Ken's post reminded me of one of my summer jobs - warehouse and loading dock hand at a company in Elk Grove that manufactured aluminum siding, soffit and shutters. They hired lots of college kids...cheap labor ($2.00/hr). Most, like myself, worked the loading dock and filled orders - loading 30 lb (or more) boxes onto a skid and then loading them into the hold of semi trailers that had been sitting in the hot sun in order to get the inside up to a toasty 110F. However, one kid, Billy, who went to Tulane and whose parents knew one of the owners, was assigned a cushy job making shutters. He got to sit down and never got hot and sweaty....he was a little nuts and bragged about his status at every opportunity. Two memorable things happened to Billy that summer.
Billy always had the same thing for lunch - hot dog and a Mountain Dew -and as he was gulping his drink one day he gagged and reached into his mouth and pulled out a used condom! In those days the drinks were in glass bottles that were reused after sterilizing, so the condom must have passed by the inspection. While Billy was throwing up, we were rolling with laughter.
The other Billy event occurred later that summer. During a break, we were gathered around his work station chatting with him when he pressed the foot pedal on his machine and it made a little tink-tink sound as it bent the aluminum. He said there was no way this was a one ton press making such a wimpy sound, and before we could even react, he put his index finger tip in the press and pressed the pedal. Tink-tink! ...and Viola! a perfectly flattened fingertip! At first he was so surprised he didn't say a word...just stared at it. Then the pain came. He was taken to the hospital and he never came back. Glad I was on the loading dock.......
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