Lights on, nobody home.

So today my manager asked me to turn off a few lights in the ceiling at my job so that he could get some people in there to move them. Somehow I've become the handyman around there despite my normal job duties. Now, all the lights are on a circuit for the entire building, they all turn on, and off at the same time, save for a few lights that are always on. He told me just to unscrew the bulbs for now. These Mercury Vapor bulbs that operate on a 220v circuit have been on since 7am, and he is asking me to do this at 2:30pm. Now, I'm sure more than a few people out there have touched a light bulb, accidentally or not, when it was on. No surprise, that its hot. Well these are about ten times hotter. Even through heavy work gloves they would literally bake your hands. Anyway, so he asks me to go unscrew these couple bulbs, then I ask him if he is out of his everloving mind. He starred at me blankly for a second, then after a brief explanation about how light bulbs get hot, he understood.
The basic principal of how light bulbs work, has not changed in many years. In fact, not much has changed at all since Edison invented it. I guess he was just having a moment.

For now, I'm going out something I seem to be doing far to little of these days.