The Day When My Job Site Was Almost Fatal

Stephen Diggins24 Headshot
2 27 Van

2 27 VanIn 1987 I started my first hardwood flooring company, Cherrystone Custom Floors: Purveyors of Fine Wood Flooring. Our supplier, Wally Johnston of W.E. Johnston Floor Service, asked my partner and me to join the NWFA and go with him and his wife to the show in Dallas. We attended all the seminars we could and made the decision to educate ourselves as much as possible so that our work might stand out or at least compete with the locals quality-wise.

Over the years we had some early success, not only just doing residential hardwood floor work, but we had done a project in a 246-year-old home later purchased by a photographer from Rolling Stone. We sanded and installed in a very old home-turned-monastery for Carmelite monks on a 100-acre sanctuary. We worked in two multi-million dollar homes for Deam Kamen, inventor of (among many things) the auto-syringe, portable dialysis machine and the Segway. This all led to our small flooring company growing and bringing us commercial work, which is where this story begins.

2 27 St PaulsIn 1994, we were contacted by a commercial construction giant making massive renovations to the prestigious St Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. In the 1870’s the first ice hockey games in the U.S. were played on the school’s “Lower Pond” with a square, leather-covered puck. Prominent alumni included: J.P. Morgan, Robert F. Kennedy and his son Michael Kennedy, U.S. Senator John Kerry and even actor Judd Nelson (many may know him from the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club). According to St. Paul’s website: “Graduates of St. Paul's School have included three candidates for U.S. president, six senators or congressmen, 13 U.S. ambassadors, and 10 leaders of various U.S. administrations; a governor of New Hampshire; a Nobel Prize winner, a Medal of Honor recipient, three Pulitzer Prize winners; a mayor of New York City; a president of the World Bank; numerous editors of books, newspapers, and magazines; CEOs of numerous Fortune 500 companies; professional hockey players; and many members of the clergy, including the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.” Working there was an incredible honor, and the hundreds of contractors on site could sense we were part of something historic.

Regarding hardwood flooring, not only does St. Paul’s school have thousands upon thousands of square feet, in 1884 it also became home to the first squash courts in America. That summer our team (between 12 and 24 installers depending on the schedule) installed, sanded and finished more than 42,000 square feet, every stitch of it 2 ¼-inch strip. Ouch!

What I’m getting to was a the day when there was a nearly fatal safety issue (for me).

Anyone that has every worked any kind of commercial construction knows how different it is from residential work. Mandatory rules WILL be adhered to: the morning schedule and safety meetings, steel-toed boots, hard hats, safety glasses, guards on all tools in place, all electrical devices in working order and properly grounded, HazMat and OSHA documents filed on site, insurance bonds secured, and on, and on! And, when you get into the swing of things, you find that these things are extremely important and not to be taken lightly. We had OSHA show up for the first time in my career. We had always been warned about OSHA, but no one had ever actually seen an OSHA representative ... until that day. You would think the U.S. president had arrived. The job foreman literally came running up to the second floor of a dormitory apartment and said, "OSHA is here! Get guards on those table saws or get them and your guys out of here, NOW!" We took a count of how many table saws and miters were missing guards and I ran to an industrial supply center and bought all new ones (after the project ended we removed and put them in my shed). A violation could have cost us thousands!

2 27 Shaft BlockedThe school was adding condo-style apartments where teachers/professors would live to the outside of every dormitory. Each building was five stories high, so there would be five apartments, one on each level and at each end, and there were hardwood floors throughout. They also added hardwood to student dorm rooms and many common areas. Since the elevators were not installed, they would load lifts of flooring with lulls (forklift/backhoe) to the open windows and we would load the flooring in teams to be acclimated prior to installation. Each level had an opening on the stair landing to the elevator shafts with two-by-fours nailed across them for safety. About my third week in (by then, very comfortable on the project) we had just moved many bundles of flooring by hand from a second-floor apartment up to the fifth-floor apartment because no one could get us a lull. We had no time to stand around and we wanted to keep working so we just humped it up there old-school. And then …

Walking up the last set of stairs to the fifth-floor apartment, I stepped onto the landing and made a left turn, but someone was coming down a flight of stairs that led to some sixth floor area. I politely backed away so these guys coming down could get through. I remember they were carrying some long planks and they looked exhausted. As I backed away, this massive bull of a man—the job foreman we had worked with for weeks, the guy with the two-way radio on his hip, the one that told us OSHA was coming—shouts, “STOP! Nobody f^#@ing MOVE! STOP NOW!” He lunges at me and grabs me with both fists by my jersey collar, pulls me in like he’s gonna head-butt me, looks me straight in the eyes and says calmly, but sternly, “Don’t…you F’ing…move.” I could tell he was unbelievably serious and he was not angry at me, nor was he going to punch my lights out. I didn’t get it. The two guys over his shoulder slowly set their planks down on the stairs and looked like they were going to be sick. The foreman firmly grasped both my shoulders and said calmly and softly, “Kid, turn around.”

2 27 Shaft Looking DownAs I turned I saw the fifth floor elevator shaft opening. Someone had removed the safety barriers. He stopped me as I had been "politely" (as I had been raised) backing into the elevator shaft. I looked down and almost lost my lunch. I could barely see the bottom, but there was sunlight from the ground floor opening. There was no elevator, just the shaft, and way at the bottom were some sort of steel beams and heavy steel springs. Not a chance I would have survived the fall. The foreman now had his hands on the back of my shoulders as if to make sure nothing further went wrong. He turned me around and walked me a few feet into the apartment, which had been my original destination. He said, “You’re lucky, kid. Go do what you need to do. I have to find that idiot elevator guy.” He grabbed his two-way and barked into it, “Where the f&*# is the elevator guy from Drury floor five?!" To the guys coming down the stairs: "You two, do me a favor; move your planks in here for now. You, [he pointed] guard that opening and you [he pointed toward the other guy] get those barriers back in here and get this thing closed up. I have to find this a$$hole.”

I saw the foreman head down the stairs in a hurry. His face was almost purple and his hands were shaking. I went to the window for some fresh air and grabbed something to drink. I could not comprehend what had just happened. I even started to set up my compressor and hoses etc. Then I saw him! The foreman had now briskly made it from the first floor exit to the sidewalk and he was haulin’ a$$ and shouting at who, apparently, was the elevator guy. The man had a toolbox in his hands and was heading toward the foreman, shocked and confused. The foreman grabbed the toolbox out of the man’s hand, grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. He then kicked him with his size-12 steel-toed boots like he was kicking a field goal and pushed him straight back to his truck. He yelled, “You get you’re a$$ in your truck, you take your $hit (he threw the tools in the man’s truck) and get the hell off this campus! NOW!”

The man was stunned and confused, but obviously knew this was serious, so he got in his truck, asking, “What’d I do?! What did I do?!” The foreman yelled, “You took down the safety barriers over the fifth floor shaft and you went back to your truck leaving it open! You almost killed someone! Leave! Now!” The foreman stormed away.

You know, it never sank in. I never thought about it again for many years. Maybe it happened so fast or maybe I was in some form of shock. I met with the foreman again as I worked that summer at St. Paul’s, and we never mentioned the incident again. It was years later it occurred to me that he had likely saved my life. It also occurred to me why the safety rules exist, and why they need to be followed by everyone. That was why the foremen were so demanding of us. I’m blessed to be here to share my story. Stay safe and stay well, my fellow floor guys (and all contractors, for that matter).

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