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
