The baby with the bathwater

New York dog sucked into street cleaner

These machines are supposed to sweep up the dog-shit, not the dog as well!

The 57-year-old said he believed the truck had exceeded the speed limit in the area and was investigating legal options.
The city Department of Sanitation called the incident "a rare and unfortunate accident."

I'm sure these machines are more complicated to manoevre than you might imagine.

I while ago I made a post about the guy at the factory who got his head crushed in the machinery.

Apparantly he was a bit of a numpty before the accident. His air-headedness was probably a major factor in the accident occuring. Anyway, he's back at work and more doolaly than before. So the bosses are thinking what they can do with him so he won't be a danger to himself and others.

"I know", says one, "we can put him on the sweeping machine. He can drive around, sweeping up. What harm can come from that?"

So we'd gotten used to seeing him driving around on this machine, a bit like the ones you see at airports, it's got rotating brushes and a big vacuum cleaner and an orange flashing light. The guys at work swap stories at the breaks of his latest exploits. For example, he was seen driving the thing outdoors, taking it to one of the tips, to empty it. It had been raining and he was driving it, with brushes and vacuum going, through all the mud and puddles, great clods of mud flying about. The machine had to spend a day having the mud cleeared out of it and having the brushes replaced.

I was at my press when I heard him in the corridor behind me, seemingly stuck on tight lock, the machine whirling round like a mad thing, with him clinging on, mouth open, eyes half closed. There was a great burnt rubber scorch mark on the floor after he'd gone.

It's very sad really.

The end came, we had just left for our break, and Mr Sweeper Man was in action nearby. We came back from the break, and the press was dead. No power to the console. or to any of the other consoles on the line. How mysterious. Pascal immediately asked Mr Sweeper Man if he had accidentally bumped anything. He pointed to one of the bank of electrical cabinets that line the wall.
Bugger.
We called the electricians. They poked about with their testers trying to find the answer. The answer was in front of us. If we had only followed the clear vacuumed path of the sweeper we would have seen it leading directly to one of the electrical cabinets. And we would have seen that 4 banks of circuit breakers had been "swept" by the machine as it did a tight turn. the end result was 2 hours of the presses out of action and an electrical engineer having to upload the presses' programs from a laptop.
And while that was going on, Mr. Sweeper Man went and DID THE SAME THING at the other side of the factory, taking out the robot arms that pack the tiles onto pallets.

It's not funny, it's tragic. I haven't seen him since. Those sweeper machines weigh a ton. they have steerable rear wheels like a forklift and are avery bit as dangerous. I hope they find a decent solution for him.

It is of such things that legends are made. The still tell of the maniak fork-lift driver, who, while loading a german lorry, put his forks through the tyres, bursting them with a loud explosion. He also knocked over a lorry load of tomatoes while putting tiles into a truck that was going to carry a shared load. And also put his fork-lift through a brick wall, and when found, in his fork-lift, surrounded by bricks and dust said "It wasn't me"