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 radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was 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 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 the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and 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 butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, 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.
Now, since I don”t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn”t stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. 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 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 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 butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn”t poop for two days because my butt 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 butt.
When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year ”round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!’, ‘And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they”ve got it!
But…. Now that I”ve reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I can”t help, but look around and notice the youth of today. You”ve got it so ***** easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned Utopia! I hate to say it but you kids today you don”t know how good you”ve got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn”t have The Internet-we needed to find out something, we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!
And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter-with a pen! –And then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the ***** mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted free music, you had to go to the damned record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ”d usually talk over the beginning and f***ed it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn”t just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of “Hustler” at the 7-11! It was either that or jackoff to the lingerie section of the JC Penney catalog! Those were your options!
We didn”t have fancy shit like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal! And we didn”t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was. It could be your boss, your mom, your drug dealer, your ex-girlfriend, that ugly chick from math class, that hot chick from math class, you just didn”t know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
And we didn”t have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens; it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as Stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!
And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning… D”ya hear what the ***** I”m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!
That”s exactly what I”m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You”re spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn”t last five minutes back in 1980!
You may not know that many non-living things have a gender. For example:
1.) Ziploc Bags — They are Male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.
2.) Copiers — They are Female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again. It”s an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can wreak havoc if the wrong buttons are pushed.
3.) Tire — Male, because it goes bald and it”s often over-inflated.
4.) Hot Air Balloon — Male, because, to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it and, of course, there”s the hot air component.
5.) Sponges — Female, because they”re soft, squeezable and retain water.
6.) Web Page — Female, because it”s always getting hit on.
7.) Subway — Male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.
8.) Hourglass — Female, because over time, the weight can shift to the bottom.
9.) Hammer — Male, because it hasn”t changed much over the last 5,000 years, but it”s handy to have around.
10.) Remote Control — Female. Ha! You thought it”d be Male. But consider this — it gives a man pleasure, he”d be lost without it, and while he doesn”t always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying.
An old farmer was hauling a load of manure when he was stopped by a state trooper. “You were speeding,” the cop said. “I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”
“Yep,” the farmer said as he watched the trooper shoo away several flies.
“These flies sure are terrible,” the trooper complained.
“Yep,” the farmer said. “Them are circle flies.”
“What’s a circle fly?”
“Them flies that circle a horse’s tail,” answered the farmer. “Them are circle flies.”
“You wouldn’t be calling me a horse’s ass, would you?” the trooper angrily asked.
“Nope, I didn’t” the farmer replied. “But you just can’t fool them flies.