Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: paul mather on July 31, 2006, 10:24:13 pm
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To quote Forest Gump.
I think this forum has gone rather quiet over last few days & we all seem rather jumpy, it's lost some of it's fun.
So I thought it might do some good if we related some of the daft things we have done up a ladder & those near misses.
I remember climbing on to a slopping roof & instantly realising that gravity was against me. So I quicky turned around so I was facing the way I was falling & skied down the roof & then jumped the last 10 feet to hit the ground. Pretty shaken up but no serious injuries.
My worst fall was one cold damp November morning back in 1995. I remember the year as my wife was pregnant with our first child. The feet of the ladder slipped from underneath me & I came down at a rate of knots. Finished the house & even did inside of the conservatory for the customer. As I was finishing I felt my wrists start to throb, so I thought I'll take the rest of the day off & give my bruised wrists a rest.
But when I came to tie my ladders to the car I realised they were probably more than bruised & a trip to A&E confirmed I had broken the Scafoid bone in both wrists.
Both arms in plaster upto my elbows. Now it takes a good woman to help you to use the toilet when she is 4 months pregnant herself. And when I say use I think you know what I am talking about.
What's the daftest thing you've ever done whilst at work.
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i fell off a ladder about a year and a half ago and immediatly jumped back up and tried to finish the job.got to the top of the ladder and thought what the hell am i doing up here.drove to the nearest hospital (Edinburgh royal) to be told there was a 4 hour waiting list,so i jumped into my car and drove for 3 hours to inverness hospital(my girlfriend lived near inverness)got taken straight away.2 sprained ankles and a broken scafoid in my left (thank god ;)) wrist.
it was in plaster for 7 weeks but never healed so was in plaster for another 7 weeks.
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The feet of the ladder slipped from underneath me & I came down at a rate of knots. Finished the house & even did inside of the conservatory for the customer
so you finished the house on your way down WOW i cant beat that ;D ;D ;D
gary
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Hey gary, I would be able to do it now I have my wonder wand :) :) :)
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One of my customers has a pergola (?) under one of their upstairs windows. Every time I cleaned the windows I used to go up the ladder between the timbers and stand on one of the timbers as I cleaned it. Anyway, one time I put the ladder between two different timbers and stood on it as normal until the rotted timber broke and I fell through the pergola onto the floor. It hurt.
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That reminds me I used to work in an area that every house had a pergola you had to stand on to get to a bedroom window. same thing happened, wood rotted & I came down.
Carried on like a complete hero & a few hours later fell through a man-hole cover that had rusted through. That was the final straw. But two falls in one day, I don't think I'll beat that
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On the phone to a mate of mine a few hours ago, he took on a lad to train up but was sacked by mid-day. he told him to grab the ladders, carry them round the back to this flat roof where there was about 2hrs of work & get the kit up while he did the few on the front. Cant be hard he thought ???.
About 10 mins later came back round with a dim look on his face & said "the ladders are broken" ???. He was only trying to open them up upside down ::). SACKED!
Macc
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Lots of stories about our attempts to fly lol
I guess mine has to be when I was cleaning a large office, I started really early in the morning to do the outsides before everyone arrived for work. Then I went into the canteen for breakfast and then into an office filled with your girls to clean the insides.
I had almost finished the last office when the receptionist walked up to me to politely tell me I had my sweatshirt on back to front.
Then I suddenly realised I wasn't the Brad Pitt that i thought I was getting looks of smiles from the girls but infact the Forrest Gump with my shirt the wrong way round!!
What a muppet!! Good old early mornings eh??
Needless to say, I really didn't like the thought of the next time when I had to go back to that office.
Oh, an I have also asked a customer when the baby is due only to be told she wasn't pregnant, that went down well ;D ;D ;D
Keep smiling,
Trev
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I've done the pregnant thing but with a twist.
I had a customer who was heavily pregnant & the next month I saw here I asked when the bay was due. "I've already had it " she said, "Oh I'm sorry what did you call it then, was it a boy or a girl" I said.
"It was still born" she said, boy did I feel bad, not only had I offended her by implying she was fat but had reminded her of possibly the most traumatic thing that could ever happen to a young mother.
Promised myself there & then never to comment on anything to do with pregnancy ever again.
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No falls or anything close, but I was once up a roof halfway up the front of the house (above the downstairs windows), when the wind blew my ladder over.
Had to ask a passing pedestrian to put it back up again. ;D
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No falls or anything close, but I was once up a roof halfway up the front of the house (above the downstairs windows), when the wind blew my ladder over.
Tht's obviously why you're not interested in WFP, you're not a walking disaster area like me.
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I've done the pregnant thing but with a twist.
I had a customer who was heavily pregnant & the next month I saw here I asked when the bay was due. "I've already had it " she said, "Oh I'm sorry what did you call it then, was it a boy or a girl" I said.
"It was still born" she said, boy did I feel bad, not only had I offended her by implying she was fat but had reminded her of possibly the most traumatic thing that could ever happen to a young mother.
Promised myself there & then never to comment on anything to do with pregnancy ever again.
I did it a bit different to you Paul. One of my customers once mentioned to me that she was pregnant. "Oh, are you?" I replied. It turned out she was eight months gone but, as she was normally quite overweight, I hadn't even noticed. Oops !!
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Four years ago I was up three stories cleaning a nursing home when my ladder snapped. I'd been telling the wife that it needed replacing for a while but hadn't got around to it.
Anyway, up the hospital I go, with nothing but a sprained ankle. The doctor wants to thoroughly examine me 'cause of the height I fell and after x-rays after x-ray he tells me I may have testicular cancer, but he's not sure. Have an op the very next day to remove the offending little fella, which DOES have cancer and have been fine since then. One more annual check-up to go and I'm all clear.
The wife swears I was meant to fall that day!!
Swear the bitch cut through my ladder. Wouldn't happen now 'cause I'd be on the ground cleaning the 3rd floor.
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Well, never had a fall or slip in 20 years!
But I sure have done some stupid things.....and said some ;D
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Pregnant dog??? I didn't say that
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We have many customers who look pregnant too.
Problem is they are all men - LOL
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One house i do has two skylights in the roof, but it's a galleried roof so really high up. Only way to get to them is over the roof and shimmy down to them !!!! So one day I clambered up the roof and went " over the top" to get down to the other side. Some old guy saw me from across the road and thought i was trying to break in. He came over and confronted me...still didn't believe me when he saw my bucket, scrims, cloths squeegee..... was only convinced when i showed him my business card and my customer contact book with her name and number in it . I shouldn't really moan, at least he was bothered!!!!
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Doing a very old pub one day
Ladder slides away at the bottom, and stops on a wooden door lintel above the door that stuck out about two inches, trouble was i carried on one leg between the rungs and the other on the out side, stopped only by my goolies, now that hurts.
A wc mate of mine called at one of his old customers and started the windows, customer's daughter comes out and tell him to stop, and tell's him her mother passed away last night, being the thick P**t he is, he replied 'O' I'm sorry to hear that nothing serious I hope?????
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i live in a very quiet village and a fortnight ago the woman who owns the post office wanted the insides done including the house.so up i went and decided to walk out onto a small balcony to clean the outside.anyway,after a minute i realised the window had closed and i couldnt pull it open past the catch. :-[
i was standing like a plonker for about 15 mins trying to look cool until someone spotted me and informed the owner.it went round the village like wildfire ;D
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Wor Lass once put her A-frame ladders on a door to clean the window above it.
Unfortunately the customer opened the door and Wor Lass fell forward.
Luckily enough the customer was a 'hefty girl' and prevented Wor Lass from hitting the floor with her ample bosom. It certainly hurt her though; judging by the way she screamed.
We were both sacked on the spot, but no legal action was taken; and it took me ages to stop laughing.
How daft is that; putting a set of A-Frames on a ruddy door?
By way of an explanation, Wor Lass is Welsh and from Pontypool!
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One house i do has two skylights in the roof, but it's a galleried roof so really high up. Only way to get to them is over the roof and shimmy down to them !!!! So one day I clambered up the roof and went " over the top" to get down to the other side. Some old guy saw me from across the road and thought i was trying to break in. He came over and confronted me...still didn't believe me when he saw my bucket, scrims, cloths squeegee..... was only convinced when i showed him my business card and my customer contact book with her name and number in it . I shouldn't really moan, at least he was bothered!!!!
Hi Julian,
Just out of intrest, how much did you charge for these two windows, and roughly how high would you of said it was.
Obviously not seeing this I cant comment much, presuming it has a valley gutter and high guarding wall, its not to bad and can be done under the right conditions, I doubt I would go up and over, even at any height, seems alot of hassle to clean a couple of sky lights. Must of paid well.
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I asked a customer today how her sick husband was doing, only to be told he died in February. A bit embarrassing on the 1st August.
The daftest thing I did was to go on the roof to adjust the TV Ariel.
I had put the ladder up to the gable and walked the rest of the way to the top of the roof. I would have put it up to the ridge but the garage was in the way. When It came to coming down I realised that the roof was covered with slimy moss. No way would I risk walking back down to the ladder. I called my stepson and asked him to take the ladder round to the other side of the house, and then put it up to the ridge. He is a chief petty officer in the navy, but had no idea how to lower an extension ladder. The ex missus and him tried to carry it round extended and it ended up in a pile in the garden. I had to wake my mate who was on nights to come and rescue me. What a Pratt. Dai
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Well , i did not have any stories worthy of posting , but it appears in the last 2 days i have decided to make a proper nob of myself !
The first was was on Thursday , after having a bone idle week i decided to go great guns , i was running around like a madman , what with this and the heat by 2 pm i had developed S.R.S , Stinging Ring Syndrome .
Come on we have all had it !
Anyway , the pain and itch got so bad i had to stop and nurse it , i found a secluded area and bathed my bumhole , i then perched between the seats to give the badboy an airing , this was fantastic until i decided to pass wind , due to the chinese the night before the inevitable happened , the dreaded follow through got me , i looked down to see a brown hand brake !
I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up !
Today was just as bad , got caught short needed a P real urgent , luckily i was at a big end of cul de sac house , fences all round , winner , i went behind the van and did my thing , i then saw my next cusomer on at her window staring at me , i was looking at her through the bulkhead window so there was no possible way she could see what i was up to , only then was it that i saw that i had left my side loading door open , and she did in fact have a full frontal of me .
When i got to her i started to explain , she just said dont worry my love , your secret is safe with me , if you gotta go you gotta go , just shut your door next time will you , she then proceeded to laugh in my face !
What will i do tomorrow i wonder !
Rich P @ F
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Well , i did not have any stories worthy of posting , but it appears in the last 2 days i have decided to make a proper nob of myself !
The first was was on Thursday , after having a bone idle week i decided to go great guns , i was running around like a madman , what with this and the heat by 2 pm i had developed S.R.S , Stinging Ring Syndrome .
Come on we have all had it !
Anyway , the pain and itch got so bad i had to stop and nurse it , i found a secluded area and bathed my bumhole , i then perched between the seats to give the badboy an airing , this was fantastic until i decided to pass wind , due to the chinese the night before the inevitable happened , the dreaded follow through got me , i looked down to see a brown hand brake !
I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up !
Today was just as bad , got caught short needed a P real urgent , luckily i was at a big end of cul de sac house , fences all round , winner , i went behind the van and did my thing , i then saw my next cusomer on at her window staring at me , i was looking at her through the bulkhead window so there was no possible way she could see what i was up to , only then was it that i saw that i had left my side loading door open , and she did in fact have a full frontal of me .
When i got to her i started to explain , she just said dont worry my love , your secret is safe with me , if you gotta go you gotta go , just shut your door next time will you , she then proceeded to laugh in my face !
What will i do tomorrow i wonder !
Rich P @ F
Too much information LOL.
Maybe you should take some corks out with you.
Seriously though, getting caught short can be a problem sometimes. As I've got a bit older, I find I have to take more care what I eat. I know where all the local dumping holes are (garages, pubs supermarkets etc).
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Thanks Rich,
What has been a hard day is now a lot better reading your story.
Am going home laughing my head off!!!
Priceless ;D ;D
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Oh my word Rich, talk about too much information Lol ;D
Did make me laugh though!!
my worst injury wasn't specifically ladder related, I was a decorator at the time and was doing an industrial painting job in a Papermill.
Had to build our own scafolding towers around this huge unit (about the size of a semi)
Was using high pressure water jetting units to blast of the old paint and mill scale, full wetsuit, goggles and gloves, hell of a job.
I was about 20ft up and stepped onto a scaffold platform I hadn't secured properly, and although we were always connected to guard rails with safety harnesses, it was at that point where I had disconnected and was stepping across to the next securing point.
Out goes the duckboard and down I go, I make a grap for the outside of a guard rail as I go down, but thick wet rubber gloves prove useless for this task.
I end out plummetting straight down with my body horizontal because of trying to grap the handrail...
Below is a solid concrete floor...but my fall is broken by a stray stanchion sticking up about a couple of feet (the back of one thigh landed on this) and a large H section girder about the same height (the back of my head hit this)
Those two points of impact actually broke my fall, net result was a really neat head wound (blood everywhere) and an enourmous bruise on the back of my leg.
I rather think that if I had fallen directly onto the concrete flat on my back I would have been badly injured....
there have been other incidents...it'll read like a book though if I carry on :-X
I'll do another post when I'm not being nagged...boy am I being nagged for being on here :'(
Ian