Stores Destroyed!

Member: Refugee

My worst disaster was in the mid 1980s at a company that made early industrial CCTV equipment.I was the after sales service engineer and often had to look after the department while the chief engineer went out to awkward jobs on customer sites.

He was in this day and was doing something over at sales. It was a few minutes before lunch and I thought I would just pop into stores to get an “O” ring for an underwater camera I had been working on before I went to lunch so that I could sit down and do the job to “kick the afternoon off”.

The store man was not there but the part was considered consumable and did not need to be booked out so I was able to go and get one myself. I went into the cramped isle and reached into the stock bin to pick the part out. Something distracted me and I just gave the edge of the bin a faint nudge.

By the time my concentration was back again I sensed some kind of movement! By the time I realised what was going on it was too late! It was unstoppable and there was nothing I could do. It was moving away from me and getting faster! It hit the floor with an almighty SMASH!!! This was followed by a hailstorm of components. Then all the heads peeped around the door.

The production manager came running in and went mad and told me to get out of the stores. I thought I had better go to lunch and let him calm down. When I got back they had found another half a dozen racks were in a dangerous condition and there was a sigh of relief that the store man was not sitting on his now flattened seat that it had landed on.

It stopped production for three days but I was forgiven.