Embarrassing
story time again. These come around when I'm sitting staring at my
computer and it's way past noon and I've got nothing posted. I have
plenty of embarrassing stories to choose from for my writer's block
days. We all have our go-to thing...
Warning:
Not for the squeamish. Contains blood and guts and cringing.
I
worked at Wendy's the summer after I student taught. (There are
other Wendy's stories in my archives if you feel like
searching...yes, also of the embarrassing category.) I started as
“back-room closer” which meant I came in after the dinner rush
and started doing dishes. After we closed, I was the lucky girl to
empty and clean the frosty machine, the deep fat fryer, the giant vat
we made the chili in, and the french fry fryers, the grills, and
let's not forget all those individual tubs from the salad bar, which
was all the rage in, yes I'll say it, 1987. It was mindless, gross,
boring work, but the people were fun and we joked around a lot and
tried to make the best of it.
After
about a month, they started to let me run the registers and make
burgers, fill orders and do less menial stuff. They hired a new
back-room closer whom I got to train. One of the tasks I failed to
mention was the cutting and chopping and prepping of the burger
toppings should they run low at the end of the day. Onions and
tomatoes, mostly. We had neat gadgets for this. Sharp gadgets.
Dangerous in the wrong hands gadgets.
I
was showing the new girl how to slice tomatoes with the mandolin.
(google free images, this one is basic, ours was bigger and fancier and had more blades)
She was doing OK, but at one
point asked for help. I started to push down on the tomato, but it
was a bit stuck, so I pushed harder. I should not have.
Her
fingers were in the way. Then only her partial fingers were in the way.
I'd sliced a few pieces off of them, just like a tomato. There was a
lot of blood. We picked up the pieces, sorry about that pun but I
just couldn't resist, put them in a baggie, and I got to drive her to
the hospital. She was a bit green, I was quite freaked out, and I
will admit it took me a while to find the correct entrance, even
though I'd been there plenty of times before. (Most of my embarrassing
stories do involve some sort of injury, but usually of myself. I
don't make it a habit to slice and dice others.)
She
was going to be just fine. The pieces were so small they weren't
worth stitching back on, her fingers would just grow back. I drove
her and her quite impressive bandage home, and returned to the scene
of the crime. After all, they were now down one closer, and I had
experience. Just enough to be dangerous.
***
Have
you ever accidentally injured someone else? Yourself? Wanna share
something embarrassing? It would make me feel less stupid...
~Tina
20 comments:
I once suggested a night out sharing embarrassing stories. My friends didn't take me up on it - they said we'd get thrown out! Most of mine are connected with things coming off in my hand! Can you imagine what happens when a tap (faucet) comes apart?
http://suestrifles.wordpress.com
Ouch! Saw that coming. At least no permanent damage.
I tried to take my fingers off with a hedge trimmer once. That did require stitches.
It's not you, it's those dog gone mandolins! Just last month I sliced open my thumb. It hurt like crazy! Now I know why they have that little prong thingy to hold the item you're slicing.
Ouch! Glad it was fairly minor. I worked at Rax Roast Beef (similar to Arby's and they are now out of business) Anyway, I can't remember injuring anyone but I do remember those salad bar bins :)
Lucy from Lucy's Reality
I sliced my own fingers on a restaurant tomato slicer once. I didn't cut anything off, but I sliced deep. My skin is crawling just thinking about it.
I haven't, but my youngest son did slice a good piece of his brother's finger off just before Christmas dinner one year. While I rushed to emergency (same baggie trick as you did) the family rallied and drank more wine. By the time I returned, the turkey was dry, the family was not. It was a great Christmas.
dang....ugh.....i saw that coming as well and could not look away...geez...saw a mans arm get ripped off once in the tire factory...that was messed up...still gives me the shivers thinking about it...
I cut through the cartilage in my ear once with a pair of scissors while trimming my hair.
I had a friend who, yes, stuck a needle in her eye, but that's a story for another day.
I've been quite good at keeping all my digits on my hand, and other people. My son however regularly takes slices and chucks off his hand. He's just recovering from a deep gash in his palm where a friend of his scraped a pen across it, and yesterday came home with a deep cut from an axe... from a supervised family event... I have no idea how he did it, I don't want to!!
i know i am mr horror... fake stuff, yes... real stuff, i am feeling woozy. i got to some part of your story and jumped to the end...
Oh wow Tina.....if that happened in this day and age she'd have sued you and Wendy's. I'm glad it had a happy ending. Yes, I have hurt myself or someone else (my cousin) in an embarrassing way. Maybe I'll blog about it someday.
Why is it that 'Writers Block' brings on those 'I'd rather forget this than write about it' times? In your case, it did make for a bloody good story. LOL! The other thing that struck me....why do our experienced skills fail us when we are trying to demonstrate and teach others?
As a professional quilter and VERY experienced 'Sewist', I once demonstrated how to 'Stitch Through Your Finger Nail'...stupid sewing machine. Thankfully, my newly done acrylic nail broke the needle. My demo became 'Why Fake Nails are a Must for Quilters'.
Sue CollectInTexasGal~Today's Post~
Tombstone Tuesday...Who Was Inez?
When I was younger and ill my brother kept teasing me. So while I was in bed I had ebough and grabbed him, I must have been really mad because I kind of lung him but the real shocker was when I realized I'd grabbed his neck not his arm. He had to go to a doctor for neck pain. Ooops.
So sorry you had to experience that. Glad the girl's ok. That story really made me cringe.
Yikes! My brother and I were messing around with scissors once (smart huh?) and I cut his finger to the point he needed stitches. So bad!
Oh those mandolines are demons!
Hi Tina .. not quite like that .. but I did manage to graunch my thumb with a sharp knife trying to grate some parmesan (must have been hard!) - my father wasn't best pleased (I was 'waiting' for him to leave .. so trying to do an easy job!) .. he had to take me to hospital for some stitches ... the thumb doesn't like the cold to this day ... and cottage hospitals (small town ones) are no more ...
Not nice doing it to someone else though .. yugh!!! You do love hospitals though I can see that ..
Cheers Hilary
Nothing major on my part. Just occasional tripping, stumbling, or bumping into things and people.
Just have to try to act as cool as possible while others laugh.
LOL! I, too, have an embarrassing story about injuring someone. Unintentionally. He required stitches. To his head. I was forbidden by my mother to play in his kiddie pool any more that summer.
Thanksgiving morning. My then two-year-old grandson had spent the night before and would be with us until his parents picked him up on route to his other grandparents, where they'd be having dinner. He wanted to help stuff our bird so I pulled a chair up to the kitchen island and let him stand on it with my husband and I standing close, one on each side. My husband leaned away to flip on the overhead light and, in that second, my grandson stepped off the edge of the chair and came crashing down on his face on the edge of the island.
We sent him off to Thanksgiving dinner with split upper and lower lips and several loose teeth. He had Popsicles that year instead of turkey. I still feel guilty.
Oh, no ....
I didn't injure anyone, that I remember, but I constantly injure myself when cutting vegetables, or reaching inside the oven. Cuts or burns, full of them.
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