Day 19 - Another Close Call

I have been employed by Cost Plus World Market since October. In that time I have had three accidents while on the job.

The first was somewhat minor. I sprained a wrist when the weight of a dining table in a box shifted in a way that I wasn't ready for. I wore a splint for a few weeks, felt better, re-injured it, wore the splint again, and then was fine.

The second accident was much more scary. I was up waaay high on a slide ladder in the stockroom. When I fell I landed on my side, injuring my knee. I had x-rays, crutches, restricted duty, physical therapy - the whole nine yards. But the crazy part about that was that had the stockroom been in its usual packed state or had the pallet jack been scooted over say, six inches, things could have ended VERY BADLY! Very badly.

So, then my boss was fired (also long story where somehow I was the scapegoat for the whole situation which is sort of crazy), anyway, I, being insane and forgetting myself for a moment, interviewed for the job. Yes, I have 15 years of retail experience. Yes, most of that time I was managing people and millions of dollars but, apparently, this did not really matter much. I am actually fine with the end result which was not getting the job; in hindsight, being the assistant manager would have totally sucked. I was on the fence about it anyway. But the point of that story is that in lieu of a promotion I just got "additional responsibility". I was crowned the Safety Captain. I, who had both injured her wrist and fallen off of a ladder in the 4 or 5 months that I had been there, was made the Safety Captain.

As the Safety Captain, I am supposed to talk to people about each month's safety topic and have them sign off on a sheet that we send into corporate so everyone can act like we are all doing the right thing. The topics have been: stretching before work, using safe cutting techniques, and using Big Joe (the forklift thing) properly.

So, fast forward to yesterday. My bosses have been a little anal about cutting wine boxes perfectly straight and I've really been concentrating on trying to do this. But, alas, there are certain things I am good at and certain things I am not and cutting a straight line on a wine case with a safety razor blade is one of the things that I totally suck at.

Yesterday, I was in the wine department putting out a new wine and cutting the top off of the box. It was a Spanish wine and I totally forgot that Spanish wines tend to come in cheap and easy to cut boxes. I was cutting the top off the box when, it turned to butter. My knife sliced through and whoosh, it hit my left wrist. Blood came instantly. I began to freak. I thought that I was headed to the ER. What? Suicide by wine box? Maybe people have contemplated it but, that's not the way I want to go out! But, after a minute there wasn't as much blood as there initially seemed to be. So, after having washed it off and bandaging it up, I went back to work. I worried that I might have MRSA and go into a coma. I worried that half of my body might have to be chopped off like the episode of Oprah where a chef accidentally cut herself with a knife at her restaurant and ended up with half of her face missing among other things. You can imagine my relief when I actually woke up this morning to find that I was not in a coma and that no amputations were necessary.

I am totally thankful that I didn't catch my wrist just a little harder. I am grateful that there is a little extra fat on me right now that kept the blade from slicing any deeper. What a crazy insane accident that could have been so much worse.

There is a quote from the Baz Luhrman Sunscreen song that has sort of stuck with me over the years,

"What ever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's"

It's not that cutting my wrist at work was necessarily a choice (insert existentialist argument here) - obviously not. But the point is, things can always go a different way. Yesterday was probably 1 millimeter away from being a hideously bad day but, it wasn't. It was a normal day and that is good.

P.S. love this song. Played it for the seniors during my student teaching at Central and they liked it too.