As you can imagine, the enormous, delicate chandeliers were a bit of a job for the cleaner. He had to climb up his ladder, clean a section of the chandelier, reposition his ladder and climb up it to begin the next section, and so on until the entire thing had been cleaned. He was required to do this for each of the chandeliers. All this up-ing and down-ing took a lot of effort, so he was delighted to discover one day that the chandeliers were capable of rotating.

Did our friend wonder why they were capable of rotating? Did he think that rotating them was perhaps not a good idea? No! He thought, 'Great! Instead of climbing up and down my ladder all the time I can just rotate them to get to each new section of chandelier!' And rotate them he did, until the day he completely unscrewed one form the ceiling and it fell to the floor below and shattered into thousands of pieces.

The building's maintenance and administation panicked, because there was a large official funciton taking place in the next couple of weeks. They attempted to order in a new chandelier, but alas, these chandeliers were hand-made and there was no way that one could be produced and shipped over in time. In the end they bought a temporary replacement of inferior design and materials to use until the proper replacement arrived.

As for our friend the cleaner? These days he's training as an apprentice carpenter.

(Australia)

Submitted on 02/22/2007

Submitted by: Alexandra Pollard
Reference: Personal Account

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Now THAT, Alexandra, is a funny story! Of course, the mook with the bright idea to rotate the chandeliers is now a carpenter in training. I HOPE he doesn't try and find a "better way" of building anything, or I am sure we'll hear from him again! Thanks for submitting, this will make a funny PA!

Graham said:
Neutral: Personal Account
This funny but I'm confused about something. Such large chandeliers are usually attached to ceiling joists with double locking nuts, and often with a left-hand thread which tighten if they rotate. Any stupidiy must lie with whoever installed the chnadeliers in the first place. Thanks, Alexandra.

Chip said:
Neutral: Personal Account
I agree with you, Graham. This type of fixture is designed to be mounted for a long long time. Daily vibration would loosen such a fixture and eventually cause it to fall if it were not locked into place. These are not light bulbs. The thought of "unscrewing" one just does not sit right. Nevertheless, a Personal Account and a funny one. Thanks for the story, Alexandra

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