I thought it would be interesting to write a post sharing some of my “work injury” and “accident” stories that have happened to me over the course of my working history. This post isn’t meant to talk about real serious injuries where people were actually wounded and had to go on disability or file injury claims, but more like bloopers, mishaps that may have resulted more in wounded pride and a few bumps and bruises rather than something serious.
I have mentioned numerous times on my personal blog and this blog that I am literally a real life Ben Stiller character, that I constantly am caught in embarrassing situations, or am so clumsy that I get injured or make a fool out of myself. Fortunately, in all my mishaps, spills and accidents, I have never had to file a Personal Injury Claim, despite my clumsiness and penchant for bloopers.
My first goes to about eight years ago when I used to install routers and switches for a Telephone Company, I used to run Cat-5 cable under floor tiles in server rooms. For those not in the know, these are giant server farms where the floors are all detachable 2×2 squares that you can pull up and run cables and such right under the floor boards. Each 2×2 square is fairly heavy at about 15 pounds or so, and can be pretty sharp on the corners. You use these suction cup like devices to stick to them, and lift them off the floor. I sometimes found like blankets and peoples belongings stuffed in the floors of the server room, but that doesn’t count as my mishap. My mishap was when I was trying to put one of the floor board back, I was sliding into place and pinched the bottom of my hand. This caused a blood blister, my first and last one I ever actually suffered. It is like a normal blister except filled with blood and it turns purple and lasts for weeks if you suffer one. Since then I have learned to be much more careful when removing and replacing floor tiles in a server room.
While working for my current company but in a different department, I used to rack SUN servers in server room. These heavy servers were about 50 pounds each and there were only two of us racking them at any one time. While racking and lifting one of the servers, my dockers split right down the middle in the crotch front to back. Fortunately I was wearing boxers at the time, but my coworker could hear the loud “CRACK” of my pants splitting, and I managed to work the rest of the day keeping my legs very close together.
In another server room incident racking servers, one of the side rails (which can be sharp) snagged on my Polo shirt tearing a 4″ long diagonal hole in the back of my shirt. This was most embarrasing, and I had my coworker tape my shirt together to get me through at least until my lunch break when I was able to drive home and replace my shirt before coming back to work.
I still work with the same coworker, and we joke about these things six years later still.
I have more stories, like getting scratched by rusty garbage metal bins and wondering if my Tetanus shots have been up to date, as well as accidentally getting myself locked in a staircase at my company building, where once you are in the stairwell, you have to set an emergency alarm to exit. I jumped up and down for like 15 minutes waving at the security camera before somebody noticed and came down to free me. (I worked in a very secure facility at the time).
What funny or embarrassing work stories do you have? Share with me some of your “not so funny at the time” but funny after the fact stories that happened at work.
-Dragon Blogger
