I was 22, it was my last year at the University, and I already was married and had a baby. And I had to work to feed the family.
I worked at a plant, where we were assembling excavators. Huge plant, with thousands and thousands of workers. The job was very physically challenging, and my back was hurting as if I was an old fart. I soon ended up working the bridge crane, those large cranes gliding under the roof.
Safety first was the slogan only, and risks were unjustifiable and plenty. People did not care about others, and did not really care about their own safety and life that much. The rules for crane operators dictated that for different loads different hooks to be used, but nobody was doing it, and we were working with the same chain with two hooks for absolutely wrong type of loads, which was always on the verge of the disaster.
I worked late shifts, as I was still a student. The safety first in the late shift when there were no safety inspectors, was really safety last. And one evening, I pressed the button a fraction of a second two early and the guy could not pull out his arm and the chain held it to the metal and I started pulling it up. I noticed it and immediately released him. He was not sure whether he fractured the bone, so they sent him to our 24-hour in-house emergency clinic.
He came back, he was OK, no fractures. And instead of being angry with me, he was strangely smiling. Later he came to me and said that the girl- a doctor on duty, who worked at the emergency clinic that night, was the most beautiful thing in the world. Now he was trying to find the way to meet her again. He asked me to come up with the disease, so that he could become her patient. She was at the emergency only 2 times a month, and he wanted something earlier than that. I asked him what was her specialty. He said "gynecologist".
He was a very determined guy from Uzbekistan and he did not know the meaning of the word "gynecologist". I told him there was no disease that he could possibly claim in order to see her. I told him it was impossible.
He got furious with me, and screamed that there sure should be at least one disease, or then why the heck there is a doctor if there was no corresponding disease. "Don't tell me there is no such disease" he yelled. What could I do?
I said "get pregnant".
The story quickly became known and all 156 men working in our division laughed at him. It was pure hell for poor guy for the next two weeks, until it became an old joke, or the way we called it - a joke with a beard...
In life we all need to know our limitations... or get pregnant
* Image courtesy of Flickr.com under Creative Commons License
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