All thumbs

Had an accident in the factory today. A small one. An embarrassing small one.

I cut the end of my thumb nearly completely off. It was hanging by a thin flap of skin. Not on piece of equipment or material. With a knife. While cutting up a tomato.

As soon as it happened, I called my boss up to tell him I was going to Medical. He went absolutely fucking ballistic. I hung up on him while he was still yelling. Our facility mandates a very trite “Safe-T-First” farce which requires any supervisor or manager that has an employee with an OSHA recordable accident to issue a formal report. This report is to include the nature of the accident, root cause, and corrective action associated with it. It’s delivered to the executive staff at a monthly review.

Seemed he wasn’t wild about reporting an engineer lopping off a digit while making a salad. He’d also forgotten his password for our neat-o-keen web-based medical pass system, thus I had to go up without formal permission.

The plant nurse cleaned out the laceration, and after about twenty minutes finally got it to stop bleeding. It probably should have had a stitch or two, but alas…that would have made it an OSHA injury. Half a dozen steri-strips, three feet of wrapped gauze, and a slap on the ass later I’m on my way to find the boss.

Transcript of conversation with the boss:

Me: ***giving an inadvertent thumbs up*** “I’m OK.”
Him: “You didn’t need stitches?”
Me: “Need? Probably. Received? No.”
Him: “What about the med-pass?”
Me: “She didn’t seem very concerned about it.”
Him: “Why not?”
Me: “Because I was dripping blood all over her floor.”
Him: “So I don’t need to fill one out?”
Me: “You better. I might get gangrene. That could be some messy paperwork.”
Him: “Are you alright to work?”
Me: “I think I can do anything that doesn’t require a left hand or sense occupational satisfaction.”
Him: “Then get to it.”

I resisted the urge to head to the men’s room and toss one off.

The real pisser is that I tried playing the beta last night. It’s very awkward (not to mention painful) when moving or strafing. And I can’t click for crouch at all. I think I’m on the 7-day disabled list.

Suck.