Next time you think you have had a bad day at work, keep this email and
refer back to it: Tom is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out
of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
Below is an email he sent to his sister. She sent it to Laughline and won
the contest (he wasn't thrilled with her for that one). Anyway...anytime you
think you have had a bad day at the office, remember this guy. 

********April 1998********

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad
day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I
thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so
bad after all. 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 communicator. 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 dry chamber 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 them more tolerable.

Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Love you,
Tom

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