BioSentral

Rob 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 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana , who was sponsoring a
worst job experience contest. Needless to say, 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 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 h ose, which is taped to the air h ose. 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 c ommunicator. 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 ce 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
shit 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 ass. 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?