Just as a word of explanation, this guy Brian is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an e-mail he sent to his sister. Excuse the language. Any time you think you are having a bad day at the office, remember this letter... It's a true story.


Hey, sis...
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week, I had a bad day at the office. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year, the water is quite cool, so what we do to keep warm is this. We have a diesel-powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of shit sucks the water out of the sea and heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps the water down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now, this sounds like a damn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.

When I got to the bottom and started working, I took the hose and stuffed it down the back of my neck. This flooded my whole suit with warm water. It was like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds, my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony, I realized what had happened: the hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. This is even worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast.
Now I had that hose down my back. I don't have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my back. My ass crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my ass. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the com, but his instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with 5 other divers, were laughing hysterically. Needless to say, I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water compression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my chamber dry compression. I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to shove it up my ass when I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two days because my asshole was swollen shut. I later found out that this could easily have been prevented if the suction hose was placed on the leeward side of the ship.

Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office, think of me. Think about how much worse your day would be if you were to shove a jellyfish up your ass. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But if you do, I hope this will make them more tolerable.