ASLEEP ON THE JOB AGAIN

I once heard about a man who was resting on his forklift at work and unintentionally fell asleep. As he was waking up, he realized someone was standing beside him. It was his supervisor. So before he opened his eyes, he took a deep breath, and said, Amen.

That was told to me as a true story, but I don’t know if it is or just a joke. I thought it was funny. It made me laugh. It does sound like something that could have really happened because I’ve fallen asleep on the job a few times. All during lunch except the time I’m telling you about now.

One of my first full-time jobs was making vinyl siding. We worked three 12-hour shifts, and one 6-hour shift each week. There were 4 shifts. Days and nights at the first part of the week, and days and nights at the second part of the week. I was on the 4th shift which was nights, from Wednesday night through Saturday night. I would get off work on Sunday and be off until Wednesday night.

Those were weird hours, and they seemed so long. I couldn’t get much sleep in the daytime, mainly because I was used to sleeping at night, but a few of my friends and family were not as considerate as they could have been. One of my young cousins actually set the woods on fire behind my house one day while I was trying to sleep.

Being tired and sleepy at work is bad enough for eight hours, but it’s worse for a 12-hour shift, and it didn’t help that the job was boring.

I was packing vinyl siding into boxes as it came off a conveyor belt just after going through the mold to form it into its unique shape. When it came out at the end of the machine, it traveled through another mold just to keep it straight and in the same shape while it quickly cooled down. It was fenced-in with rollers and presses to aid in this process and to keep anyone from getting hurt. By the time it reached the end of the track and dropped onto the rollers, it was pretty much cooled off and in the shape it would be in for the next twenty-plus years.

Sometimes a piece of trash or something would get in the mix somewhere along the way and it would cause a hole to appear in the piece of siding. As it was pushed and pulled along the track it would usually become solid again when the piece of trash moved on, but sometimes it wouldn’t. When the hole remained for more than a few seconds we would have to quickly cut the piece of siding off behind the hole with a hacksaw and quickly put it back into the precisely formed track.

It was bound to happen, and one night it did. A huge hole formed in the piece of vinyl, and I knew it wasn’t about to work itself out. I grabbed the hacksaw and cut as fast as I could, but I wasn’t fast enough to get the siding back into the form in time. I had to try it again. I grabbed the quick-moving siding with my left hand and the saw with my right hand and began to cut it again. After only two strokes, I stopped. I knew what I had done. The second stroke had cut my thumb almost completely off.

I grabbed my bloody hand and ran to the restroom. As I washed my thumb in the sink, I could see the extent of the damage. The saw had hacked through my thumb, removing a portion as wide as the teeth on the blade. There was only a small section of the nail and flesh left intact. I was in a lot of pain.

I went to the emergency room and got it patched up. Then I spent the next week or so pushing a broom at work for twelve hours a night. That was worse than the accident itself. I was supposed to be on light duty for two weeks but after one, I couldn’t do it anymore. I bugged them until I convinced them to let me get back on the line.

I still wasn’t sleeping enough, so I started using caffeine pills to keep me awake at work. They made me sick so I had to stop taking them. Then one night, as I was packing the siding into boxes, I woke up about twenty feet away from my line. I was holding one piece of siding in my hands looking around. The plant manager and my supervisor were standing together by the break room looking at me and laughing their heads off. So I calmly walked back to my line and got caught up as quickly as I could.

Then, one morning as I was driving home, I fell asleep and slammed the side of my car into a bridge on the highway. It woke me up, and I jerked the steering wheel in the opposite direction and went into the opposite lane. Thank God there was no oncoming traffic there or I might not be here to tell the story.

After that, I had to quit and find a daytime job. That’s how I ended up with the position where I fell Asleep On The Job that I previously wrote about. You can read that post and one about another time I cut the end of my index finger almost all the way off at the links below.

God has been so good to me. I’ve been through a lot in my life and he’s always gotten me through whatever bad happened and I know he’ll always be there to help me. You can trust him, too. Never forget that.

ASLEEP ON THE JOB
https://teddylynn.blogspot.com/2017/07/asleep-on-job.html

THE DUNE BUGGY, THE BICYCLE, AND THE DRILL
https://teddylynn.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-dune-buggy-bicycle-and-drill.html

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© 2023 Teddy Lynn – All Rights Reserved

My books are available in paperback and digital format on Amazon @
https://www.amazon.com/Teddy-Lynn/e/B01MZDB6L6

MORE CUTS AND SCARS

A while back, I wrote a post about several times I had accidentally cut myself. Well, in case you were wondering, those were not the only times I’ve been cut. I want to share a few more today and hopefully, you’ll be entertained for a few minutes as you delve a little deeper into my life lessons.

I had been working at my new job for just a few weeks packing vinyl siding in boxes as it came off a conveyor belt. Sometimes a piece of trash would get in the vinyl somewhere along the way and it would make a hole in the piece of siding. When that happened we would have to quickly saw the piece of siding off behind the hole with a hacksaw and feed it back into the track between the rollers.

One night, a huge hole formed so I grabbed the hacksaw and cut the piece of siding as fast as I could, but I wasn’t fast enough to get it back into the rollers in time. I had to try it again so I grabbed the quick-moving siding with my left hand and the saw with my right hand and started sawing again. After only two strokes, I stopped. To my shock, the second stroke had cut my thumb almost completely off.

I ran to the restroom and washed my thumb in the sink. I could see that the saw had cut a trench in my thumb as wide as the teeth on the blade. There was only a small section of the nail and flesh left, and I was in a lot of pain.

I went to the emergency room and got it patched up. Then I spent the next week at work pushing a broom for twelve hours. That was worse than the accident itself. I finally was able to start doing more after a week and soon I was back to regular work.

Several years later, I picked up a small, metal pipe at work to toss it in the scrap truck. As I tossed it, I simply pushed it off the tip of my middle finger to watch it flip into the trailer as I had several times before. I didn’t get to watch it flip that time because as it left my hand, it took a piece of my finger with it. There was a metal burr on the end of the pipe and it sliced right into my flesh. More pain and more bandages, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

I have had some pretty bad scrapes and cuts and cracks. A few of them have been on, or around my head, but not many directly on my face. There was that one time, though. My wife’s dad had a camper he was using as a storage shed. He had built a deck around two sides of it. We lived just down the road.

My oldest son and I were doing something there and I stepped up onto the deck which was only a few feet high. The sun was setting in the sky, and I was facing West so it was shining right in my eyes. Just as both feet hit the deck, I came to a quick stop. It was a hard stop, too. My face had hit the end of a TV antenna pole that was propped up on the deck at about a thirty-degree angle. It struck me at the top of my nose right between my eyes.

My vision became blurry for a minute or so. When I felt to see how bad it was, then I felt the blood and I felt the pain arrive. When I looked at my hand it was bloody. I told my son we needed to go before I passed out. We made it home and I cleaned it up and got to feeling better, but I still have the scar to remind me of that painful day.  

Let me give you one more for the road. I was picking a few things up off the floor at work. I don’t remember what it was but there were several of them. I think it might have been trash or screws or washers. I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter because what happened next is what I want to tell you about.

When I bent over to pick up that last, whatever, I would never have imagined what happened next could even be possible. As I raised back up, my head was abruptly stopped by the sharp corner of an electrical panel. I hit it hard, and it cut deep. I think it took three stitches to close the wound. I’m not sure about that either. The whole thing is a bit blurry. Anyway, I feel I was blessed in all of these situations because each one could have been worse. I truly believe that old saying, “It could always be worse.”

I feel fortunate to have experienced all I have in my life, and I’d like to think that I learned valuable lessons from each experience. If nothing else, hopefully, I at least learned not to do the same thing again.

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My Blogs
https://teddylynn.blogspot.com
https://teddylynn.wordpress.com

© 2017 Teddy Lynn – All Rights Reserved

My books are available in paperback and digital format on Amazon @
https://www.amazon.com/Teddy-Lynn/e/B01MZDB6L6