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Hi. My name is Jester, and I'm a Klutz. I know I don't seem to be so, especially when I am doing magic tricks with a deck of cards, but the fact of the matter is I have always been a Klutz--it's just that over the years I have, through discipline and effort, managed to suppress my Klutziness and appear to be nimble, agile, and dexterous. Do not be fooled by appearances....no matter how smooth an operator I may appear to be, I am still, by nature, a Klutz. And every now and then, just when I forget about the true nature of my being, my Inner Klutz rears its ugly head. Tonight was such a time.
Flag Day
Monday nights are my shift on the roof deck at The Bar. The roof deck is open air, but the bar and a bit around it is actually covered by a semi-roof, from which we have ceiling fans to aid with the heat when it is hot up there....which is often, this being the tropics. We also have two flag poles that extend out from the balcony towards the street, from which are hung two flags representative of our business. Oftentimes said flags will be blown around said flag poles, and as employees, we are expected to, from time to time, unfurl the flags from the poles so that they may flow freely. Towards this endeavor, we are provided a long (10-12 feet) metal pole, so that we may unfurl the flags that hang over the street while never leaving the safety of the roof deck itself.
So, I was doing my duty as a loyal employee of The Bar, unfurling the flags from being wrapped around the poles, and chatting to two of the tables along that part of the deck. One of them warned me not to get electrocuted, as there are cables running between electric poles out towards the flag poles. I assured the guests that those cables were not in any way live (they aren't), and joked with them, letting the metal pole rest on the cable and feigning my own electrocution. As I finished with the task at hand and started to return the pole to its place in the back area of the roof deck, I started to make a comment about how, now that I said I had never been electrocuted doing that, something like that would probably happen. And then....
WHAM!!!
Something slammed into the right side of my head, nailing me ear, and dropping me like a sack of potatoes. And when I say it dropped me, I went to the floor, grabbing my right ear in agony.
What had happened was, while walking the long metal pole along, I had become careless, and had let the trailing end rise up to the height of one of the ceiling fans, which caught the pole and sent it at speed into my poor right ear. I was okay, but at first, I was in agony, and when people asked if I was okay, the answer was "No!" But eventually I got up and went back to work, with a much redder right ear. It actually was very funny (since I was alright), and to ease the pain on my ear, I took a cold bottle of beer out of the cooler and applied it to my ear, saying, "Well, I finally found a use for Michelob Ultra!"
Yes, it really was funny (unless you happened to be me when it happened). The guests I had been talking to wanted to laugh, and then stifled it when I didn't get up immediately (whenever I go down with something like that, I stay down and go through a mental checklist to make sure everything is alright, and if not, what is wrong), and then laughed when I raised a thumbs up into the air while still laying on the floor. Both of my managers who were on duty had to struggle to stay on their feet when I told them what had happened, as they were both laughing so hard!
Shattered
A while later, I was putting some pint glasses away in the cooler we keep them in. One of them somehow got away from me and fell down, shattering all over the glasses in the cooler and going everywhere. As I had just ordered myself some dinner, this sucked, as now I had to (1) get some latex gloves, (2) pull all the glasses out of the cooler, (3) remove all the pieces of broken glass from the cooler (hence the latex gloves), and (4) wash all the glasses that had been in the cooler to make sure that no stray shards of glass remained on them. The cooler holds about 50 glasses, and it had been mostly full. And my dinner sat looking at my plaintively. Thank goodness I had ordered a salad! And at least I had not injured myself this time!
Found It!
So I had taken all the shards of glass off of the unbroken glasses and out of the cooler and tossed them in the trash, very carefully. Well, almost all of them. Apparently I missed one that was on one of the unbroken glasses. I found it when I was washing those glasses, as it got caught between my gloved hand and the bottom of the glass, slicing right through the glove and the ball of my hand.
"Fuck!"
So I ripped off the glove on my left hand and immediately rinsed it under running water, then held a napkin to the wound. I did this several times and the wound just kept on bleeding.
"Fuck!"
So I walked downstairs, found my manager, and had her bandage the wound, then tape the bandage in place with medical tape wrapped around my hand. This, naturally, slowed me down even more washing the glasses, as I was now only using my uninjured right hand and going one glass at time instead of two. Not to mention it delayed me even further from getting to my dinner!
So, one slow night on the roof deck. Three accidents. Two injuries. It's a wonder I'm still alive!
Flag Day
Monday nights are my shift on the roof deck at The Bar. The roof deck is open air, but the bar and a bit around it is actually covered by a semi-roof, from which we have ceiling fans to aid with the heat when it is hot up there....which is often, this being the tropics. We also have two flag poles that extend out from the balcony towards the street, from which are hung two flags representative of our business. Oftentimes said flags will be blown around said flag poles, and as employees, we are expected to, from time to time, unfurl the flags from the poles so that they may flow freely. Towards this endeavor, we are provided a long (10-12 feet) metal pole, so that we may unfurl the flags that hang over the street while never leaving the safety of the roof deck itself.
So, I was doing my duty as a loyal employee of The Bar, unfurling the flags from being wrapped around the poles, and chatting to two of the tables along that part of the deck. One of them warned me not to get electrocuted, as there are cables running between electric poles out towards the flag poles. I assured the guests that those cables were not in any way live (they aren't), and joked with them, letting the metal pole rest on the cable and feigning my own electrocution. As I finished with the task at hand and started to return the pole to its place in the back area of the roof deck, I started to make a comment about how, now that I said I had never been electrocuted doing that, something like that would probably happen. And then....
WHAM!!!
Something slammed into the right side of my head, nailing me ear, and dropping me like a sack of potatoes. And when I say it dropped me, I went to the floor, grabbing my right ear in agony.
What had happened was, while walking the long metal pole along, I had become careless, and had let the trailing end rise up to the height of one of the ceiling fans, which caught the pole and sent it at speed into my poor right ear. I was okay, but at first, I was in agony, and when people asked if I was okay, the answer was "No!" But eventually I got up and went back to work, with a much redder right ear. It actually was very funny (since I was alright), and to ease the pain on my ear, I took a cold bottle of beer out of the cooler and applied it to my ear, saying, "Well, I finally found a use for Michelob Ultra!"
Yes, it really was funny (unless you happened to be me when it happened). The guests I had been talking to wanted to laugh, and then stifled it when I didn't get up immediately (whenever I go down with something like that, I stay down and go through a mental checklist to make sure everything is alright, and if not, what is wrong), and then laughed when I raised a thumbs up into the air while still laying on the floor. Both of my managers who were on duty had to struggle to stay on their feet when I told them what had happened, as they were both laughing so hard!
Shattered
A while later, I was putting some pint glasses away in the cooler we keep them in. One of them somehow got away from me and fell down, shattering all over the glasses in the cooler and going everywhere. As I had just ordered myself some dinner, this sucked, as now I had to (1) get some latex gloves, (2) pull all the glasses out of the cooler, (3) remove all the pieces of broken glass from the cooler (hence the latex gloves), and (4) wash all the glasses that had been in the cooler to make sure that no stray shards of glass remained on them. The cooler holds about 50 glasses, and it had been mostly full. And my dinner sat looking at my plaintively. Thank goodness I had ordered a salad! And at least I had not injured myself this time!
Found It!
So I had taken all the shards of glass off of the unbroken glasses and out of the cooler and tossed them in the trash, very carefully. Well, almost all of them. Apparently I missed one that was on one of the unbroken glasses. I found it when I was washing those glasses, as it got caught between my gloved hand and the bottom of the glass, slicing right through the glove and the ball of my hand.
"Fuck!"
So I ripped off the glove on my left hand and immediately rinsed it under running water, then held a napkin to the wound. I did this several times and the wound just kept on bleeding.
"Fuck!"
So I walked downstairs, found my manager, and had her bandage the wound, then tape the bandage in place with medical tape wrapped around my hand. This, naturally, slowed me down even more washing the glasses, as I was now only using my uninjured right hand and going one glass at time instead of two. Not to mention it delayed me even further from getting to my dinner!
So, one slow night on the roof deck. Three accidents. Two injuries. It's a wonder I'm still alive!
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