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 a radio station 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, I must first bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a wet suit.
This time of year the water is quite cool. To keep warm, we use a diesel-powered industrial water heater. It sucks water from the sea, heats it, and pumps it down to the diver through a hose taped to the air hose.
When I get to the bottom, I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my suit with warm water. It's fantastic, like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until my butt started to itch. So, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within seconds, I felt a burning sensation. I pulled the hose out, 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. Since I don't have hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick there. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate.
When I scratched, I was actually grinding the jellyfish and its poisonous, stinging tentacles into the crack of my bottom.
I immediately informed the dive supervisor. His instructions were unclear because 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 reaching the surface. When I arrived, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.
As I climbed out, the medic, with tears of laughter, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt. The cream helped, but I couldn't poop for two days because my bottom 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 bottom.
Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."
Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?
May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day.