Positive thinking...

RJTravel

Member
...may be wonderful, but negative thinking will keep you alive. We all know what to do - pretty elementary stuff - but it might be interesting and informative to share those unexpected and unanticipated things you have learned to watch out for. I have quite a list and will start with one:

When securing a common inside roof hatch I usually would duck, let the hatch drop, and snap the lock. No more. I let the hatch drop as usual, except the support did not stop the hatch - it swung through and clobbered my head. A 10 foot drop to the concrete would not have been conducive to good health, but fortunately it was one of those 'light' hatchs instead of a 50 pounder, and all I got was a severe headache. Never would have guessed that could happen. What unpredictable dangers have you encountered?
 
BEES BEES BEES Opened the roof hatch and got Zapped in the lower lip.
If that wasnt bad enough I got it a few more times when attemting to take the access panel off to see what kind of mess we had to clean up.
 
So many things can happen. In the last 14 years
Have slipped and fallen on greasy floors, icy roofs and parking lots.
Been stung by bees and wasps living in ventilators and flashings at roof. once had a fixed ladder pulled from concrete lags and almost hit the ground on my back from about 12 feet up.
Fallen from 4 foot step ladder and broke my back in two places( 5 years ago.)
Have cut my fingers and hands on sharp metal a few dozen times.
I can't stress safety enough to employees/ and try to practice safe work habits myself but accidents do and will happen from time to time, you always have to expect the unexpected.

P.S. Have never had to make workers comp claim, but I still would never operate without it!
 
I am sitting here right now with a sprained ankle. Happened two nights ago. It was a dark back walk area and we had finished the hood system and pulled the hoses out to wash the filters. The hoses were left in a wadded pile and I couldn't see well enough to get past them. I tripped over one and my foot landed on another and rolled. Fortunately it was just a light sprain and not anything broken. I guess its a good time for a safety meeting. This could've been avoided if a little extra step had been taken to get the hoses out of the walkway.
 
"WE HAD"??????????????????????? two of you.

Gateway to the West-The Greatest Sport City-I didn't know that you moved to the SF Bay area-to include Oakland!
 
Good thing you had someone with you!
 
Heh heh heh. lol.
 
Jolted by Josh's post. Perhaps need to start another thread, but how many seasoned flue cleaners actually powerwash filters and baffles? Years ago we found this to be terribly inefficient, time-consuming, lacking deep cleaning, and brought unwanted EPA action. We can't all boil 'em out (ala Grant), but we use a monster soak tank with our own very strong alkaline chem coupled with agitation. Almost always both filters and baffles come out like new. A couple dozen filters/baffles will take 5 to 10 minutes of one man's time total. Does someone actually TEACH powerwashing these? How many still powerwash them?

Richard
 
a couple dozen baffle filters takes 5- 10 minutes to clean in your soak tank. Wow- thats great. Lets see some pictures of this thing.
I,m curious to know how you mix your chemicals and what agitates your filters.
Seems like boiling would be easier? Less chemicals involved?
Grant how do you do it?
I think we are off subject here. sorry.
 
We have always cleaned filters and still do.

Biggest kitchens we have done had 132 filters each. Canopys are 20 foot wide and 40 foot long. One guy spends 1-1/2 days just cleaning filters! We do this work in the kitchens dish washer room.

In smaller kitchens we clean the filters in their sinks or use a barrel and dump the water into their santary sewer.

Dave Olson
 
Mtngoat,

Didn't say it takes 5-10 min in soak tank. It takes 5 to 10 minutes of your 'time'. We let 'em soak while completing job and then shoot 'em off. Done. An added benefit is that the wheeled soak tank can carry most of your supplies.

Dave,

On small jobs we too often use the sink in lieu of a tank. Didn't understand your post - do you powerwash in the dishwasher room? If so it seems the soak method would save you a tremendous amount of time.

Richard
 
Josh you should fire your helper for not thinking ahead and making sure the hoses were not in a big messy pile.

Or just take your pain out of his check.

You also may need to change your signature....the "break my bones" part may be bringing you bad luck.
 
A big messy pile, that brings me to a pet peeve. I hate it when someone doesn't unroll the pressure hose first, they just drop it on the ground and start pulling on it, and spend 5 minutes trying to get it go around four different corners with it all curled up.
If they would just take 30 seconds and straighten it out first it would likely just slide right on through, but I'm the anal guy who spends the time to clean up the equipment before I leave a job so who knows
 
Not about everything, I pick my spot's. Now taking out the trash for instance, I figure if I ignore it long enough some one else will do it. After all isn't that why we have kid's. The funny thing is you spend two years teaching them to walk and talk, then the next 16 years telling them to sit down and shut up.
 
Racer-X is an anal guy too.
Every tool/scraper has to be cleaned and polished before it is put away, all hoses have to be rolled up a certain way and cleaned before they can be put back.
He has taken rolling up the hoses to an art form.

He gets really really mad when his tools get left behind on roofs or just plain lost.
 
Someone has to be anal or you will have no tools left after a month. I gave all my crews magnets, and most of them were gone in a month. I had work out of one of the trucks a month after buying them and guess what, no magnets.
The way we do a McDonalds the magnets make things easier and save time. They are not expensive but the point is no one even tried to keep track of them. I watched one of my guys trying to be in a hurry yank the plastic down ignoring the magnets he had used. I knew they either stayed in place or fell into the plastic, but I waited until he had the fryer pushed back and said “hey some magnets are missing we need to find them”. He found two in the trash can in the middle of nasty greasy plastic, made a big mess doing it too, the other was still behind the fryer.
Now am I a big A hole or am I a guy sick and tired of people losing tools and not paying attention to what they are doing.
You make the call.

P.S. That guy hasn’t lost anything since, if he has he replaced it himself and didn’t tell me.
 
Last edited:
Hey how about this one. There are trashcans at the gas pumps, can't you throw your trash away at least once a week. OK who got me started?
 
You are on a roll.
 
Put it back where ya found it or dont use it! AMEN.

The guys dont care. They dont have to pay for this stuff.
As far as the hose rolling and cleaning goes i'm all for that.
Anyone bothered to clean out the vacume or the hose lately?
I found a couple pounds of unidentifiable soup in the vacume a few days ago! I hate that!
 
In deference to 'Scraper-X' we do things a bit differently. Maybe I am just sloppy or lazy by nature, but we simply throw the scrubbers, tools, scrapers, neutralizers, bottles of shine, etc in buckets and toss 'em in the van. Don't even clean 'em or sort 'em, yet we very rarely ever lose anything or have any difficulty finding what we need. Perhaps this could be called 'disorganized order' but it works for us. We even have a system for the h/p hoses - just let 'em drop in the trailer without coiling. It allows water to exit without winterizing, and next use is simply pulling from the position in which it fell - never any uncoiling, kinks, or hangups. I spent many years in a profession which required detail and precision, and perhaps this is my way of 'striking back', but for us it is very efficient. Honest now, am I alone in discovering how well this works?

Richard
 
Back
Top