Sometimes Karma Is A Cruel Entity

We have all heard of karma and at times we have wished for karma to pay a visit to someone who has done us wrong. Well today karma visited someone who done me wrong but I think it was a bit of an over-kill.

Before anyone who doesn't know who Brad is asks who he is, he is a co-worker who played a practical joke on me a couple of weeks ago. He most certainly didn't deserve this.

This morning while at work the guy that locked me in the freezer had a visit by karma. Before I go any further I want people to know that I did not want anything bad to happen to Brad. As a matter of fact Brad actually seems to be an okay guy, and a decent guy. You might notice that the below picture has a warning. In order to view this picture all you need to do is place your mouse over top. This picture isn't an actual picture of his injury but it is very, very, very similar. I actually found this image by doing a Google search.

Okay, this is what happened. I'm not sure how familiar the readers of my blog are with forklifts but I will try my best to explain. The forklift we have at this grocery store is used only for moving large pallets worth of grocery good off the delivery truck and staging them so that it is easier to do inventory before we actually put the product on the sales floor. This type of forklift runs off of a big battery that weighs about 600 lbs. Normally the forklift's battery is plugged in at night in order to make sure it stays charged. Well the night shift for the last few days has neglected to plug the battery in. Thus the battery was dead and it needed to be swapped out for the backup battery so that the 70 pallets worth of product could be unloaded from the 2 delivery truck. Even though the battery is on rollers of sorts, it's still a two person job to replace this battery. Well Brad, poor, poor Brad decided that he was man enough to change it all by himself. The short answer is he wasn't man enough. Sorry Brad, but there's a reason why things come with instructions.

I knew he was going to try and change the battery himself, I was in the process of leaving the stockroom area to find another guy to help him. I didn't see the manager but I did see the meat guy (butcher). He agreed to help and while we were going back into the stockroom to help Brad change the battery, we heard a loud crash and a rather deep voice screaming like a girl. It didn't take long before we figured out what just happened and the meat guy and I ran into the stockroom to find Brads fingertip trapped underneath this 600 lb forklift battery. Now you might think that his finger would have only been crushed but it was pretty much skinned, almost exactly like the one in the picture. According to Brad, as the battery began to fall he tried to stop it from falling. Once he realized it was too heavy to catch he then tried to move his hand out from underneath before it smashed his hand. Right as the edge of the battery made contact with his class ring he tried jerking his hand out. Well, gravity is pretty fast and when an object has as much momentum as a 600 lb battery it can do some really strange things. The battery crushed his ring as his hand was moving away. Essentially the ring cut the skin around his finger and him jerking his hand away peeled it all down toward his fingertip. When the meat guy and I got there his finger tip was still trapped underneath. Can anyone say OOOUCH?

Long story short, company policy is to call an ambulance in the event a worker gets injured. I insisted that someone drive Brad to the emergency room because the injury was bad enough where I thought he needed immediate medical attention to make sure he doesn't lose his finger. I happened to be the elected driver. Brad had a car so we used his and I drove. I was up at the hospital for about 3 hours before his mom and dad finally told me to go ahead and leave. His mom gave me a ride home. This was around 1:00 pm  About an hour ago I got a call from brad and they had to do surgery on his finger. He has a pin in his fingertip and they think he will have permanent nerve damage.

The moral of this story is that sometimes it is best to not joke around at work because karma has a way about getting back at ya. I do think karma took retribution just a hair too far. Poor, poor, Brad. I hope your finger heals quickly. I think I will kinda miss having you around at work.