DUDE! Hook me up!
Someone works in an oil refinery, Yes?
When 15,000 gallons of jet fuel ignite, flipping the top of the tank like a giant pancake.
And the reason? Static electricity.
Right. I saw the smoke from Media, PA. It’s twenty miles.
Nothing quite like calling a friend, and saying “hey- you want to see where I work? Turn on the TV and flip channels until you see FIRE!!!”
The response? “Oh, SHIT!!!”
A few months later a pipe burst, and spilled 700 degree crude into the atmosphere. Instant fire.
The zone of “you can survive outdoors for a full hour with no permanent damage when all of the HF acid leaks out” goes out 21 miles.
…When a three a.m. phone caller invites you to simply, “quit your job.”
Good ol’ hydrofluoric. [cue Mentos] “The Bone Fuser.” [/Mentos]
When pricking your finger with the substance you are working on means you lose the arm, as fast as someone can cut it off you.
When they give you a butcher knife to cut off any parts that get bitten by the snake.
When your job is unsafe . . . Yet you like it, and go back for more every day!
Tripler
Easy kids, there’s enough plastique for everyone!
Your name is Fred and your boss is Henry Cabot Henhaus III.
When there’s a real good reason for the 3-inch-thick high strength steel tube separating you from the outside world… or rather, a couple hundred good reasons per square inch.
This FNG training speech:
"How to use the RADIAC to determine the magnitude of the nuclear missile yield in the next compartment - throw it at the bulkhead. If it (a) bounces off, no yield; (b) sticks, low-level yield [high explosives, non-nuclear]; © passes through, high-level yield [nuclear fission or fusion].
[sub]<Gunsliger, you a submariner, too? I thought I recognized a kindred spirit!>[/sub]
Wonko, no it looks like Zenster works/knows someone who works in a semiconductor foundry. As I said earlier, Fabs work with very nasty chemicals, where 1 part per several million will cause an evacuation.
…you are sometimes required to stand 30 feet above ground in an insulated bucket and use a 10-foot fiberglass pole.
…you were once hoisted 150 feet in the air by a crane so you could change a light bulb.
…your workmates refer to a 110-volt shock as “a little stinger”.
…you know how to perform CPR and apply a tourniquet.
…you attend yearly training classes on how to escape a flooding sewage tank.
…you know more than five stories about people in your department who have died or been horribly injured on the job in the last ten years.
…driving home is the safest thing you’ll do today.
Oil refineries? Deep sea divers?
feh. Try working the Weekend Night Shift in one of the most dangerous Gas Stations in Dublin.
Having 2 seperate panic buttons for varying degrees of emergency.
Knowing your only protection from blood filled syringes and knives is your reflexes and a polyester shirt.
You have the direct number to the local Garda SRU (special response unit) on speed dial.
Your boss allows you to keep a butchers knife under the counter.
When you come back from a long weekend out of theater and ask if you missed any assasinations or bombings.
Sounds like you work with Coral snakes Asmodean. Sea snakes, maybe? Why don’t you tell us.
And the winner is Narile!
Yes, I’ve worked in the semiconductor industry for over twenty years.
As we have already established that you are indeed the genuine Llama of Death, come to take me away, I feel obliged to point out that you positively slay me.
When one of your ‘trainees’ points his rifle at your chest and says “I loaded it but it won’t shoot” while jerking the trigger.
When you learn the herd way not to stand between a COBOL programmer and a box of doughnuts…
…when there is a line every morning, two blocks long of people waiting to take your job when you die.
(During the construction of the Bay Bridge in the '30s)
Nope, I just read too much Clancy :). I do have a friend that’s going into fast-attack boats, though.
More:
When you use C-4 by the pound, just to make sure it works.
When you are authorized to call an Arc Light (3 fully loaded B-52s), and you’re just a buck sergeant (E-5).
If you have ever intentionally pulled the pin on a hand grenade and dropped on the ground while running.
If you did the above, but held it for 3 seconds before dropping it.
The indoctrination tour includes driving past a large tank separate from the rest of the plant, and your new co-worker tells you, “They put that out here because the chemical is inherently explosive without inhibitors. Of course, it’d take out the entire plant and half the city if it ever went up, so it doesn’t really matter.”
The firefighters come, ask about the problem, and suggest that maybe you should just handle it yourself. (The second story he told me on the tour.)
…you have to tell people you’re in Redmond, WA even though you’re about as far from there as you can be (outside of Boston).
(I used to do tech support for Microsoft.)