Let The Sparks Fly!

Things have been so slow at work, I tried to burn the place down.

Just kidding, sorta.

Wednesday morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, I heard my cell phone beep at me, letting me know the battery was getting low. Not wanting to go to work all day with my cell phone turned off, I grabbed my charger and planned to charge my phone at work.

It's something I've done before. I plug it in under my desk, let it sit for a few hours, then when it's done, I unplug it and put it back in my purse. It doesn't take much electricity to charge a cell phone, right?

I arrived at work, took my phone and charger out of my purse, crawled under my desk and plugged it in. Because I'm in a cubicle, the outlets are at the bottom of one wall, and there's a metal plate along the bottom to cover and protect all the wiring. All of the outlets in my cubicle are not flush against the metal plate, they are a slight angle, so I know I need to be careful plugging or unplugging anything.

About 2pm, I remembered my phone was still plugged in, I checked it (battery full) unhooked my phone from the charger, and proceeded to pull out the plug from the outlet.

As I'm sure everyone does, I wiggled it ever so slightly to work it out of the slots.

Bad move.

I saw sparks.


The outlet and the metal plate were scorched.

All the electricity to my cubicle was gone.

Shorted out? Fried?

I meekly walked over to our IT department, and explained what happened. They both came over, took a look at it, and determined that I indeed had no electricity in my cubicle.

Fortunately, my computer was plugged in to a surger protector, so that was ok.

While I waited for my boss to get out of a meeting, I began cleaning out the empty cubicle next to me, expecting I'd have to move. At least until they could figure out what happened and fix it if possible.

The drawers were a mess, I tossed so much crap, pulled one drawer all the way out and dumped it upside down. I used Windex on the surface of the desk area to clean up the dust that had accumulated.

By that time my boss was out of his meeting, I explained to him what happened, he told our controller, everyone had to come and look at my desk.

I was really getting some attention now. Not exactly the kind I wanted though.

Since the cord for my surge protector was really long, they decided to set it on top of my desk, behind my monitor, and plug it in on the other side, in the empty cubicle, where there was still electricity.

They got everything plugged back in, and I was back in business. Not that I really had anything to do that afternoon, but at least I could get any emails that might come my way.

Thursday morning, one of the maintenance guys for the building checked the circuits and found out all I did was trip that particular circuit. I didn't actually fry the wiring, which I was really concerned about. With the prospects for 2009 so dismal, the last thing I wanted was to have cost money to the company that wasn't necessary or planned.

So Thursday after lunch, I unplugged everything again, and moved it all back under my desk where it was originally.

Oh, and Wednesday night I stopped at the AT&T store after work to get a new charger, because one of the prongs on mine was melted. There was no way I was going to be able to use it again. They couldn't find a new one for me to buy, but they had one with a phone that had been returned, so I got it for free.

I will NEVER charge my cell phone at work again!