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the "I had a bad day at work.... " thread


mcsluggo

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I used to work for VDOT, waaaaay back in the 1980s-----   i worked for the Merrifield division of the Virginia Dept of Transportation.   I was on the road crew --- cutting trees after after storm, shoveling gravel and/or asphalt to rebuild road shoulders, filling potholes, digging ditches--- etc etc etc.   Included in the etc department was my favorite responsibility,  listening to southern rock, smoking funny smelling cigarettes and painting snow plows "highway department Yellow"  (the crayola designation) while i was educated about the virtues of the Monte Carlo SS and its 5.7 L (350 CID) LM1 Goodwrench V8.    The worst duty, by far --- holding those stupid "Stop/Slow" paddles--- a slow agonizing death.   Somewhere in-between the two extremes was road-kill duty.  

 

Roadkill collection is potentially as unpleasant as it sounds.   Fortunately, however, the duty is combined with the bureaucratic efficiency of the VDOT administration staff.  This usually meant that there was usually a 1 to 2 month lag between when a complaint of a rotting animal carcase was logged with Vdot, and when a little yellow slip of paper that said "Raccoon, 1400 Colombia Pike" arrived at my "desk".   (My desk was glove compartment of a big yellow truck that was used for animal collection patrol, driven by someone (other than me) with a class B equipment operators license that allowed them to drive dumptrucks).  Usually i would arrive at the scene of the animal homicide a month after the crime had taken place to find an occasional dry bone and tuft of fur as the only remaining forensic evidence.  I would dutifully toss the crime scene evidence into the truck and go along my merry way.   

 

Unfortunately, however, occasionally this normal standard waiting period would be eliminated.   In the late 80s there was Pizza Hut on Rt 50, in, or somewhere near, Loehmann's plaza.   An opossum chose to stage his death scene 5 feet from the front of that restaurant.   The Pizza Hut staff and or management placed a request for animal disposal with VDOT.  And another.  and Another.  and... well I think they called every couple of hours for days.....  and miraculously, it worked, and the yellow-slip-lag was cut from the standard 30 to 60 days, to about 5 days ----- or whatever the time period it takes for a dead opossum to reach absolute maximum death-bloat.  

 

I have no idea how large this fella was when he was still frolicking through dumpsters, but by the time i met him he was ginormously bloated.   he was so bloated that his torso basically swallowed up his arms and head, and you could barely even see his tiny little human-like opossum finger tips sticking out of a tiny dimple in the side of the giant bloated putrid balloon sack of fetid pulsating fluid.  No arms.  at all.   He was scrumptious.   Our road-kill crew consisted of one career employee/equipment operator B class (for simplicity purposes, we will call him Cletus), and three summer hire college pukes:  1) pinko hippie dirt munching commie bastage (no, not me-- we can call him Trotsky); 2) second year VMI cadet (we will call him Jarhead); and 3) me (we will call him Handsome Devil, of course).  

 

When the 4 of us arrived at Pizza Hut, we had no idea what was waiting for us.  The day had started with a handful of our standard desiccated 2 month old bone/toupee pick-ups.   we actually got along pretty well as a crew, and were joking and having fun....  until we saw IT.    The instant dread descended like a palpable cloud.  The sun dimmed, and birds stopped chirping.  We were all silent and somber for a while, until crew leader Cletus began to recognize the need for leadership. a serious look on his face, he somberly assessed the situation and gravely nodded at me and said "Git 'er done, Handsome Devil" 

 

to which I replied..... "the **** you say."

 

afterwhich followed a long stunted Cletus soliloquy, alternating between cajoling, attempts at shaming my honor, shouting, ordering, negotiating, prodding... me to get out of the truck and approach the monster.    

 

to which I periodically replied..... "the **** you say."

 

all through Cletus' cajoling, Jarhead and Trotsky sat between the two of us, on the giant dumptruck couch seat, gazing slack jawed at the monstrosity across the parking lot.   I sat against the window, arms crossed, looking out the passenger window..... sullenly refusing to aknowledge its very existence.

 

and then a strange mini-miracle occurred.  While Trotsky had chosen this situation to be the one moment in his life that he kept his damned mouth shut, and his opinion to himself....  Jarhead, who was normally fairly quiet and reserved, chose that moment to let bubble-up the pride and bravery and honor and attention to duty that he was absorbing from the core of his VMI training.  He choose that moment to get a steely flint to his gaze, to straighten his spine, and to growl in his best possible 19-year-old attempt at John Wayne:

 

"oh shut-up you ****ing ******* and give me the ****ing pitchfork...."

 

Trotsky stayed silent.  Cletus stayed silent.   I stayed silent... as Jarhood grabed a pitchfork and  marched purposefully across the parking lot.  Only looking over his shoulder once, and barely registering the misgivings in the corners of his eyes.   

 

In one continuing motion he strode up to the behemoth.... smoothly slid the pitchfork under the waiting bundle of joy....  popped the containment bubble.... and puked all over the rotting corpse as a a gigantic wave of high pressure fluid and gasses erupted from ground zero through his hapless body and into the surrounding neighborhoods.  

 

really, and for true.. it was one fluid motion.  walk/slide pitchfork/puke/cataclysmic explosion

 

 

 

 

 

 

i remember it vauguely like this:

 

firstsoviethbomb1_4604730_GIFSoup.com.gi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and jarhead like this

 

terminator2nuke.gif

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the far end of the parking lot (where i was) , like this

 

tumblr_mc795hD1Pd1r2ntmlo1_500.gif

 

 

but i always knew that this might be a little bit of an exaggeration in my memory.  but i could never tell for sure.

 

 

I have no idea what happened over the next several minutes?  hours?   but gradually a ringing in my ears faded and i was sitting on the ground next to trotsky and cletus.....    Jarhead was standing there in front of us......  slimed like a ghostbuster, with the added spice of some of his own vomit dripping off his chin.....mouth agape with blank expressionless eyes.  his hands were still formed into circles as if he were holding a pitchfork... but the pitch fork was across the parking lot, twitching.... under IT.

 

 

I have already dragged this story out long enough.  But somehow, jarhead dug deep into his inner core and approached the beast again with a steely bravery that would serve him, and our country well, when he eventually graduated from VMI at the onset of the Gulf Wars.   while i broke the law and backed the dumptruck to the edge of the crime scene (without an equipment operators B license), and helped cover and wrap the beast with a tarp (I honestly don't remember how we got it on the truck.  its a blank space in my mind, but we did it).    Cletus, showing the sparks of true leadership that you simply cannot learn at Wharton, went into pizza hut and ordered 3 pitchers of beer.  we all knew he had it in him.   I am sure that this leadership development experience helped him in his later career.   Trotsky had his tentative leanings towards militant veganism violently and irreversibly fused into the core of his dna on that day.  I never saw any of them again, after that summer.

 

 

 

 

anyway.   tell YOUR stories of a bad day at work.  Its cathartic.   two serendipitous events brought ^^^THIS^^^ shielded memory out from deep in the recesses of my troubled mind today:   First, my kids have reported that there is a dead... and growing... raccoon down the street at the corner that is used as their school bus-stop.  We are on day five of continuously reporting it to VDOT.  our fingers remain crossed.    Second, through the wonders of the interwebz, i chanced upon actual video footage of that fateful day in history.  

 

 

i never knew this footage existed........ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

anigif_enhanced-buzz-7468-1385565319-12%

 
 
its not as bad as i remembered it.
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One day I got a pretty nasty paper cut. And the coffee machine was broken.

 

Actually, as a student I drove forklift trucks for a couple of companies. With a fruit and veg company I was driving along a city back street when a reversing van forced me to stop suddenly. My pallet of ripe tomatoes was not properly secured and filled the street. The La Tomatina festival in Spain was created to honor the event.

 

LA-Tomatina-Experience-Spain-Inspiration

 

At another gig moving bottled hard cider in my fork-lift truck the pallet failed (note that none of these incidents were my fault - breaking a pallet after the fact with just your feet and hands is hard work). Glass bottles filled with alcohol defy the laws of gravity and hang in the air for minutes before crashing to the ground. Then came the deafening noise followed by a tsunami of glass shards and hard cider filling the warehouse and sweeping away anything in its path.

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I've had a lot of somber days, working with animals most of my career. Too many to count. The two that are seared in to my memory will forever get my blood boiling. One of them was my fault. Always tell myself I'm a stupid asshole whenever I think about it. I fell asleep, albeit at 3am, trying to bring a pup back to life in my bedroom. I woke up at 6am and she was dead. Gina the yorkie. I'm a mother****er. Would've been a great dog.

The other instance was when I worked at the humane society back in the early 2000s. We were a high-kill shelter because we'd always be out of room. So many good dogs and cats put down. Makes me want to vomit thinking about it. I often had to be the one holding the animals in place, and they'd die in my arms. I finally broke from it, I befriended a dog as well as I ever had there. She was a 7 year old golden lab, and I taught her how to play fetch. She was so new to it, but loved it like crazy. Took her out a few times every day. Well, she was on the kill list one day, and I pleaded for them not to go through with it. My young ass had to give in an hold her while they put her down; tears running down my face. She passed on, and I went in the other room, sat on the floor and balled. I lasted a few more days at the shelter in a state of shock, then just said I can't do this anymore and quit.

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Said numerous times before that I did crime scene cleanup for a time.

There was a particularly memorable call I got.

Shotgun suicide

Unattended for 2 days

Summer

Get the picture? No, you dont

Guy must have done himself with a bazooka. We're generally not given a whole bunch of details about each call (and many times, we are better for it), so we didn't know how bad it was, but judging from all the blood and brain matter, his head must have damn near exploded. The smell will stay with you the rest of your life

We were there for what felt like an eternity, ripping up carpet, taking out sections of the wall, etc, and when its that hot, you start to get moist inside your suit. Just an incredibly bad feeling all around

Definitely the worst workday ever

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Boss sodimized me with the business end of a katana. I kept screaming for the handle. Eventually he stopped, looked at me, and said "And what would I hold on to?" before going back to town on my starfish.

 

Yep...that's enough for me to see my way out.

 

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I can't compete with Sluggo or Sin's stories.....so I'll toss out an 

 

F2OHX1QH1LWPJLY.LARGE.gif

 

 

The worst I've had to do on a job was when I was 16 and started working at a grocery store back home.  Run down, old and a lot of older people and a lot of disgusting people shopped there.  Being the new guy, you got stuck on bathroom cleaning duty.  

 

There was an entire pecking order/hierarchy in place on what jobs were done by whom, who got **** hours, more hours, OT, etc.  New guy always got stuck mopping the entire store by themselves, cleaning the bathrooms at night (usually night hours on Fri/Sat), cleaning up spills, etc.

 

The woman's bathroom there was the most disgusting bathroom these eyes have ever seen in my 40 years of existence.  It was like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get when you stepped inside (speaking to the level of disgusting).  

 

One day I'm walking up towards the bathroom with my mop bucket and cleaning supplies.  I see this little old lady walking into the bathroom.  So, I'm waiting and waiting for her to come out.  I can honestly say, I never saw her leave or come out of the bathroom.  Maybe I was reading a magazine while waiting, or talking to someone in the front office, etc.  But I swear I was up front and she never walked by the front.  

 

So I go knock on the door.  No answer.  Walk in and there isn't anyone in there.  Look around, the standard piss on the floor in stall one, tampons shoved down in the toilet, clogging it up in stall two.  No bloody maxi-pads on the stall wall or floor this time, I'm thinking........man, this is one of the better days cleaning this **** hole.

 

Then I opened the door to the third stall which was on the side of the wall.  Before my eyes there was **** everywhere.  Liquid **** explosion all over the walls, toilet, behind the toilet.  I swear to this day, that little ole lady never did come out, just exploded into a big ole pile of ****.

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It was the most disgusting thing I've ever had to do man. You still win with cleaning up brains bruh, no doubt.

Yeah, but anytime someone mentions that when I tell them, I always reply with the fact that I wore a suit, boots, gloves, and many a time, masks... Armed with enough cleaning chemicals to destroy a small village. And the pay was ridiculous. So you felt protected in a way, even though you could still see and smell it

I simply cannot bear the thought of having to plop my ass down (paper or not) in a space that looks like someone got killed by Jason Voorhees. Skin, clothes exposed *shivers*. I do admit my weirdness, being that you could probably kill me with oeanut butter, and I hate spiders, yet cleaned up after dead people (until I quit)

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Yeah, but anytime someone mentions that when I tell them, I always reply with the fact that I wore a suit, boots, gloves, and many a time, masks... Armed with enough cleaning chemicals to destroy a small village. And the pay was ridiculous. So you felt protected in a way, even though you could still see and smell it

I simply cannot bear the thought of having to plop my ass down (paper or not) in a space that looks like someone got killed by Jason Voorhees. Skin, clothes exposed *shivers*. I do admit my weirdness, being that you could probably kill me with oeanut butter, and I hate spiders, yet cleaned up after dead people (until I quit)

 

Yeah, a bio-suit would have helped for those bathrooms lol.  I just went in there with as much bleach as I could carry, talking like 1-2 gallons and rubber gloves and prayed to the bathroom Gods nothing got on me.

 

Luckily, nothing ever did.

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