Mongo
Mongo
A couple of years ago, a well known electrical contractor was hired to essentially add a second switchgear room to a working hospital. New 4" conduits were being installed overhead of existing live switchgear; this work was being performed by a crew of 4 working on 8' & 10' stepladders. I threaded my way through these folks, their carts, extension cords, & conduits on the floor carrying my own 6' ladder (I was working on something unrelated). To make it worse, the switchgear room was not very well lit.
I wind up bumping into one of their ladders pretty good, and called out that I was sorry right away. (All kinds of things were going through my mind, i.e. what kind of catastrophe could have happened if I had caused this guy to have dropped a tool, or a bucket of tools....will all the working operating rooms upstairs suddenly go dark?.....you get the idea). The guy on the ladder (the ceiling was too congested for me to see anything of him above his waist) didn't say anything, so I repeated that I was sorry. Another electrician comes down off a ladder less than 10' away, approaches me, and says, "Don't worry about it! You don't even have to THINK about apologizing! Don't you know who this is? This is Mongo! If you knock Mongo off a ladder, he just gets up, climbs the ladder, and goes back to work! Trust me, you can't hurt Mongo!"
Then the guy I bumped, still up on his ladder, says (in a big kid's voice) "Except for Mongo's feeelings."