Friday, September 05, 2008

Friday Funny

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on Offshore drilling rigs. Below is an email he sent to his sister. She then sent the email to radio station FM103.2 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. She won.

Hi Sue, just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not too bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with the technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office; a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea and heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my entire butt started to burn.

I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tub of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt. May you never have a jellyfish day. Love, Rob

Have a great weekend everyone.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That puts things in perspective...

-Dan Newlin-

3:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That puts things in perspective...

-Dan Newlin-

3:57 AM  
Blogger Lolly said...

Oh, I'm so glad I checked out your blog today! What an experience! I'm sure it will live forever!

Found my way here via Smith's Murder of Ravens.

11:02 AM  
Blogger Melissa Blair said...

Ouch!

11:27 AM  
Blogger Laura G. Young said...

*scratches head*

As a diver, I have to point out that this story is most likely apocryphal. At such a depth (3 deco stops!) they'd be wearing a drysuit, not a wetsuit.

A funny story, nonetheless.

2:50 PM  

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