Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 8:53 AM
To: Bosses
Subject: Out today...you'll never believe it
O.K., so I know I've come up with some daffy reasons for missing a day of work now and then, and you guys are very good-natured about accepting them as true, which they always are. I'm just not sure you're going to believe this one, so I've attached pictures.
Say it's Memorial Day, and you're looking for something to do. Your beloved is diligently working on your finances, because your beloved has watched too many hours of the Suze Orman Show. You stroll into your home office, bored and hoping to find something to occupy your time. "Hey," you think to yourself, "maybe I'll finally catch up on that filing and shredding."
You put a piece of paper in the shredder, but the shredder does not activate. You look down to see that the shredder is plugged in, that it's turned on. "Hmmm. I wonder what's wrong with this damn shredder," you think to yourself. "Is it really not working?" You lean in closer to make sure.
!!!!BOOM!!!!
Your shredder explodes with a blinding, white-hot flash of light that blasts you right in the face. You spring up and away from the shredder without thinking. The next four thoughts in your head are, in this order, "Holy S&%T!", "It smells like burnt hair!", "Yep, both my eyes still work," and "Holy S&%T!". Your beloved runs in to see what happened, and immediately afterwards grabs the camera.
"Can I wash my face???"
"No! We need to document this."
"Ah, dammit..."
So, ummm, yeah. I can't come in to work today because my shredder exploded, taking out a good portion of one of my eyebrows, half the length of the eyelashes on my right eye, and about half an inch of hair around my forehead. My carefully sculpted eyebrow still looks its full length in the full-face picture, because I hadn't yet absently rubbed my thumb across it, then watched in disgust as it cascaded down onto the bathroom floor. You know how cartoon characters look after a bomb explodes in their faces? I had no idea that it actually happened like that. I did not push my hair up and away from my face like that. It was all from the blast
Normally, this wouldn't keep me away from work, because I'm hard-core. If I'm not contagious, I'm dragging myself into the office, on only two limbs if necessary. However, my right eye feels dry and scratchy, and my vision's a little hazy out of it, so I'm going to my optometrist to have him check out my cornea. I don't mess around with the vision. I was going to have to leave at two to get to the dentist anyway, so it all works out, except for the part where a seemingly harmless piece of office equipment blew up in my face and ruined my day off.
Totally O.K. to laugh. I'll see you tomorrow.
Suzanne
Oh. My. God. Ya know, you always make me laugh with each and every blog entry you write but this is priceless and now I feel like shit because I'm laughing at your misfortune. *sigh* But that's gotta be the best reason I've ever heard for missing work.
ReplyDeleteOK, if this weren't so scary, I'd be rolling on the floor right now. You were so lucky nothing caught on fire! I hope your cornea is all right. Good call on getting checked out right away, your vision isn't something you should be playing with. Let us know how you're doing!
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness... thanks for the PSA - I can't believe you thought to document this! I'm glad to hear you are okay, though :)
ReplyDeleteWow! Scary! Something similar happened to me, but with an oven. I had the 1/2 length eyelashes, burned fringe, everything.
ReplyDeleteHow is it now?
Our shredder exploded in my face too and I had the same results except I also had severe epitheleal cornea burns. If you look in google you will see that it is hardly an isolated event and people need to excercise caution when using a shredder.
ReplyDeleteWell I must say young lady.....u still look the same to me. ;-)
ReplyDelete-M
I had this happen last weekend. I was working on shredding some important information from my business and the shredder exploded in my face. I had the same burns to the face and hair. I also had my fingers burned as well. Wow you wouldn't think that a thing that you use at home on a daily bases would explode.
ReplyDeleteMine just did the same thing, same results. Glad I was wearing my glasses.
ReplyDelete