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.

I Unplugged For A Few Hours

I was in a really bad mood yesterday. It started right before I went to sleep the night before. I don't have any idea what triggered it because 2 days ago I was in a pretty good mood all day long. Yesterday I woke up all pissed off, not at anything in particular. I felt like I was on the edge of sanity and just one small step away from blowing up.

As some of you may know I started a part time job this week. I only worked 12 hours this week which is okay but I want to work at least 20 hours so I can more easily afford the expenses that come with having a car. Work is pretty easy but there's one thing that bothers me about the job. I think this is one of the things that bothered me so much yesterday. I want to give some quick background so you can see what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from.

I am slightly claustrophobic, always have been. The guy who hurt me held me captive in his van for a 23 hour period of time. The van was similar to a delivery van that you would see UPS or a bread truck using. The inside of it was roughly 7 feet high (just a little shorter than the ceiling in a typical home), about 7 feet wide, and 12 feet long. That's not an extraordinarily tight space but for someone who has a fear or even a slight fear of small spaces it was very unsettling. This isn't even taking into account all the stuff that happened to me in that small space or the fact that I was often blindfolded which made the space seem even smaller.

At the grocery store I work at there's a walk in freezer that just happens to be near the same size as the inside of the van. It bothers me a little to be in there but I know I am safe so it's not too big of a deal. Well, this freezer is designed so that they can be opened from the outside or the inside. All walk in freezer built after a certain year has a safety mechanism which keeps the seal around the door from freezing and trapping someone inside. The manager made me aware of this and has even temporarily placed a handheld radio (walkie-talkie) inside of it just in case someone get's trapped so they can call the manager or someone to help them get out. Being that I hate small spaces and the freezer similarities to the van, I always use something to prop open the door when I am in there. I need to see an open door; it's as simple as that. Yesterday while I was in the freezer someone (coworker) purposely moved the bucket that I was using to prop open the door, causing the door to slam shut. I didn't know at the time that this happened intentionally. No big deal, it will take a few minutes for the door to freeze shut. Long story made short, this employee who was just trying to be funny and had no harming intentions leaned against the door. This gave me the impression that the door had frozen shut. Still, no big deal; I grabbed the radio and called for the manager but of course the manager was out in the parking lot and the radio was on his desk.

After a few minutes the guy who shut the freezer door opened it and let me know that he was just playing a joke on me. I politely told him to never do that again. He was laughing and I then emphasized that I was being serious. He said that it was just a joke and I needed to learn how to take a joke. Now I realize he has no idea what the issue is with me and I do not hold that against him. Still I told him I was being serious about this and he dismissed me.

Later one of the cashiers asked me if I was okay. She said that I looked like I was upset. I told her what happened with the freezer and I also told her that tight spaces are a problem for me. I explained that I'm claustrophobic and that recently something really horrible happened to me in a closed in space. She didn't ask too many questions, but she offered to listen if I needed to talk. This well intentioned cashier at some point told the manager that the guy employee locked me in the freezer. This stirred up controversy that landed right in my lap. As far as I was concerned the freezer incident was over with, but the manager called everyone to the break room for a meeting.

The manager reiterated that this was a work place not a place to horseplay. Okay, good enough. The guy who shut the door on me got upset thinking that I told on him to the manager. I didn't tell on him, the cashier did. He looked at me and called me a snitch and a snob. I was visibly upset at this point and the manager told him again that this wasn't the place for horseplay. The guy co-worker asked what's the big deal about playing a joke on her. It was a harmless joke. I became pissed, I was furious. Why couldn't he have just let this go? I walked up to this co-worker and talked very calmly and quietly. I said, "Brad, I didn't tell on you. As far as I was concerned you locking me in the freezer was over with. Since you want to know what the big deal is I will explain it to you. I am scared of small spaces, maybe you heard of it, claustrophobia. Also since you want to know so badly what the BIG DEAL is, three month ago I was abducted and held captive in a van about the same size as that freezer. I was repeatedly raped and beaten inside that van. So yes BRAD, being locked in that freezer that reminded me so much of that van was such a funny joke. FORGIVE ME FOR NOT LAUGHING."

I felt immediately ashamed after I stopped talking. The fact that everyone else who was there was silent because they didn't know what to say, didn't help. I sort of felt empowered, vindicated, and ashamed all at the same time. I walked out of the meeting and into the employee restroom. It didn't take long before someone came to check on me.

Later after I got home I had a dispute with someone on a support forum. I will say it wasn't with someone on After Silence, it was a different forum. This dispute wasn't a big deal, but an administrator of that forum said to me, "if you don't like it here you can go somewhere else". That hit me the wrong way because I wasn't aware that the dispute I had was a real big deal. The entire dispute came down to an argument that started in a thread. I wasn't even a part of this argument. The gist of it was that the administrator disciplined another forum member, but instead of disciplining them by private message they did it in the thread. Essentially letting everyone know that this person was being punished and what their punishment was. I simply contacted that administrator by private message and told her that I thought it should have been handled privately. I tried to explain that handling this in the thread can embarrass the person in question and it seems unprofessional to do that so publicly. Now keep in mind the person that was being disciplined didn't do some horrible thing, but they did show a little bit of disrespect to another member. The administrator apparently didn't like that I suggested that it would have been better to handle all of this in private. She replied back, "if you don't like it here you can go somewhere else". Maybe I'm too sensitive, but when an administrator of a support forum shows such a lack of common decency I tend to get a bad impression of that forum as a whole.

This just added to everything that was going on in my mind. I felt like removing myself from the world. I almost deleted all my online accounts including my blog, but instead I unplugged for several hours. Plus I have been spending too much time in political debate forums. Sure these forums keep me distracted and since I am being HOME SCHOOLED now, I haven't been able to participate in the debate team that I loved so much at the school I was going to. I thought it would be a fitting replacement. The problem with debate forums is when I leave them and go to a support forum that I need to keep myself sane, I have trouble turning off the competitive debating side of me. As a result I can often become very direct in my opinions.

If I ever become very argumentative, please don't take it as personal. I am a very passionate person and when I see something that I feel really strongly about I can become seemingly cold and insensitive in my responses. If I made anyone feel bad during one of my many opinions please accept my apology.