Pro Sound Web: This article, #InstallationFail, has been inspired by the many, many instances of bad installation practices I’ve seen throughout the years.
I’ve been taking pictures and cataloging these for quite some time, and I figured it’s time to share them with the world.
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I am always amused by “#fails” because it lets me laugh at things that I could have very easily done and now realize are wrong. Anything labeled as a fail we assume is so stupidly incorrect that we think “obviously I would never do that.” But the fact of the matter is we probably do tons of #failworthy things all the time, there is just no one following us with a camera and blog. So while I can sit here and feel superior because I would never run cable over HVAC, I have to remember that I have run cable over HVAC. Failing is easy. In fact, I would aruge 8 times out of 10, it is easier to fail at doing something than it is to not fail. I think what is important is to look at things we do as fails and then tell ourselves how to #unfail the situation. This way we can always find better ways.
I agree with Drew's point about tasks being easier failed than completed successfully. As evidenced by this article, even cable installation companies tasked with seemingly mundane jobs can find ingenious ways to screw the job up, whether it be running cable over/ through HVAC, or simply taking out chunks of walls to access the cable path itself, these #fails have people like me laughing nervously and looking around to see if anyone else sees how little we know about that which we're laughing about.
Just as Drew iterated above, it would be so easy for people like himself (who have far more cable installation experience than I do) to produce examples of work like those that appear in this article. Hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight, looking at pictures of botched work, I believe that even a self-proclaimed cable installation no0b like myself would laugh heartily and point out the seemingly obvious errors, emboldened by the false confidence that we could never do something so wrong.
Moral of the story: you aren't as special as you think you are.
I found this article to be extremely humorous, especially on the opening lines about whether or not people should feel bad over the article. Moving on to the images, I found the first few very clear despite not knowing anything (and I mean anything) about installations. The first image stood out because there was an alternative method that made perfect sense, but whoever installed the Cat-5 cable decided to take a roundabout, detrimental version of installation. The second image, though associated with the same installation, instilled fear because of the incorrect way of going through a fire-rated wall, providing not just humor but danger to this awful, and surprisingly ‘professional’ installation. I wonder if the author did something to correct this installation, since he is clearly unhappy about it and was physically present/at it when he took the images. Admittedly, the issues underlying the majority of the remaining images were beyond me, but looking at them reminded me of when my boyfriend was switching to Verizon internet and needed someone to come and install it for him. The worker was at the house for about five extra hours than originally planned, running up and down the stairs (and he was an older man, with white hair and wrinkles from age) in order to figure out the mess of cables that made up the wiring in my boyfriend’s house. The worker claimed that my boyfriend’s house was exceptionally bad and generally made his job close to impossible/very unnecessarily strenuous. This worker was also not allowed by contract to accept any tip, and my boyfriend and I felt awful about that fact because the poor worker deserved more than what he got. Bad installations, though somewhat laughed at in this article, are very real, very awful situations, and I hope that the number of them diminishes in upcoming years.
A few years ago, during a bathroom renovation in my house, a contractor found a pipe that was the wrong size. Instead of getting a new pipe, whoever installed it closed the gap with two license plates wrapped around a can of beans. To this person’s credit, it lasted about 20 years. Installation fails can be funny when you can find them and take a picture, but in some cases they can be really dangerous. I’m sure everyone makes cabling mistakes sometimes (I know I would make a lot of mistakes, but I would also ask for help). This is why you take the time to learn how to do electrical work. And also why you should carefully read reviews before you hire a contractor.
We think about fails in the educational setting as a “good” thing because it means we get corrected for doing the bad thing and then the activity is no longer subconscious but rather a conscious choice to make the right decision. This type of #fail is also something we budget time and money for because we know that things will not go exactly according to plan. However, if I were a production manager in a professional setting and some of these images appeared as something I had to deal with, I would be furious. In an industry where we pay for getting the job done to a certain standard and we typically pay hourly, I expect for it to be done well. Fails may be a part of life, and everyone has a bad day. But if a person does too may of these at a high enough level in a staff position, they do not know how to safely do their job, and I could not trust them to do the work without double checking every little thing. And that wouldn’t work either.
Ah, the good ole cable management fail. I think the author of this article should take a look at r/cablefail, it’ll really help them rage out at some of the ridiculous things people do to get something plugged in, but not plugged in right. To me, this type of asshattery doesn’t dwell purely in the realm of the unknowing/unexperienced worker. It also rears it’s ugly head anywhere anyone running something is on the clock and thinks they can get away with it. I think that’s why you will often see this type of work in the theatre, because everyone’s always on the clock, and unfortunately very often times we can get away with installing cables poorly for a show with a two week run. I’m sure everyone who has ever run a cable is guilty of it, I certainly am, where you’re 15 minutes from the end of a call, and you just need to run that last cable, and that part of your brain that says “ah, fuck it, it doesn’t make any difference if I cut this corner” overtakes your better judgement. But it does matter, to a certain degree, almost always. And while one mistake might make you want to rip your hair out because the person who ran these cables didn’t care to make it easy to take them down at the end of a show (and often times that person was past you, and you want to kill past you), other mistakes that were outlined in the article might get someone put in a hole in the ground. So everyone running cables, if you can, please put in the extra 5 minutes into running things the right way, attaching connectors properly, giving proper strain relief to everything, and then when you’re done soak in the satisfaction and glory of properly run cables à la r/cableporn.
I like this. Currently, due to some installations fails, every time I turn on my garbage disposal, my wifi router restarts. There's always a story behind these seemingly idiotic installations. There is a right way and a wrong way to do installations and there are reasons for these procedures but there could always be uncontrollable factors involved in making these fail decisions. I'm all for doing things the right way but if it's safe and it saves time but looks a little wonky, who is this guy to judge? The most enjoyable part of this article was seeing the things I could have easily done myself and now seeing them on the internet as a "fail". I'll mention it again just to drive this home, if it's unsafe, its no laughing matter.
I think it’s very easy to laugh at other people’s mistakes while forgetting how often we make our own. While these installation jobs might very well be “fails” in our eyes, we have definitely done comparable/ worse jobs/ breaches of safety in our past experiences or even here at CMU. In our last tech management class we went over OSHA standard for safety and learned that so much of what we have one on crew calls and at internships is deemed unsafe. One that surprised all of us was that technically you’re not supposed to carry heavy objects up ladders. I think that oftentimes, particularly during load-ins and strikes, it’s very easy for crew heads and members to forgo safety in order to get things done quickly. Especially when others are depending on your efficiency in order for the process to be successful, or grades/ reputations are at stake, quickness can be falsely likened to progress, which could lead to accidents happening and mistakes being made. While we often laugh when we see safety being forgone in pictures like these, I think it’s a serious matter that can’t be made fun of.
While this article is a good laugh, I think something it also highlights is the necessity for being explicit when working with people you aren’t familiar with. Freshman year we were put on crews with departments I had never interacted with, and sometimes our first crew calls were before the class for that department has even started. I tell you all this because it’s just easy to mess things up. Another thing that is important is that when you’re in a managerial position you should really try your best to constantly check in on various projects until your group shows other wise. Even the “professionals” hired to do some of the cabling in this article made monumental mistakes, and though they shouldn’t have, dropping in every half hour to say hey what the heck are you doing with that hole in that wall maybe could have let to a proper installation.
I’m not the first to question and say what the heck were they thinking when they put this together. Or whether it was how something was designed. You would think that someone who has been in the industry for so long would know better than try and cut a few corners. You would think there is a standard somewhere about these kinds of installations. Some of which seem self-explanatory. Others for the do it yourselfers, it is a little more understandable that cables might not be wrapped as neatly as those done by professionals. At least they have a creative way of getting the job done. Some of the installation fails aren’t the worst things in the world, but you do have to ask yourself why something like that was done in the first place. It seems a little excessive, but I’m not one to hold you over with something, because I have a little less limited knowledge as to what goal is trying to be accomplished.
After reading this article, it was fun simply to go back and see some of the things people decided to do afterwards out of the context of reading the article. I do not understand how people who do this professionally think that this is okay, let alone leave it that way once they are done. If you are in the middle of a job and leave something on the side for a moment, I can understand doing that just for convenience, but leaving it like that is ridiculous. In Cosette's comment she mentions one her wifi router is triggered by the garbage disposal, and that simply scares me because what if it was something more important or dangerous. Installation done wrong can cause more damage than simply looking at a photo and laughing, it could cause something to fall, something that should not be exposed to be exposed, something easily being pulled out, etc. The things seen in this article made me both nervous and grateful, because things should not be happening like this and I am glad CMU is teaching me the right way to do it.
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