Instant Electrolysis

One thing I hate about customers is when they employ Aunties to clean their offices. As such, these Aunties are so efficient to a point that they never realise their actions have expensive consequences to the customer. take for example, the humble 4-way socket.

This is a small little grey plastic box whole sole existence is to connect the cables from the PBX to the cables to your phone. You can throw the little guy on the floor and he will sit there quietly. Sometimes you can see him stuck to the wall/table courtesy of some sticky double-sided foam tapes. So, there he is, minding his own business on the floor when Auntie came with a very wet mop. With one big sweep, the tiles are clean but our little guy is momentarily drowned in a potent mixture of Terracare/Savlon/spit (or some other washing liquid on Sale at Makro).

And all of a sudden, voltages from the PBX surges through the metal inside the little guy and we have a very nice Chemistry lesson on Electrolysis. As a result, the copper in the cable are eroded and becomes green (just like those you see on your spectacles) on the outside. But inside the cable, it becomes black where the poor old innocent guy (like me) would have to take his blade to scrape out the black stuff.

And if its too severe, the little guy gets replaced and sometimes, the worst thing that could happen would be that the cables would either have to be cut short or get replaced too. Because moisture inside the cable is bad news. You would get complications like shorting, unreliable signals or even permanent damage. This is expensive because you'd have to pay the guy (like me) to lay a new cable all over again.


See the green stuff at the top left of the screw?
Its Copper Sulfate. In other words, the metal connectors and the cables are "screwed"

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