job from hell #142

2^nd Worse Day Working

the  scar starts at the knuckle and runs to the end of my thumb. it still gets cold and hurts but still works. you can still barely see it. 

       Well my second worse day working came not to long after quitting Scumburger and after I had worked for another company and found myself unemployed and  had to sign up for unemployment one of the first times since I was out of high school. I went to the unemployment office by some strange coincidence and they actually had a job for me close by where I was living, it didn’t pay much to start but heck if it paid the bills that were piling up then what the heck.

      Sex drugs and rock and roll was grabbing me by seat of the pants and dragging me all over town at night to a different party every night as Wooster, Ohio was quite the party mecca at the time. By the time you figured in rent and food your party budget always left something to be desired but we had a plan. That my roommate at the time and I had. He was willing to forego the rent if we could buy this ounce of angel dust from his friend and we could sell it and make about 5000 off of it, we had it all figured out we were going to become Wooster’s next drug barons, because after we sold that ounce, we were going to buy us a pound of herb, and then we would be in business big time, with people knocking at our door at all hours of the night, looking to score, including the police. Luckily I think that soon after we bought the angel dust, the word came out it was horse tranquilizer and probably not the best thing in the world to be doing to your being. I was stuck with the ounce, so I decided to smoke it by myself if I had to. Our dreams went bust and we all sat around , and when I say all I mean not only my roommate, but also a couple other druggies that had as great a future as us and less money but were fun to have around when you were high.

     Well I do intend to get back to my story regarding the unemployment office, and in the 50 years I have been alive and needed a job from the unemployment office, well they came through and hired me in the middle of my failure as a future drug lord, well they didn’t hire me instead they sent me to a stair company at Madison, Ohio. I go into work and I am on time for my first day which is always a good thing and I never even filed out a paper instead they took me back to the middle of the plant and put me to work on a chop off saw.

     I would insert a stile from a stair rail, these are the upright posts in a staircase, and I was to cut them to length. I would place them on the saw table and back them up against a stop and pull the saw head down and chop off the excess, seemed simple enough. Except it had a little extra involved , as it would leave a slither of wood that was chopped off and was waste but you still had to remove it. Well here is where the fun began as I was instructed to do this while the saw was running and my fingers were just way to close for comfort to the running saw blade, none the less I had  to take my thumb and forefinger and reach in and pull the sliver out. The supervisor showed me with his stubby fingers and doll like hands, and I had to do the same thing with my huge paws, and succeeded at first for about a half hour until I was reaching in there when I felt a little more confident about what I was doing and ended up to close to the blade and it nicked me. Well it seemed like a nick till I looked at it again and I swore I saw bone , and then lots of blood, and then the pain.

     I had gashed it deep and I shut the saw down even though I wasn’t supposed to and went looking for the foreman and he looked at it and shit a little pile right there, but insisted that I go get stitches, after he asked if I would be able to drive. I figured yeah for about five minutes and then I was going to pass out from blood loss, so I asked if he had gauze or anything to help curb the blood flow assuming he would have a first aid kit at least. I had been using my jeans and t-shirt but they were getting soaked also. He offered up a dirty rag which at least it was dry and as fast as I was bleeding I doubted if infection would be much of a problem anyhow. Seeing I wasn’t going to get a ride from him, he made sure I knew to tell them I had been there at work only 34 minutes and officially I wasn’t an employee.

      I kinda figured my career as a stile cutter was cut short in its infancy hardly before I had a chance to really show them how well I could cut after all I did a great job on my thumb. Anyhow I headed to the emergency room and soon I had 14 stitches in an area about one and half inches. It sliced me deep and bounced off the bone nearly taking the end of my left thumb off at the first joint from the end. As the time went on and the effects of the Novocain they administered had begun to wear off, it was beginning to hurt as I headed home from the hospital. I called the supervisor and said I would be off for a few days and he told me that he already had the job filled as he needed someone right away and that he figured I would be laid up a while . Agreeably I was going to be laid up, by their fault as it was their equipment that wasn’t properly set up and required me to stick my hand in there and put myself in danger. And so I asked if he had any intention of using me again and he said no. I asked if he was going to help me file papers for Workmen’s Compensation and he said I never officially worked there as I as there for only 34 minutes before hurting myself. I asked him then if his mom ever had any kids born that were not such pricks worried about covering there ass, after a minute or an hour or year if you’re working and get hurt it is still a work related injury. He said ‘sue me’ and hung up the phone. I wopuld own the place today but back then you still didn’t do that , you just take your lumps and move on.

     First thing I did upon returning home was find my stash of angel dust and become comfortably numb as a couple of fellow loser friends showed up and I started a 2 week binge of drinking and smoking and partying till my hand healed enough to go to another interview. The horse tranquilizer did a good job of frying me as I would wake up in the morning and get high and be high all day long and fall into bed at 3 in the morning to wake up at 7 and do the same thing all over again. I couldn’t work and needed to heal so I could find another job without questions about why my thumb looked so gnarly. As the 2 weeks sped by and I grew hungry and tired of hearing my roommate complaining about me not making my share of the rent and me reminding him that if I had not listened to him and drug filled fantasies and promises I would have had plenty of money to pay the rent but instead we were stuck with the horse tranquilizer no one wanted, and I was not about to lose money on , so i smoked it along with my friends, eventually I made it back to work and gainful employment. And in ways I was glad to have the angel dust to get high on and take my mind off my thumb.

    Have to admit I would have been much smarter by  now had I never touched the stuff, as at times I could almost swear i could hear the brain cells sizzling in my head. Whether it was the angel dust or the booze I was never certain what caused them to go. I just knew there had to be a reason why I was always coming up short, in life and that drugs and alcohol might have had something to do with it, surely it couldn’t have been the sex. Although I filled out the Workmen’s Compensation papers and turned them in any way I still ended up paying for the bill on my hand and received nothing from the company.