Perspective

[Sedalia Dave]

 

 

This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.
Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.5 on FM dial in Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest.
Needless to say, she won. Read his letter below:

~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 so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's 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. It 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, is 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 ass 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. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it, however, the crack of my ass was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my ass.
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 tube 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 take a crap for two days because my ass 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 a*s. Now repeat to yourself, 'I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.' Whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?
Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift

[Blackwater 53393]

Mamma said there’d be days like this!!!  I’ve had a couple myself!  

 

 

Some are pretty funny…

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOW!!

[J-BAR #18287]

I'll play!

 

Not as funny as Bob's jellyfish attack, but maybe I can place 2nd.

 

Junior year in college, working on the trail repair crew for the US Forest Service in Colorado's Sangre De Cristo mountains.  (Background scenery in the movie Cat Ballou- please no Hanoi Jane comments.)

 

After 3 days on the job, I don't know if it was giardia in the creek water I drank, or the crew supervisor's cooking, but after breakfast I had a gastrointestinal emergency.  I grabbed a camp flag (new roll of toilet paper) and beat it into the woods to find a suitable spot to relieve my cramps.  A deadfall pine tree served the purpose, and I was grateful to avoid squatting in the open.

 

Until the log broke.

 

And I fell backwards into my recent production.

 

The rest of the crew was not sympathetic.  They complained that I used up the whole roll of toilet paper getting myself back into working condition.  

 

I tried to stay downwind for two days before we could pack out and return to town for the weekend.  They let me know when I failed.

[Sedalia Dave]

When I was in The Navy there was an aircrewman in my squadron that suffered a gastrointestinal emergency in flight. Unfortunately before he could get out of the seat and make it to the head his bowels let loose and the resulting mess flowed up the back of his flight suit to his collar.

 

He spent the rest of the flight locked in the head. Once the AC landed he was the first one down the ladder and off to find someplace to attempt to clean up. 

 

His nickname became Shart and the crew made a big deal of presented him with a new nametag with it embroidered in larger than normal letters. 

[Pat Riot]

My bad day was also in the Navy and I am thankful it was water, not “shart” or jellyfish in my nether regions. 
 

I used to have a very Eidetic Memory. Still do, somewhat. If I see a photo, diagram or witness something in life I can recall details. This is especially helpful regarding technical issues. 
Anyway, our ship was in port in Norfolk, VA. We had been in the shipyards for a time getting work done and some of that work included the installation of some new valves in our missile magazine for the sprinkler system. 
We had an annual fire suppression test on the mag sprinkler systems that we had to do to test the new valves and make sure everything was working okay.  I recall telling my boss - launcher captain, that maybe this test should be done before loading all the missiles back in the mag after leaving the shipyard. I was told to be quiet and do as I was told. 
So, since climbing back into the rear of the ready service ring to operate the test valves was a PITA and since I was “Mr. Knowitall” I was assigned as the valve turner at the rear of the magazine. 
Our boss was in Engineering and my other 2 shipmates were monitoring pressures from inside the control space. ie; twiddling their thumbs. 
I was looking at these valves and the labels had been swapped. I told my boss over the sound powered phones. He told me I was wrong. I told him I was right and the valve designations didn’t match the drawings or my memory. He said “Shut up about it and do as I say!”

 

Here was the problem. If you opened the wrong valve first it would cause a pressure differential in the sprinkler system making the system think a head was activated. Once this occurred the system was designed to set off all of the magazine sprinklers. NOT a good thing. 
 

I responded that I thought we should have the Chief look at this before we proceeded. Trouble is my boss, a 2nd class petty officer and our Chief (E-7) did not get along. 
I made the mistake of telling Craig, my boss or LPO, that if we set this system off the Chief would be thoroughly pi**ed!

That was when he said “Follow my directives and turn the valve labeled (blah-blah) when I tell you. Turn it 1/4 turn the open valve (blah-blah) quickly to the fully back seated position.”

I jokingly requested the guys in the control space bring me some towels. There was stone silence on the sound powered phones.

 

“All right, on the count of three when I say ‘mark’ turn valve (blah) 1/4 turn towards back seat then immediately turn valve (blah) to fully back seated as fast as you can…1…2…3…Mark!”

I turned the wrong valve one quarter turn. There was a BANG, a shudder then WOOSH! All the sprinklers actuated. It sounded like someone dumped a truckload of hammers on the main deck above me. There was so much water in the air. For about a second it was the 24 gallon fresh water header then immediately the saltwater system actuated. Thank God the rocket motor plenums didn’t activate. There was so much water I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t see anything but a white/gray heavy barrage of saltwater. Luckily I had a rag in my pocket that I bunched up and put over my mouth and nose and I could breath without inhaling water. 

As fast as it started it stopped. The idiot Craig had shut down the system when Engineering erupted in fire and flooding alarms. 
Emergency alerts went out over the ships 1MC “Fire! Fire in compartment two-tack-fifty eight- tack - one Aft Missile Launcher. Away the fire party!
Flooding! Flooding in compartment two-tack-fifty eight- tack - one - Aft Missile Launcher. Away the fire party.”

All hell had broken loose because the alarms on the bridge said there was a fire and flooding because the sprinkler system was actuated. 
All because one Knowitall butthead wouldn’t listen to what his people were telling him. 
 

I was drenched and in all the excitement and I got some more cough syrup. I took a little bit when we bought it at CVS and then will take a little more before we actually leave. me getting crap beat out of my by high pressure water my right foot was wedged among the metal work of the ready service ring (missile rack) and I was stuck. I could not move. I am lucky the pumps activated as I was low enough in the mag I could have drowned. 
There was a lot of yelling and screaming going on and the fire and flooding parties were trying to assess the situation as I made myself comfortable awaiting someone to help me out. 
Two of the HT’s came back and hollered at me through the machinery and girders. They told me to hang tight, they’d get me out. 
There was a lot more noise and I distinctly heard the Chief reaming Craig a new orifice then things got quiet. 
I sat for a few minutes and I heard the launcher access door slam and get dogged. 
Those no good dirty rotten (this section written over due to an exorbitant amount of Sailorese) left me down there. I started yelling as loud as I could when I heard the door open again (thank god the ventilation had kicked off when the sprinklers kicked on) and I yelled some more.

All of a sudden I hear “HEY! YOU GUYS GET BACK HERE! You left (my last name) stuck down there!”

 

They had to cut my boot off me from under the magazine ready service ring. Really a tight space but they got me free pretty quick. There was quite a bit of apologizing going on. But not by Craig, that no good dirty rotten (you get the point)
 

That day sucked a lot! 

What sucked even more was we had to get  underway again and go back to Newport News to off load any water damaged missiles and take on new ones. Me and my guys had to do a complete freshwater hand wash of the interior of the entire missile magazine due to all the salt water. 
Notice I said “My guys”? For a while I was the only E-3 launcher captain in the U.S. Navy until Craig’s replacement arrived.