A distributor out on Long Island in New York had a customer with a job that came crashing to a halt, to say the least. The contracting company's sand-and-finish supervisor had just hired a new worker who spoke limited English with an extremely heavy accent, and he sent the worker out to a condo complex on his first day to do a buff and coat. Not long after that, the supervisor got a call from the worker, who told him, "Buffer broke." "What are you talking about?" the supervisor asked. "Buffer no work," the worker answered. The supervisor decided to go out to the job, and he took the service elevator up to the seventh floor. When he walked into the condo, he saw that one of the floor-to-ceiling windows was shattered completely out. He walked over, looked over the edge and saw the buffer lying on the sidewalk. "What happened?!" he asked the worker. He answered, "Turn buffer on, zoom, bang, gone!" Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident—except for the buffer.
See a collection of wood flooring job-site stories on the WFB Pinterest Tales From the Front board. Do you have a funny or bizarre job-site story? Email it to WFB. If we use it, we'll send you a WFB T-shirt.
