Commercial Diving
Commercial Diving
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 14:17:13 -0500
Brian is a commercial diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs
underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an email he sent to his
sister. Anytime you think you have had a bad day at the office, remember this
letter....
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother.
Last week I had a bad day at the office. 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 shit sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful
temp. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped
to the air hose. Now this sounds like a damn 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 I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my neck. 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 ass started to itch. So,
of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds
my ass 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. This is even worse than the
poison ivy you once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my back. I
don't have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my
back. My ass crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was
an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my ass.
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the comms. His instructions
were unclear due to the fact that he, along with 5 other divers were laughing
hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3
agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come
to the surface for my chamber dry decompression.
I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and gear
were tied to the bell. When I got on board, the medic, with tears of laughter
running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to shove it up my
ass when I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't
shit for two days because my asshole was swollen shut.
I later found out that this could easily have been prevented if the suction
hose was placed on the leeward side of the ship.
Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office, think of me. Think
about how much worse your day would be if you were to shove a jellyfish up
your ass. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But, if you do, I hope
this will make it more tolerable.
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