A Bad Day At The Office

Next time you think you have had a bad day at work,
think about this guy...Tom is a commercial saturation
diver for Global Divers 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). Anyway...anytime you think you have
had a bad day at the office, remember this guy.

April 1998

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 piece of shit 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 damn 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 ass
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. 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 ass crack was not as fortunate. When I
scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually
grinding the jellyfish into 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 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, but I couldn't poop for two days because my
butthole was swollen shut. 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 you were to shove a jellyfish up your
ass. 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