Bad Day at the Office

By: Author Unknown

Next time you think you have had a bad day at work, think
about this guy. Tom is a commercial saturation diver for a
diving company out of Louisiana and performs underwater
repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an email he
sent to his sister. She sent it to Laughline and won the
contest (he wasn't thrilled with her for that one).

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 wetsuit.

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 monster sucks the water out of
the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it
down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to
the air hose.

Now this sounds like a 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 I take the hose and stuff it
down the back of my neck. 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 bottom started to
itch. So, of course, I scratched it.

This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my bottom
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. This is even worse than the poison ivy you
once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my back. I
don't have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't
get stuck to my back. My bottom was not as fortunate.

When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually
grinding the jellyfish into my bottom. I informed the dive
supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His
instructions were unclear due to the fact that he along
with 5 other divers were laughing hysterically. Needless
to say I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water decompression
stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the
surface for my dry chamber decompression. I got to the
surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and
gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board the medic,
with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a
tube of cream and told me to shove it "up my butt" when I
get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out.

I later found out that this could easily have been
prevented if the suction hose was placed on the leeward
side of the ship.

Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office,
think of me. Think about how much worse your day would be
if this were to happen to you. I hope you have no bad days
at the office. But if you do, I hope this will make them
more tolerable.

Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Love you,
Tom