This is a true, recent story.
Rob Jones is a Commercial saturation Diver for Global Divers in Western Australia. 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 in Perth, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.
G'day 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 realise 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 equipment sucks water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a hose, which is taped to the side of the suit. I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. 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 arse started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my arse started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was already done. In agony I realised what had happened. The machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.
Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my arse was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my arse. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all in fits of hysterical laughter.
I was then instructed to make three agonising in-water compression stops totalling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the Medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my arse as soon as I got into the chamber.
Yes the cream put the fire out, but I couldn't crap for two days because my arse 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 arsehole
