…said dumbass being yours truly. Friday I’m teaching the HSE session of our initial training for new employees. Slips, trips and falls account for about 30% of all accidents at work, sez I. I show the slides demonstrating how falls can occur, for at least the 20th time. I point out my favorite example, the guy walking while carrying objects that obstruct his view. Just asking for an accident, sez I. I mention situational awareness, how in 20 years I’ve managed to avoid serious injury in part by applying these principles.
Today, I’ve just returned from lunch. I stop at the tech’s office to pick up a printer to take back to the training room. As I go in, I notice the one rollaway cart in the area is piled high with cables. Fuck it, I say to myself, I’ll just carry the thing. I pick it up, head out the door…and immediately tumble over the knee-high wooden box sitting just outside, adjacent to the doorway. SMASH. The printer is instantly reduced to parts. I end up laying on my back, windless. I look at my right arm: hmmm, joins the wrist at a funny angle, doesn’t it? Oh shit.
Well, now it’s 11PM and my arm’s in a cast; the broken radius bone should be mostly healed in about seven weeks, sez the doc. Most of my job involves typing at the computer. I drive a manual-transmission car. Right now it hurts like a mofo. Shitpissfuckcuntybastardalmighty.
Off to bed, I guess. Sure hope that Vicodin helps a bit.
…or the art teacher I had in middle school using the paper cutter and talking to the class about how to always be careful using it and OOPS! There went his thumb.
The safety engineer at a major Austin employer I used to work for (and which will remain nameless) was the most clumsy MF I’ve ever seen. I think he was retained to find safety problems by injuring himself.
Heh, I had no idea this sort of thing was so widespread. Some years back, we had an instructor who lost 1 1/2 fingers while supposedly showing the ‘safe’ way to adjust a sensor on an operating pump, but I always assumed it was a 1/1,000,000 thing.
I’m still hurting a bit, but am now more or less fully functional. Any tips and tricks that might make it easier to carry out daily tasks like washing one’s hair, buttoning one’s trousers, and so on while one-handed, would be welcome. So far I’ve been able to do most things, but it takes a ridiculous amount of time to do them. A family member may be coming to Houston to assist for a few days, but after that I’m on me own.
My 9th grade physics teacher was doing something that required bending glass rods in bunson burners. After she bent her rod, she turned to the class and said “Now when you do this, be careful, right here at the bend the glass gets red hot” while simultaniously putting her finger right on the red hot glass in an attempt to point out exactly where the glass was hot. :smack:
That reminded me of 8th grade science where a kid was pushing a bent glass rod into a rubber stopper. He was pushing down from the bent part at the top.
SNAP!
GASH!
He tore his finger up. I still remember he was running it under water in the sink, looking REAL queasy, and this other kid came up and goes, “I can see the bone.” I think he almost passed out.
Funny story, El_Kabong. Sounds like someone’s getting the strange for a couple weeks. We got a lot of those “safety videos” when I worked in a hospital kitchen. I’d always think, “how can someone be so stupid” and then next thing you know, Rosemary has a broken hip from walking on the wet floor.
