While living in Radium hot springs,BC. I owned a small construction company with a friend. We did all the work ourselves, construction from decks to framing houses and all the paper work as well. As we got our name out we got busier and busier. After awile we could no longer carry the whole work load ourselves so we hired a friend who happened to be out of work for the time. I had just finished laying down and tacking all the plywood on the roof of the garage when our friend showed up for work. he asked what should he get started on and my partner told him that he could go and nail off all the sheets of ply wood on the Garage. our frien grudgingly trodded off to get started mubling something to the affect of hating hights. Feeling alittle concerned and having to go back to work myself, I followed our new employee up the ladder and on to the roof. when we were on the roof i noticed how nervous employee #1 was and i asked if he was going to be all right. He mumbled something about hieghts again and than inquired about a safety harness. We had a Harness on the roof (as required by law) set up and ready to go. I asked our employee if knew how to use the safety harness and he assured me he wasn't an idiot and had used them before. Now for those of you who do not know the saety harness consists of a body sling similar to what mountain climbers wear, a long lenght of rope and a clasp that runs the rope one way and locking out and not moving the other, and a tag line. So first you put on the harness, attach the clasp to the rope, then attach the tag line to the clasp. The rope is anchored to the top of the roof or some point higher than yourself. Another important item to know is that our anchor rope is approximately 150 feet long. The reson the clasp is adjustable is so you can work freely moving up and down the roof. So not really paying attention to our new employee (because he wasn't an idiot) I went about my business of sheeting the main roof of the house. About five minutes had passed when i heard a little yelp. I looked over an our employee was no longer on the roof. I ran over to the ladder, climbed down and ran around to the other side of the garage to find employee#1 laying on the ground with about 110 feet of rope coiled up on top of him. I asked if he was alright and to my relief he was. When I asked him what happened he told me that my harness sucked. That's when I noticed that the clasp which is attached to the anchor rope and the five point harness was all the way to the bottom of the 150 foot rope. When this particular little tidbit of info was mentioned, employee #1 promptly went home never to return. You should have seen it there was so much slack rope that when he fell the 10 feet to the ground, the rope coiled up on him like the coyote in the old roadrunner cartoon.

I hate to think what would have happened if he was an idiot.

Submitted on 02/28/2010

Submitted by: James Ryder
Reference: none/ personal account

Copyright © 2010 DarwinAwards.com

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Sounds like the kind of worker you definitely don't want around. Thanks, James!

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
This fellow needed a shrink (and a brain) more than he needed a job! Thanks, James!

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