everything I could from there, and then I had to find another store. There, I finally had everything for this job they wanted. Oh my gosh, what a nightmare. I go back, so it was just three o'clock. I got back at five. I'm working. Working didn't get done until midnight. I was working hard because fishing by yourself for those non-electricians to fish down a wall from point A to point B is not easy. Sometimes it's a two-person job. If you don't have that second helper, you're done on certain things. This house, balloon type house, that means the exterior had an opening from A all the way down, right? But you don't go that way because it's a fire. So you go through the studs. I'm trying to go down the studs, and I get hit something like what that. I thought I kept looking with the fish. I'm like, what is that? I go hit the my finger. I don't have a stud finder. I'm like, uh stud there. So I decided to go lower, another stud. So there's a stud three feet up, six feet up, going across. All the way, all the whole house. Oh, what a nightmare, dude. It was horrible. Luckily, I only had to go through the sixth. No, I had to go through three foot. Yeah, I had to go three foot because the outlets were 18 inches. So I had to go all the way down. That's one of the reasons that it took forever. It was just way, way much. And I would have brought another helper with me. If, you know, my brother in law, I got other friends who would love to do side work with me. I would have called them. I would have, hey, come on, man, I need to help. And I didn't get the opportunity because it was last minute. Last minute does not help. Definitely when you don't have everything. So they were my horror stories that I have. So what I would like you to do is if you listen, share your horror stories in the chat. Later on, I'll read it and I'll talk to the group, all Facebook family, and tell them about your horror story. Or we can meet up and do a podcast together to talk about your stories. Because tradespeople, I want to hear it. For those who want to get into trades and just feel that this is their world, let's have a conversation. We can do a little podcast together to talk about it, see what you want, see what your interests are. Because one thing I'm going to tell you, because I was just talking to one of my co-ops at the school, and they're looking for an apprentice. And one comment they said to me was, Hey, let them know we work. Electricians don't have it easy. Because I don't know why, but people think electrical work is easy. Now we're not welding up a side of a ship, of course, or we're not doing really heavy labor like laborers, but we have tough times. We're not easy. Definitely when you're young, you're working. You're not sitting there doing the easy stuff. You're not doing instructional with a little screwdriver. You're not doing that. You're doing the heavy lifting, you're doing the digging, you're running that condo down the floor. So that's what they were telling me. So if you're interested, let me know. We'll get together, get you into the trades, or at least talk about it. So that is some of the crazy stories. Now let's talk more about job site disasters. I just got bullets, so I got my attention just woo. So I gotta make sure I stay on task because I only want to do 35 minutes for you. So let's talk about the job site disasters. We were working at a job site in the winter time, and vehicles were in there, and I'm working. I'm feeling lightheaded, I'm feeling tired, and I'm I'm like almost about to fall asleep. Everybody else is about to fall asleep. We're all looking at each other, what's going on here? We were we were hurting and we were dying there, like really and they realized they had a gas generator inside the building, they had a vehicle inside the building, and we were down in a hole. They had other things that produced carbon monoxide. So we're there in the hole working, and we were exposed to it, and we could have died. That was like a uh, oh my gosh, what the hell are you doing? We never, I don't know why they allowed it. We finally saw it. We're like, yo, get out. So we all got outside ourselves and waited. We general conner, we're like, we're not going in until that clears out. That was a disgusting, annoying setup that we were dealing with. That carbon dioxide. That is one of the horror stories that I had. Another time. For those out there, when you work residential, sometimes you don't have the correct ladder. You only have for the fours out there. You usually just bring a 14-foot ladder or a 12-foot ladder. That is it. A-frame. Some fours, even when you stand all the way up on the top, you're still not at the top on some of these fours. Some are more than what you need for a 16-foot ladder. You need higher than that. So there's a time, many times when I worked residential, I'm on top of the 14-foot ladder puckering. I am puckering, puckering, and I don't know why I'm holding the wire thinking that's going to keep me safe. It's not keeping me safe, but it gave me confidence. I'm holding the wire, I'm grabbing the other thing. I put the thing on. I put it up there, right? And I finally got it secure. So I got up my other hand, grabbed the wire knot, did one at a time. All right. I'm still holding it. Now I'm holding the chain. I bring the thing up and I tighten the. Now I'm finally done. And I'm just going down slowly. Oh man. I did that multiple times. Stupid me, but I felt like I had to because everyone else did that. And unfortunately, we had one of our major guys. He fell off that ladder and he was in the hospital for almost a year. So when you take the chances, realize it only takes not much to crack that skull. It only takes not much. You could be up two feet, three feet, it doesn't matter. Whatever angle you hit that head just right, you're done. Done. That person was out for almost a year because he decided to take chances like we all did. After that, I'm like, oh, you gotta get done. I'm like, give me the right ladder for the right job. I'm not doing it. And we forced back. Luckily, I left there since then, so a long time ago. I left. And I believe they're still doing that. But man, a year. The person was out for a year because he just took that chance, which again, we all did it. We got complacent. We thought it was a norm because I thought it was a norm. Same thing when testing electric. Thought that was a norm, you know, the way we did things. I not did it once, and I'm like, I'll never do this crap again. I just made a switch and a plug. You know, we did. There's other times, that was the latter one, where you had the miscommunications. Remember, I told you I was a tool guy. I did all the running around the tools, getting stuff, doing this, doing that. So I was told to run out and come back to get something. Go out, run out, get that something, come back. It's completely wrong. I'm like, yo, this you told me this is what what? And he described it again. And I'm like, couldn't you just write it down next time? He's what he said, but he was off a little bit, and I thought it was a different thing. So now I had to go an hour back, pick this device up, and come back to give it to him. Because of miscommunications, that wasted two hours of my life at that moment. Now I'm getting paid, but the job's being slowed. I've had that happen. The miscommunications are horrible. We're pulling wire. For those who don't know, when you pull wire, you've got to be able to communicate with the other person. One way to communicate is you can feel when the tension's loose, right? You can feel that's one communication. So as a person's feeding it, you're pulling on the wire and it just feeds back. Okay, that's one way to communicate. The other way, which we didn't have phones at the time, was to have a middle person just communicate back and forth. Yo, all right, yeah, all right, we're good. All right, cool. Because we were couldn't hear each other. Because some places are just too loud. Because usually you yell, all right, Ben, hold. You hold fixing the wires nice and neat. You pull it, good, you know, up, put it away. So with that, there's times when we're pulling wire. Well, no, no, not pulling wire, pulling string. We pulling a string and then we're pulling the rope. So I'm pulling hard, right? I'm going crazy. They're not communicating with me. They never told me they stopped feeding. And I'm pulling, pulling. I get line of linemans and I pull more, and it breaks at the point where the rope was connected. It was a long run, too. That means we used a vacuum to get that in there. But that means we got to pull it all out to do it again. Because they dating that happens a lot. That miscommunications happen a lot where you can mess things up and things don't go right. That's why it's always good to have good communication with your team. Make sure you're heard, make sure you're listened. Because if you're not, you're gonna be hurting. That's one of the horror stories. Oh, another one. I'm sure this happened to you. This battle between HVAC, electrical, and plumbing. You gotta understand HVAC, plumbing, they're first because they gotta run their stuff where they gotta run it. Because they need the ductwork, it needs to be in the duds, the plumbing needs to have its eighth drop. They need to run their stuff where it needs to run. Back then, we didn't get prints. We just looked at it and assumed it goes here, assumed it go there. We ran all these wires. All right, we're done. We come back. Half of the wires are cut. We're like, what the hell is that? Because one, we ran into the H V ducks, two, we ran into the plumbing areas. So they ripped them all out and we had to rerun it. It's our fault. We should have not run them, ran where they were going. But we didn't know. We're supposed to be last, but we were told to go first. All right, we were told to go first to run the wires without a print. Back in the day, they never gave us prints, they just told us to wire it up. So, you know, uh space, you need an outlet. Every 12 after that, you need an outlet, switch in a bedroom, switched outlets. What we did, that was our lighting circuit, switched to outlet. So it's quick, get it done. Uh, but in the kitchen, we ran our wires here. Next thing you know, I ripped out because Barathon ran our wires here. Or again, wires are cut because we ran into their dirt direction, and you can't run wires in duck because it's considered plenum, right? You can't run that. You're not supposed to unless you have wires specifically rated for it. So we had to rerun everything, and that cost the contractor money. It is what it is. We didn't do it out of print, it's our fault. You need to do it on the print. You need to have a print with you, read it, and do it according to print. If you do that, you're good to go. You don't have to worry about it. Now, for those I've probably done this multiple times, leaving tools. I'm telling you, um, like my students, if you leave your tools and they're missing, that's on you. Now I'll try to get it back for you, but out in the real world, your tools are gone. So secure your tools. Come on, man, put them back. Because out there, I remember I'm up an extension ladder working. You know, I dropped my hammer and I'm gonna go down there. HVAC walks by, guy, looks up, says, Thanks for the hammer. And I'm like, dude, I'm gonna come after you. I'll see you next time. He's like, dude, you'll never see me again. He grabbed my ladder from me right in front of my face. And I was in the middle of work, I was doing an outdoor light, um, floodlight. So I was up there stuck. I couldn't do anything. I just had to suck it up. Right? I don't know why I brought the hammer up in the ladder in the first place. I didn't need it. But back in the day, you just had all your tools in there and you just worked with everything in there. You didn't make tools out just because you're doing A and B. You left the tools in there. That's what you do. Oh, he took my hammer. Many times, working up in the ceiling, you're working, and you leave a tool. I've done it multiple times. You leave, you go down, you're putting your stuff in, you're like, man, are my dial cutters? Gosh, what did I do with them? You're going nuts. You're like, I I don't know. And then later on, next couple days, maybe a week later, someone's working, they they find them, it has your initials on it. I've done it many times where I left tools on spots where I'll never go to again because I didn't need to. You know, don't doubt that. These are things that you do in the trades. You forget things. Now let's talk about some apprenticeship apprentices. We've seen them all. Remember, I told you the story about the one apprentice squeezing the electrical cord instead of unplugging it because he thought it water, you allowed it slow down water by squeezing the hose. He did that, you know, he got shocked. Oh, he couldn't. Oh my gosh, I got ripped up, up and down, torn up. Apprentices, apprentices. I had my fare of really good ones, and then those who are okay, and those who should not be in the trades. They got in somehow, but they shouldn't be in the trades because they don't have the brain cells to continue, unfortunately. And our trade's not that hard, you don't have to be the extremely smart, but at the same point, because you can do basic uh outlet switches, you know, but you gotta have a little bit of common sense and you have to listen and you have to be able to take initiative. Man, I've had apprentices with no initiative, and I have apprentices with too much initiative. Now, what I mean by that, they mess up, they take too far, like running conduit. I've had it where I'm long conduit running, I'm telling them measurements, I'm telling them this, and I'm telling them that, and he gives it back to me, and I'm like, dude, you're like four inches short. And he like, no, no, this and he I read his notes, he he wrote the wrong number. That was a number for another thing, and apparently he got twisted in there and he cut that pipe that length. So next thing you know, he had to go cut another pipe. Well, the pipe threader and everything was not there. You had to go down, pretty good wall, cut and thread, and bring it back. Rigid, you can't just EMT like it's rigid's not. You gotta make sure you run it and that's it. I've had that happen. That was tough. And apprenticeships, apprentices mess up, and nothing wrong with that, but they do. I used to mess up all the time when I was apprentice. I didn't always do the right thing. I've had it where I'd done whole circuits. Uh that's what it was. I did uh a whole circuit. There's water sensors. It says it right on there that parallel right there. Parallel. Parallel means something different. And I'm wiring them all up series. I'm done. I'm walking out. And the foreman looks at it and goes, Um, how'd you wire this? Parallel series. I said, Oh, serious. There was like 50 of them. It's like they're all supposed to be in parallel. I'm like, what? Because the water sensors I did before that in another job were series. Now, for those who don't know, there's two different ways of wiring electricity. Series and parallel. That's all. We'll get more into it later on. So what I did is because I was a jerk at that time. I felt bad. I went back and did it on my own time. I did them all in parallel on my own time, knocked them out because I felt like a jerk, because we were just trying to get that job. The job was almost done, and I was holding that up. So I went back and did them all. It was a commercial job. Man, I've seen it. So we just talked about apprentices, crazy job site stories, and the crazy customers. The micromanagers over your back, the lookers looking at you doing the job, the connivers teasing, trying to get the job for nothing, talking smack. Just not a good experience. But I want to tell you four things customers should never say or do. Ready? This is rapid fire. Can you do it cheaper without a permit? Hmm. Just work for now. My cousin said that's easy. Turning brigars back on while you're working multiple times, happened to me. Following you room to room like a shadow. Negotiating prices midway. Asking for side work to cut corners, offering dangerous suggestions. Just tape it. It'd be fine. Just put it in the wall. Don't worry about it. Just asking you. Or the ones that says. If it starts with, I saw it on TikTok, you know you're in trouble. I saw it on YouTube. It told me how to do it. Well, you're in trouble. That means that person thinks they know what they're doing. I've had people call me to do some work for them. I go in there and it's just a switch to outlet. And you're going in there and I'm like, okay, cool. Well, I turn this off. It doesn't come back on. It kills a breaker down. I'm like, oh really? Okay. So I go in there inspecting. I I'm inspecting. I take this out. Apparently it stopped working. Well, found out why. I think the wire burned up. I couldn't get the wire. It's a white black. White black. Black is um the hot, white, the other hot, you know, to the outlet. That's what they were using. And then when I was trying to find out, I'm like, why is the white? Because I'm toning it, I'm doing continuity. I'm getting really nothing. But yeah, when I put voltage to it, I get like 40 volts to ground and neutral. I'm like, believing it's bad, it's done because it hasn't been right apparently for a while. So I'm trying to investigate, and I finally realized there's two circuits in the box. Two circuits, and they were tied in together. So when you turn the switch up, it connects the two hots together. That's what was happening. So I take it and clean it and do all this stuff. I'm like, switch outlet dead. I'm gonna have to make it not available. I can rerun it and all that. Give them the price, like, oh, I can't afford it. So I'm like, all right, no problem. So I just removed the switch, put the outlet back in, cap off the other hot. So it's not an option. I put it in safe. I make sure it was nice and safe, put everything back together because he didn't want me to run a new wire, and and was a homegrown electrician. So let's talk about the closing segment. The real talk. This trade is just not about wiring, it's about connection, it's about problem solving, it's about safety, dude. Remember, I almost fell off the ladder multiple times, and dealing with people. You gotta learn how to deal with that person because you as an electrician, you're the front face. I don't care commercial or industrial, you're still the face. CEOs walking down the hall, seeing you're working, uh, you're in a commercial building, school built, cool building, superintendent, teachers. You are the face of the company. You do something stupid, it's not on you, it's on the company. So try to be more personable, try to be respectful, try to be a better problem solver. Because electricians, you should be a good problem solver, at least try to be. Now, the best electricians aren't just skilled, um, but not by far. The best electricians not only are skilled, but they also are able to handle the chaos, the change. I love change. Good change, I talk about. Some people can't handle it. Change to them just puts them off and they just can't handle it. So, a good electrician, you can be amazing, but if you can't handle the change, change, if you can't handle your personality, you're horrible in front of people, and you're difficult to deal with. No one wants to work with you. No homeowner wants you in their house. You know, best electricians are the ones that can handle themselves, handle change. And remember, every job site has a story. Some you laugh, it's funny, ha ha ha, and some near death. So stay safe, stay sharp, and don't trust the wire until you tested it. This is Sean from Tech Train Solutions. If you've got a crazy story, drop it in the comments. We might feature it next episode. Follow Tech Train Solutions for real trade knowledge, real stories, and non-stop training. We at Tech Train Solutions are all for an eight-week boot camp, electrical training, eight weeks with no experience. By the end, I'm not making you an electrician, and I won't want you working at your house, but you should be very, very to the electrical contractors after you're done. You will be able to put outlets, switches in, be able to do minor troubleshooting, and if you're high speed enough, maybe more. So at that point, maybe a contractor will hire you. That's what we're doing. Eight week boot camp here at Tech Train Solutions, where we're gonna train you from nothing to something. So let me know. Uh, thank you and have a good day. Oh yeah.