Power Plant “We’ve Got The Power” Stress Buster

Originally posted April 12, 2014:

In an earlier post titled “Power Plant We’ve Got the Power Program” I explained how in 1990 we broke up into teams at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma to find ways to save the Electric Company money.  Before we were actually able to turn in our first set of ideas, we had a month or more to prepare those ideas and to turn them into proposals.  During this time, and throughout the entire “We’ve Got the Power” program, teams who wanted to succeed and outdo the other teams became very secretive.  Our team was definitely that way.  We had secret experiments going on throughout the plant, and we didn’t want other teams to even know what areas we were investigating.

As the program progressed, a certain level of stress developed between teams.  In a later post I will tell a story about how this level of stress led to a situation of suspicion and eventually even animosity.  This  post will not go into that situation.  Instead I want to explain what our team did to try to alleviate some of the stress by devising a special “Power Plant Joke” that we played on the rest of the Power Plant Men (and Women).

There were some teams that had setup some experiments that they were running to see if their ideas may save the company money.  Our team had several experiments running throughout the beginning months.  All of which we carefully hid from prying eyes.  We were proud of our stealthiness.  Sneaking around, making sure we weren’t being followed when we went to take readings from our carefully hidden recorders and other devices.

Charles Foster, Scott Hubbard and I were sitting in the electric shop office discussing the stress level that had permeated the plant, and we thought we could take advantage of the stress by setting up a “We’ve Got The Power” Experiment out in the open that would be obvious to anyone that walked by.  Only it would be a fake experiment designed to play a joke on the unsuspecting Power Plant Man.

Here is what we did….

Right outside the electric shop in the Turbine Generator basement there is a water fountain.  We placed a hazard waste barrel a few feet away from the water fountain.  Like this:

Hazardous Waste Barrel

Then we mounted a junction box on the wall a few feet above the chemical waste barrel and a little to the right.

A junction box like this

We turned the junction box so that the hinge was on the top, allowing the door to fall closed naturally.  This was an important part of the setup to allow for the joke to automatically reset each time it was operated.

We ran some copper tubing from the water fountain water line over to the box.  Then another copper line came out the bottom of the box and into the barrel.  Next to that copper tube, another smaller copper tube came out and just bent toward the front of the box.  We had a plastic hose coming out of the barrel and over to the drain next to the water fountain.  Then we put Yellow Barrier Tape around the entire setup.

Barrier Tape

 

We tied Caution tags to the Barrier tape that said “We’ve Got the Power Experiment” Do not enter!  I signed the tags.

Caution Tags like this

There was an electric conduit running up from the junction box, that went up and into the wall about 6 feet above the junction box.  So, this looked like a legitimate experiment going on, but for the life of anyone, no one would be able to tell what it was doing.  — Mainly because it wasn’t doing anything….. At least not until someone went to investigate it.

So.  Here is what would happen….

Employees would walk by and see the barrier tape with the hazardous waste barrel and the hoses and water lines coming from the back of the water fountain, with a junction box above it that was not completely closed.  The door to the junction box was down, but not screwed closed.  Conduit was going into the box, which meant that something electrical was probably inside  Maybe a solenoid or something that was controlling the experiment.

They would read the Caution Tag that explained that this was a “We’ve Got the Power” experiment, and it would pique (pronounced “peak”) their curiosity enough that they couldn’t help but investigate it to see what was really going on.

So, what would invariably happen, was that someone would enter the area that was barrier taped off, and open the junction box to see what was inside.  When they lifted the lid, they would find that they were instantly being soaked with water that would spray out of a small copper line pointing right at them directly under the junction box.  At the same time, an alarm would go off above them behind the wall right above the electric shop office.  It was very loud.  A counter inside the junction box would register an “intruder’ had just opened the box.

So, as we would be sitting there during lunch, we would suddenly hear the alarm go off, and we could dart out the door to the Turbine Generator basement to find a drenched Power Plant Man.  They were usually amused that they had fallen into the trap.  I say usually, because I have the feeling that one particular person who found himself violating the barrier tape and getting soaked didn’t act too cordial about it.  I’ll get to him later.

As I said, inside the box was a counter.  It counted how many times the box had been opened and sprayed someone with water.  So, we could go inspect it in the morning and we would know if anyone had looked at it while we were gone.

After the experiment had been there about a week, an overhaul began where Power Plant Men from different plants came to our plant to perform the overhaul.  The plant would shut off one of the units and we would take it apart, and put it back together again fixing problems along the way (well.  maybe not quite that drastic.  It was a time to fix things that couldn’t be maintained or repaired while the unit was running).

So, the Power Plant Men at our plant, who by that time all knew about the bogus experiment just outside the electric shop, would bring unsuspecting Power Plant Men from other plants over to the see the “We’ve Got the Power” experiment going on in the hopes of seeing them get sprayed with water.  So, a new round of alarms were going off during that time.

Eventually, when people had heard about the experiment, and knew that it was spraying people, they would approach the experiment with caution.  When they opened the lid of the junction box, they would stand next to it against the wall in order to not get wet.  The spray pattern from the crimped copper line was fairly wide, so you would have to stand practically against the wall next to the box in order to stay dry.

So, this was when we implemented Phase 2 of the experiment.  — Yeah.  It’s the second phase of many Power Plant Jokes that usually make the joke a much bigger success than the first phase.  For instance, I have written a post about the “Psychological Profile of a Control Room Operator” in which I had played a joke on Gene Day, where after a week of preparing him for the final joke, I had coaxed him to look over my shoulder, only to have him read that according to his psychological profile, he was the type of person that would look over your shoulder and read your private material.

That would be a good joke in itself, but when Gene Day read that and began choking the life out of me, I pointed out to him the final statement in Gene Day’s profile which stated that he tends to choke people who try to help him by creating Psychological profiles of him.  This second part of the joke is what really completes the joke and makes it a real success.  The first part just makes it funny.

So, here is how we modified the experiment for Phase 2….  The nozzle that sprayed the employee actually came out the bottom of the box and elbowed to point toward the front of the box.  So, what we did was we took a file and filed a tiny notch in the side of the copper tubing just below the junction box just above the elbow.  The notch was on the side of the copper tube, and it was deep enough of a notch to make a little hole in the side of the copper line.

So, then, if someone was standing to the only side they could stand next to the box and the barrel and they opened up the lid of the Junction Box to show someone how the experiment worked, they wouldn’t notice right away, but a small stream of  water would be spraying on their pants in just the appropriate location to make it look like the person had just pee’ed their pants.

Right when we had finished modifying the experiment for Phase 2, Howard Chumbley walked into the electric shop.  He was a retired Electric Foreman, that I have written about in the post “Pioneers of Power Plant Fame Finally Find Peace“.  He had come to visit the plant that day because there was going to be a Men’s Club lunch and he wanted to come and see some other old codgers that he used to work with that liked to attend the Men’s Club dinners.  He always wanted to see us of course as well.

So, we told him about the “We’ve Got The Power” Joke Experiment just outside the electric shop that sprayed water on people.  Of course, he wanted to see it, so we took him out and let him observe it.  We explained that when you open the lid, an alarm goes off, the counter toggles and water sprays out of that little nozzle sticking out at the bottom.  We told him he could try it if he wanted to see how it worked.

So,  he climbed under the barrier tape and walked around the side of the junction box that didn’t have the barrel, and reached over and lifted the lid.  The alarm when off, water sprayed out, and Howard laughed with glee to see how we had devised such a nice trick.  After watching the water spray for about 3 or 4 seconds, he suddenly realized that something was wrong.  He dropped the lid and looked down, only to find that it looked like he had just pee’ed his pants.

That was it!  That was icing on the cake.  Howard laughed even more when he realized what had happened.

The next morning when we came in the shop, we went to look at the experiment, it had been disassembled, or shutdown in some manner.  I think some caution tag had been placed there by Gary Wright, the Shift Supervisor stating something like this was a safety hazard, or some such thing.

Gary Wright is the one down in the front with the glasses.  He had more hair in this photograph than I remember

Anyway, when I went up to the Control Room to ask him why he shutdown our experiment he was adamant that it constituted Horseplay and someone could get hurt.  Maybe when the water sprayed on them, they might jerk back and fall down and get hurt.  Ok….

I suppose.  Though, by the time he took it down, everyone at the plant already knew about it, and we were just in the Phase 2 part of the experiment.  In this phase anyone who was looking at the experiment was doing it by opening up the door from the side, and peeing their pants and they wouldn’t jerk back……—- Oh….. I see….  Shift Supervisors don’t usually like to walk into the control room looking like they have just pee’ed their pants.

I will say that I hadn’t expected that type of reaction from Gary Wright, because up to that time, he seemed more mild-mannered than the rest of the Shift Supervisors.  We just took it that the more upset Gary was with us about it, the more successful the joke had been implemented.  The joke had played out by that time, and we were good with it either way.

After it was all said and done.  We thought it did help to reduce the overall tension that was permeating the plant due to the “We’ve Got the Power Program”.