I was told this story by one of my fellow mechanic. It was a new contract the guy was taking the trouble call at. When he walked in the machine room a homeless guy was alseep on the floor. The mechanic woke him up and asked him what he was doing in there. Guy said the previous mechanic was charging him 20 bucks a week to be able to live in the machine room. The homeless guy main lined one of the cars cause it was maching a loud screeching noise and he could not sleep.
Except...
I came into the job early and found a car in the blind hatch on inspection. Old Otis job and loadweighing switches RC and TC falling in and out, in and out. Blocked the doors, jumped out in the car stop switch, and ran the car to the lobby and opened the doors.
Alas...It was my boss and a secretary in their secret love elevator and trying to get dressed with the doors open and the car in the lobby.
We never talked about it, but he knew.LOL..
We had just completed Phase One recall on the service car at First National Bank and it was back in service and running fine until � a few months down the line.
I was on call when an overtime call came in on this very elevator. I checked in with the security guard and went looking for the elevator. The PI lights were out so it was a simple matter of picking a couple of locks to find the car. I picked the lock at the bottom floor and no elevator. I traveled to the top floor, picked that lock and still no elevator. I went to mid travel, picked that lock and still no car. But something else was missing � the Comp Ropes. I went back to the top floor for another look, picked the lock again and checked out the hoistway. The traveling cables were there OK, but wait a minute � this is the top landing. This time looked up and there it was, way up in the top of the hoistway. It was time to go to the machine room. I looked down the cable block out in the machine room floor and two inches below the slab was the two to one sheave. By now it was midnight and there was nothing that could be done anyway. I gave the security guard the bad tidings and headed for home.
Because his job was hanging by a thread to begin with, Russ was always acutely aware of his profit and loss statement. Overtime calls on full maintenance jobs stretched that thread a little tighter. So every morning when he hit the office he checked the log for overtime callbacks. If there had been a call you could bet on getting a page at 7:30 am on the dot. The twenty question routine could get a little irritating before the start of the work day. So with his hand on his wallet the questions would begin. �What happened at First National last night?�
�DC Overload was tripped.�
�What caused that?�
�The overhead.�
�Gasp� then �What overhead?�
�The overhead at the top of the hoistway.�
�Did you get the car running again?�
�No.�
�Why not?�
�It was on the safeties.�
�What stopped you from running the car up to release them?�
�The machine beams.�
Phone hits carpet.
Fumbling noise.
�Where are you?�
�First National.�
Dial Tone.
They stated that the lift 'just stopped' and don't have any idea why. The lift luckily was near floor level on a floor and the doors were open. The bastards had opened the trap door, knowingly shorted out the contact, and had placed about 10 lengths of 4 by 2 timbers thru the open hatch. Then when going up the cwt jammed solid between the 2. Suffice to say we went absolute nuts and told the builders just what could've occured and got them the saw them in half and lucky for them there was no damged to rails or guides. They pleaded with us not to report the finding(making it official) and i'm not sure what happened after that as i left the job to meet another mechanic at another site.
Dumb, just dumb.
They stated that the lift 'just stopped' and don't have any idea why. The lift luckily was near floor level on a floor and the doors were open. The bastards had opened the trap door, knowingly shorted out the contact, and had placed about 10 lengths of 4 by 2 timbers thru the open hatch. Then when going up the cwt jammed solid between the 2. Suffice to say we went absolute nuts and told the builders just what could've occured and got them the saw them in half and lucky for them there was no damged to rails or guides. They pleaded with us not to report the finding(making it official) and i'm not sure what happened after that as i left the job to meet another mechanic at another site.
Dumb, just dumb.
They had a load of 2x4s using them to climb out of the car or someone opened the door and dropped them down to them?