You dropped what?

What do you think would happen when you drop a cell phone? Not much right? Well not here. One of the Techs out on the system dropped their cell phone and caused a five minute delay. Sounds strange doesn't it? I thought so also, and had to go look at the log book to find out what really happened.

Well the log book was not very helpful, neither was the delay report. What happened was that the Tech dropped their phone onto the system guideway, and Control in their infinite wisdom shut the system down for five minutes while two Techs looked for this phone. I have some problems with this; one we run on a raised guideway that unless you are a precision dropper the item will fall to the ground. Two, we wouldn't stop the system for a customers phone, why is this one so special. Adding insult to injury, the phone was not found on the guideway.

So here we are with five minutes of downtime and nothing to show for it. I hope the Tech had insurance on the phone, it could have cost us $5K.

Stupid is as stupid does.

-- Forest Gump's Mother

Somehow I think she was smarter than some of the people we have around here, and she was fictional.