Man I couldn't accept nothing, even though our job is very dangerous, we are paid fairly well. Of course places like California make almost double what we do and one mistake and you either don't go home or you will never function the same way ever again. But I make enough to get by so I don't like accepting anything. When I was younger we were always quick to take beer and food but most companies we work for ask us to not take anything. We even raised some money and bought water/food for people in Bayside Texas because the situation was so bad there. Most of the time our food is reimburseable so we don't need people that are already struggling offering us food if that makes sense. After we donated to Bayside they begged us to stay and eat with them but we snuck out as we didn't want the glory nor for them to waste their food on us because they needed it far worse than we did.
Bazza, that would be a good idea especially if your place floods at all, and speaking of generators please always follow what the maker says about hooking them up. A lot of the public don't realize that an improperly hooked up generator can backfeed power into the transformer and actually energize a dead line up to the system voltage (7,200 volts, 13,300 volts, 19,900 volts, etc) so as you can imagine that causes major issues with us. Of course we are supposed to always prepare but not all line workers do so and it's very dangerous. We actually had one death in Texas (not my company), a 21 year old kid was killed in the bucket for a contractor out of Beaumont Texas. He shouldn't have even been in the bucket to start with. Heard of one burned in Florida but I have not heard the details on that yet but I do know he was a journeyman out of Michigan that was with the UWUA (it's a union like the IBEW).
