No shocker there (pardon the pun!). I've seen countless circuits installed where the grounds were cut short or not connected. I've also seen grounds just pinched between the device and the box. It's too bad that some people neglect to properly connect such an important conductor. It's not too hard to do it the right way!

-Nelson

I've had people come into the store wanting to change out their old 2 wire receptacles to 3 wire, and eventhough there was no ground wire and they didn't want to rewire it properly, they ignorantly thought that using a grounding adapter in the outlet would somehow magically cause it to be grounded and safe. Or the people that wanted to run extension cords/cable for permanent use instead of spending the extra money to have it done right, which we offered, but they were too cheap.

'Ive had people come into the store wanting to change out their old 2 wire receptacles to 3 wire, and eventhough there was no ground wire and they didn't want to rewire it properly, they ignorantly thought that using a grounding adapter in the outlet would somehow magically cause it to be grounded and safe. Or the people that wanted to run extension cords/cable for permanent use instead of spending the extra money to have it done right, which we offered, but they were too cheap.

I have seen the same thing in my grandmother's house, and when i switched the cheap LPF magnetic ballasts to HPF magnetic F40's the ground wires shocked me! thats why they were cut short! yet the house has been rewired recently!

I noticed my old school I used to go to had installed 160W blended mercury vapour bulbs into 125W mercury vapour fittings. They seemed to work perfectly fine but I shouldn't think the heat did the fittings much good! Someone had also tried to fit a 6' 70W T8 into a 6' 85W T12 lamp with SRS gear and nothing happened, for some reason it was left like this for several months and if you fiddled with the switch flicking it up and down you could get the lamp to flash but that was about it.

Have seen HPS fixtures using incandescent bulbs as replacements.......lame!

How about this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWLX8jm_M1g

That is really f**king stupid with those dangerous phosphor and mercury dissipation in the air

I am sure that EPA would swarm all over with violation slapped on the motocycle guy

this JUST happened! My dad put a stupid CFL on a dimmer! REALLY bad idea! 

I daisy chained about 10 power strips before, and cords/splitters for x-mas lights once, turned them on, and everything went out. Wondering why it happened, and melting the first 2 power strips. Lets just say, I decided to not do it again, and used a different method.

I've also put t8 bulbs in a t12 light before, with the wrong wattage, and saw a nice 2 second display.

The building where I work (14 floor 70s tower block) is always a good one.  We've got a completely random selection of lamps across all of the open plan area, the criteria apparently being that whatever lamps (they're using T12's at least, F40's mostly I think, quite a few 20W ones too) that they can get cheapest at any given time determines the colour temperature.  Just walking through the 1st floor I go past 2700, 3000, 4000 and 6500K white!  Our office is actually matched - but only because I made enough of a nuisance of myself that they sorted it just to shut me up.

The ballasts here I THINK are series resonant ones, and when the lamp will no longer strike, leaves the electrodes on preheat indefinitely.  There's no starter involved, the lamps just shimmer into life once you flick the switch.  Heater will light even if only one end of any lamp is connected.  The caps are on flying leads and the lamps held into the fixtures with terry clips around the tubes.

I reported it to them when in the canteen one day that there was a really strong smell of electrical burning, and it was ignored.  Went in the day after, and you could see the heaters in that lamp pulsating, and the smell was far stronger in that corner of the room - clearly something not being right - still ignored.  ...Three days later, fire alarm goes off when the room fills up with smoke.  Yep, the ballast was to blame.  This has happened at least twice since, yet when I was in there today, there were at least ten lamps in that room either out, dimly glowing or flickering madly.

...They replaced the lamp and that one ballast, still leaving the ones next to it - one of which was out and the other was rectifying and glowing dim purple and had been for weeks!

Makes me feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall does behaviour like that. 

The diffusers are held into the false ceiling by little screw clips which have to be fastened manually when finished - these seem to get forgotten occasionally.  Needless to say I was somewhat surprised when the one above my desk landed on my head one afternoon - though my co-workers found it highly amusing.  Granted, so did I, well once my heart rate had returned to normal anyway.

After three months of badgering the facilities team to refit it, I gave in and just stood on the desk and refitted the thing myself.

Pretty much sets the scene for maintenance in general where I work really!

That doesn't sound too good! The ballasts stink when they fail as well

If the cathode filament glows with only one end connected then it's most likely to be a quickstart ballast with a heating transformer, they normally start in under a second.

Oh god where do i start with stupid stuff i have done! Wrong use of towers, One time i had to re-lamp a sports hall 11M High but we only had a 9M Cherry Picker...Bungie tied a set of steps to the side and put the steps in the cherry picker!

 There is loads of dangerous stuff i have seen too much to list! As for myself i always work live and its rare i isolate anything! Hands right in the 3 phase boards! I will try and remember some of the stupid stuff i have seen.

Zelandeth, sounds like where I work! At least the maintenance crews typically order the same color lamps, but that's no guarantee. I gave up long ago complaining. Now I just change all my own lamps! I think I need to start changing my own ballasts as well. I've even had to change lamps in the maintenance storage rooms so that I could see to work on our phone wiring! The custodians don't even seem to care if their own lights are out. In the time it would take me to leave a note for the few custodians who might actually change a lamp, I can do it myself.

Moving a Tallescope when there's someone in the basket (and being in the basket while someone moves it), a practice that is explicitly forbidden by the manufacturer but is very common in the entertainment lighting industry

Unplugging a 15A plug with one hand whilst holding onto an earthed lighting bar with the other hand! 

"Unplugging a 15A plug with one hand whilst holding onto an earthed lighting bar with the other hand!"

I was guilty of that earlier this evening. Only I was using 20A stage pin plugs while stabilizing the grounded metal batten with the other hand. I try to avoid hot plugging, but when you need to make last minute lighting changes ten minutes before the show, that's what you do!