Don't eat the meatballs! AKA: Stupid stuff you've done.

[QueenofAllThings]

Oh, he was fine - too busy laughing at himself to be in much pain. And I'm not offended (occasionally I try to catch knives too - why do I only drop them when cooking barefoot?). You have to be able to laugh at yourself!

[White Dragon]

I work for MegaCorp. Not sure if this is stupid stuff or Professional Darwinism, but I'm still kicking myself - hard!

MegaCorp has a website that contains all the marketing information for each branch office. Quantities, day of service, method of delivery etc.
Clients access this website and use the information to plan their purchases and buying campaigns.
It's a really, really, really big deal. Clients include major retailers, agencies etc.
Huge deal.

Branch offices are responsible for making sure the website info is correct. In our office, this is my job and I maintain the data for several offices. Thankfully, there haven't been any major changes lately because I've been busier than a chihuahua on a triple espresso.

I got a phone call from a client. They had some questions about one of the branch's data. I had a massive, massive, fundemantal brain spasm and gave them the information for the wrong office. I did not realize this until the next day, because...

Cue an email next day from UberHighLevelNationalMarketing Client. It said, essentially

"Thanks for letting us know that the information on MegaCorp's website on BranchBlue was incorrect. Please send the correct information to janedoe@megacorp and she'll handle your update. We have a meeting with MegaCorp next week and we're going to use this set of data as an example of why we don't like to use the website, it's always wrong.     

Sweet petunia monkey fritters!

I then wrote the most apologetic, humble, fall-on-my-sword-shoot-me-I'm-stupid email I have in my entire life.
I gave them the correct data. Told them the website was essentially correct, aside from a few tweaks (data attached).

Now I have to wait until Tuesday to see if I've staved off disaster.

[bansidhe]

My shower head was getting all clogged up with hard water deposits, sending sprays of water in odd directions. It's not the type of shower head you can just unscrew: removing it would require some serious effort. I puzzled for a bit about how to solve this problem, when it suddenly occurred to me to fill a plastic sandwich bag with vinegar and tape it around the shower head to keep it in place. So that's what I did, figuring that leaving it in place for 24 hours ought to do the trick.

I'm in tears laughing at this one!     And thanks for the baggie idea.  Such a simple solution that never occurred to me!

It worked really well, too - apart from the whole "completely forgetting it was there" part.

[amanda_tlg]

Ooh, ooh, I can play this game!

I am the lawn-care-expert in our house. DH hasn't mown or used the weedeater in about 3 years. I inherited my weedeater/weedwhacker from my father, because it was too old, too heavy and too hard to start. Remember that....too hard for a grown man to start. I developed some tricks and can usually get it started. However, one of the tricks involves me calling the weedeater and it's mother both an extraordinary amount of, um, unsanitary names and insulting its heritage, social class, everything. Believe it or not, the weedeater will.not.start until I have done this. I usually wear my earbuds with the music up LOUD while I cut, but I always pull them out when starting the mower or weedeater. Well one day apparently I had forgotten, and did my normal cursing-swearing-insulting at the weedeater with the music still blasting in my ears and so was talking WAY WAY louder than I ever meant to. Look up. Yeah. Neighbor, his wife and his brother in law are on their deck (which overlooks our yard) and wearing identical looks of amused amazement that not only did I KNOW those words, but was using them at the volume I had been. Thankfully they were not offended or insulted, and double thankfully it happened during school hours and no impressionable school age children had to be subjected to that.

For my "ohnosecond" moment. I was taking DS5 to school because we were already late and had missed the bus. Got in the car, realized I forgot my keys. Went to shut the door and at the last second I saw my keys on the floor and didn't need to go in the house after all. Tried to grab door. Instead I shut my thumb and first two fingers in the door. And I don't mean the door just hit really hard and bounced off. The door actually LATCHED with a good portion of my right hand stuck inside. Managed to not scream and scare the daylights outta DS5. Barely. End result: Dislocated my thumb and index finger at the knuckles, chipped a bone on my middle finger and lost the nails on all three. This happened last spring and they are just now back to full length.

[GreenEyedHawk]

Ok, my first story is pretty gross.

Back when I was still working in a particular grooming shop, I used to go to the Tim Hortons in the same strip mall for lunch frequently.  I'd get a sandwich and come back to work.  The shop owner's daughter had an Amazon parrot she used to bring to the shop sometimes.  He'd walk along the divider between the professional side and DIY side, high enough that most of the dogs in the shop never even noticed he was there.  One day I went to grab my sandwich and noticed a smear on the wrapper.  Thinking it was just excess sauce from my sandwich, I scooped it up with my finger and licked it off.  About a split second later, I realised it was bird poo.  Needless to say, I rather lost my appetite after that.

My "ohnosecond" was when I was actually WORKING at Tim Hortons when I was about 17 or so.  The bagels came pre-cooked but frozen, loose in boxes which we kept in the walk-in freezer.  When I was on sandwich counter, it was part of my job to make sure warm bagels stayed stocked so I'd have to go into the freezer, get whatever kind of bagels we were low on, and put them in the oven to reheat.  The freezer shelves had just enough space between them to store the boxes, but not open the tops, a problem we solved by just cutting a v-shaped hole in the box fronts so we could just reach in and grab what we needed.  I was doing just this, cutting a V in the front of a box with a box cutter, the knife in my right hand and using my left hand to keep the box from sliding off the shelf.  The knife was sort of dull-ish, you see, and was not a typical box cutter but more like a lino cutter, hooked like a cat's claw.  It kept getting stuck and it was REALLY effin cold in the freezer and I was rapidly losing my patience with the dang knife. It would get stuck, I would yank it out, work it back in and keep cutting, getting closer and closer to my left hand, still bracing the box.  One yank of the knife too many; I knew this time as soon as I yanked on the knife that I was going to cut myself, but it was too late to stop.  Sure enough, I opened a gash on the inside of my left wrist, wide enough that I got a shockingly good look at the tendons in my wrist.

I immediately dropped the knife, covered the wound with my free hand and ran out of the freezer to find my supervisor.  She had our delivery guy run me to the doctor for stitches (8 in total) but in the meantime, of course my co-workers were wondering why I'd suddenly vanished and asked the supervisor, who added insult to injury by telling everyone, "GEH slit her wrist in the freezer!" prompting a wildfire of rumours that I had tried to commit suicide in the walk-in freezer.

[Apricot]

GreenEyedHawk, you reminded me: I was at the park with my sister, her friend, my boyfriend, and our dogs. I had Elsie, my dog, on a retractable line, and sat down in the middle of a field. Elsie wanted to keep racing around, so I sat down on the box part of the lead. Well, the line wrapped around my ankle and went ZIP! My sister knew I was really hurt because I didn't yell--I said "No, nononono--" softly as I tried to jump away from my leg. I ended up with a rope burn that went completely through the skin. It was deeper than the line was thick, and didn't hurt at all for the first 24 hours. Then it didn't stop hurting for 14 days. I will have a scar for the rest of my life--it looks like someone tried to cut off my foot.

[Miss March]

I've told this story before, but once when I was a young teenager, I rode a horse to my house. My mother brought me a glass of lemonade since it was such a hot day. I stood next to the horse, drinking from the glass, and it brought its nose up and gave a sudden inquisitive shove against the glass- which shattered into my face. It's a wonder I didn't lose an eye.

I can't believe I was so careless to be using glassware right next to a horse. 

[Fleur-de-Lis]

Eating raw cookie dough.  It's lovely, but especially if you haven't done it for a while, your body may not be happy about it.

[Kimblee]

Ha, ha Kimblee.  Where were you when I needed you?!

  Hope you're feeling better.  A few tums, bicarbonate of soda and you should survive the wedding.  Oh, it's already over isn't it...Well, backwards good vibes.

It wasn't so bad, but its only today that the queasyness has gone away. lol

And yeah, its a gift. And a useful one because i am a major klutz.

[Firecat]

Eating raw cookie dough.  It's lovely, but especially if you haven't done it for a while, your body may not be happy about it.

I solve this by buying the pasteurized eggs. Raw cookie dough, and no tummy trouble. It's beautiful.

[Morticia]

Eating raw cookie dough.  It's lovely, but especially if you haven't done it for a while, your body may not be happy about it.

I solve this by buying the pasteurized eggs. Raw cookie dough, and no tummy trouble. It's beautiful.

I just buy the cookie dough.

[Kaora]

I eat borderline food all the time.  It's kind of a talent... toughening up my stomach in case of emergency... you're not always going to be near a well-stocked fully-powered fridge.  But it has come back to bite me a few times.

Most notably, I was a teenager.  As a teenager, I had an appetite (lunch was more of a ritual than a meal... I'd eat enough to last me all day sometimes.)  We had the fixings for ham and cheese, and I love a good ham and cheese sandwich.  I also hadn't had breakfast, so I had three (3) sandwiches.  In my defense, I was hungry.  Believe it or not, we've not reached the stupid part.

See, what I hadn't really paid attention to at the time was that the ham had a strange multicolored sheen to it.  I thought this a trick of the light and oh isn't that kind of pretty and okay I'm really hungry now.  So I scarf down sandwich number one.  I scarf down sandwich number two.  I eat sandwich number three a little more leisurely, and my hunger is sated, and I am once again pleased with the world.

For a half hour.

Thirty minutes later, my stomach is pleading with me to pay attention.  Something is terribly, desperately wrong here.  I run downstairs (run may not be the right word for this... it was half-sprinting, half-stumbling) until I reach the back door.  I fling it open, take two steps, and promptly paint the back stairs a lovely shade of pink and white.  I have never, ever, vomited with that kind of force before or since.  I'd like to believe that were I mugged, I could successfully chase my attacker away with whatever were in my stomach that day, but alas.

I think the sheen might have been coincidental.  The same thing once happened with a ham we had just served-- it had a sheen like a Mother of Earl.  Asked dad, dad said it was probably oxidized, but otherwise okay.  We ate it anyways.  Didn't get sick a bit.  Still, better safe then sorry? 

As for cookie dough?  There's recipes out there for eggless cookie dough, which is only meant to be eaten in its doughy state.  Absolutely delicious snacky food. 

[Silversurfer]

Last weekend i  cooked a delicious roast chicken for sunday dinner. We have a roast most sundays, then use the meat for lunches during the week.
I pull the pan out of the oven and the roast looks amazing- its crispy on the outside and the inside is roasted to perfection.
I slide the knife inside the chicken to pick it up.
Underneath the chicken was the plastic absorber thing, that had infused itself into the bird!
We did not eat the contaminated chicken!

[Firecat]

Eating raw cookie dough.  It's lovely, but especially if you haven't done it for a while, your body may not be happy about it.

I solve this by buying the pasteurized eggs. Raw cookie dough, and no tummy trouble. It's beautiful.

I just buy the cookie dough.

I'm spoiled. To me, most of the purchased stuff has a sort of chemical aftertaste - it's better once they're baked, but I really taste it in the dough.

[cicero]

once i had a temporary crown. i was dozing and the crown came out. instead of taking it out of my mouth and putting it somewhere safe, i figured that i'll just stick it back in. yup, i swallowed it... thankfully it was just a temp...