So I'm in the lunchroom at work today scarfing down during a slow spot in business,when my shift manager yells for me "AARON!!I NEED YOU OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!!"So I'm thinking business has picked up...and it had...but...

Sitting on the floor in front of the counter was this battery....Foaming at the seams...Spitting battery acid out the vents...hissing and boiling...bulged at all ends...filling the air with toxic fumes....basicly a ticking time bomb..

My young lad of a shift manager looks at me and says "What should we do with it?" [img]graemlins/banghead.gif[/img] "GET THE DAMN THING OUTTA HERE!!"I yelled with people keeping a good 10 ft girth around it.At this point all he could is look at me with this"what do ya mean?"look.. [img]graemlins/jack.gif[/img]

So I reached down grabbed this battery that could have popped at any second and make a dash for the back door and into the empty section of the parking lot and set it down veeeeery carefully...with it still pissing and fuming...Chances are my brand new 2 day old jeans will be swiss cheese when I go to wash em..

I went back in, got customers cleared up, then told the "shifty" :rolleyes: he should maybe call someone to find out what would be the best thing to do..."Nah...Don't need to do that.."So I took it upon myself..again..

I called the non-emergency number for the Calgary Fire Department to maybe get some insight as to what to do or who to call.But that turned into a pumper truck paying us a visit to assess the situation.

After 5 mins of everyone standing around this hissing battery(which had calmed down a fair amount,but was still semi-nuclear)they called the Haz-Mat unit of the Police Department...They didn't know what to do either.So Haz-Mat called someone else and got back to the CFD and instructed them to remove the battery and they would remove it from the fire hall.

And as stupid as it sounds, I have feeling that for doing this I will catch hell from someone becasue now we dont have the battery to send for warranty...but time will tell I guess...Either way I think I handled the situation as best I could....considering it's the shift managers job to prevent things like this...Had I been on the counter when the guy came in, I would have ordered him to take the battery back outside...

When I left at 6 pm, some 4 hours after all this, the store still stank of sulphur...

There....that was my excitement for the day... [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

What kind of battery was it? Did it just start in the store or did someone bring it in?

It was battery a customer had bought less then a month ago...

Still dont know what he was thinking bringing it in the store....

If you get crap from you boss since you dont have the battery for warrenty purposes anymore.. kick him in the shins..


I'm glad you did that.... I have no idea what would have caused that.. but if that battery would have exploded right there.. that would have had some wicked reprecussions... exploding hydrochloric acid all over peoples faces... jeez that could have been messy.

Great work Aaron!

You definately did the right thing Aaron.

was it a sealed battery?? almost sounds like is wasn't a sealled battery mounted in the trunk for the audio system... and it sitting there in the hot sun would do that to a regular canadiantire special battery, I have witnessed that exact thing.

Mark

/\/\Nope....this thing was a sealded unit with just the small breather vents in the top being the only opening...and amazingly the acid found its way out of them...lol...

I dont know the details of how the battery became nuclear,but the guy was really stupid for bringing it in the store..

And so far I haven't got hell for it so,so far so good....

personally, if my boss was gong to give me crap in that situation for doing exactly what you did, it wouldn't be a place I would want to work in.

I would consider the safety of my staff and customers, or potential customers to be paramount, especially over something like having to replace a battery because the hazmat crew took it away... small price to pay in my eyes...


Mark

/\/\Havent caught hell yet, but I'm sure sooner or later as things go down the chain of comand, someone will say something....

I've put in for a transfer to a differnet store since this happened, and hopefully my working with careless shift managers will be done....

But I have it set in my mind that if someone out and out gives me supreme hell for it,I'm walking....I can get another parts job in no time...(hopefully one day get into installations)