Client goes through the ceiling!

[Barry Adair]

Literally!

1. This is a fixer-upper
2. Attic stairs installed in garage conversion.
3. Husband goes up the stairs.
4. First step off of the stairs, through the ceiling, hangs from ceiling joists for a moment, and back down onto the floor.
5. Wife holding baby, not missing a beat, says, "Well now we have something else to fix on this POS."
6. Can you say "feel the tension in the room"
7. Good thing is only his ego was bruised and it happened at the end of the inspection
8. Funny part is he tried to feign it off by pointing to the cracked drywall around the hole and said, "look it was already cracked right there."
9. I kept my mouth shut and facial expressions to a minimum, as did his wife. Except for her rolling of the eyes. I think this gesture is becoming a normal and natural routine with her as she does it exceptionally well.

[Michael W. Gault]

You did very well then, I may have laughed a tad...

[Mark A. Timpani, CMI]

wow!

[Joe Funderburk, CMI]

I do not allow my clients to go into the attic or crawl space during my inspection. I am firm about it. I tell them they can go it they like, but after I leave. I explain to them the reasoning is to limit liability. Also, my state's SOP says that I am not to place my clients in danger. Attics and crawl spaces are dangerous places.

[Russel Ray]

Originally Posted by jfunderburk

I do not allow my clients to go into the attic or crawl space during my inspection. I am firm about it. I tell them they can go it they like, but after I leave. I explain to them the reasoning is to limit liability. Also, my state's SOP says that I am not to place my clients in danger. Attics and crawl spaces are dangerous places.

Ditto with me and my company. And if I ever find out that an employee let someone else use our ladders or follow them into an attic or crawl space, I suspect they would be looking for a new job.

[phinsperger]

Originally Posted by badair

Client goes through the ceiling!

Well at least it wasn't because he saw your bill

[wsiegel]

Sometimes you cant stop your clients from being stupid, and you cannot watch them all them. I had a client not too long ago decide he was going to go around an open up the windows. He yanked on a blind and it came down and hit him in the head. He tried to put it back up so the seller would not notice. Before we left, I made him tell the seller what he had done. No way was I getting blamed for that one (very expensive blind)

[Keith Swift, PhD.]

Too long a story for details, but here's the condensed version. Paused in a dining room to watch as "artists" were putting the finishing touches on a wall mural, when the room seemed to explode. Can't recall the sequence of events, but I saw through a cloud of dust a huge chandelier shattered among the pieces of a glass table that it had demolished, and then looked up to see a leg protruding through the joists. Apparently, a worker in the attic installing an alarm triggered the event when .....
As for the cost of the damage, I have no idea but the interior door handles that I was installing were were approximately two-hundred dollars each (just the handles, not the rest of the hardware), and that was twenty years ago.
I'm reminded of this every once in a while when I tightrope walk over joists.