EMERGENCY BALLAST 911!

For those of you that work in offices that have lay in flourescent lighting and have ever experienced a power outtage, you may have noticed that one or more of those fixtures stayed lit allowing you to make your way out of the room without clearing your desk of that mad collage of pictures, collecter coffee cups and whatever doo-dads you have scattered around your desk to remind you that you have a life beyond the cubicle.
You can thank an electrician for saving your prized collection of glass kitties holding balloons from a fate worse than death.
I had the honor of wiring in 3 emergency ballasts today...I won't go into the boring details, but it is a royal pain in the ass. But we do it for you, and your safety, and your inability to carry a lighter or a flashlight, just in case you find yourself in the dark. Don't laugh, I carry both. At all times. In case I find myself in the dark. And being a FNG electrician, darkness happens sometimes. It's the learning curve. Sometimes it follows an explosion, but not always.
Anyway, back to the emergency ballasts. Wires...lots of wires, everywhere. The mission is to figure out which wires off the ballast go to the wires already in the fixture. That depends on the type of fixture you're dealing with. The emergency ballast comes with instructions covering at least 10 schematics. You have to figure out what kind of ballast you have, is it instant or rapid start? How many lamps do you have in the fixture? What's the voltage? 120? 277? Did I mention the people who wrote these instructions also were responsible for the translation of gideons bible to the head of a fucking pin? It's true. And the lights are off. So...it's fucking tiny tiny writing and diagrams, and you can't see them because it's fucking DARK. (That's why I have a flashlight...but that eliminates a hand, which opens a whole new door of frustration ).
I'm ok with up to 6 or 8 wires, provided they line up color wise. But the wires coming out of the emergency ballast are like medusa. Orange or black? Yellow or yellow with a black stripe? Blue or blue/white? Red/white...there's 2 of those...white? AAAAAAUUUGHHHHH! I am overwhelmed.
And today is the day my journeyman decides I need to learn how to read and translate schematics and hook these emergency ballasts up on my own. He didn't help as much as he challenged my questions about what goes where. He answers my questions with questions of his own, he tries to trip me up. Needless to say, I traced and wired the third ballast on my own with no questions asked, and there was no explosion. It worked.
So, the next time you look up at the pencils you've lodged in the suspended ceiling and notice that little red light inside the fixture and say to yourself " I wonder what that is"? It's your emergency ballast bitch. The one that's gonna save your sea world magnetic paper clip holder from flying across the floor in case the lights go out. And you've got me to thank for it.
You can call me.
Thank you journeyman, for making me think.