Urine, aren't you?

I work in what most would consider an "industrial" environment.

(Totally NOT my work)

There's lots of heavy things to crush you. You get to periodically wear hard hats.  I wear steel toed boots.

And if I'm to be honest...all that makes me feel pretty butch!  'Cause I've never been the hairiest or most manly of men.

(RAWR, Tiger!)

So I don't mind that I get to wear Dickies everyday.

But what goes along with this potentially deadly environment where you can get smashed and mashed and killed by falling stuff is a pretty clear ban of having cell phones on your person.


At any time.

At any place.

But the management and powers that be carry them.  Everyone takes a phone call from time to time.  Including my bosses.

And I can't be out of touch.  I have a mother.  I have family.  I have a need to be able to be reached.  Ultimately, that was why I got a cell phone so many years ago.

My boss tolerates me "adding up figures" on my phone pretty well.  "Adding up figures" is code for text messaging. 


Or being on Facebook.

Or doing something other than earning a living and being productive.

So when patience wears thin and I'm about to get smacked down or fired for my insolence, I have to take my texting and phone antics into our single person restroom.  And this works.

Or it did.

Last week, I retreated to the restroom for a "break"...and I was being as productive as one should be in a restroom on a break. 

And I was texting away.  Like I always do.

And I have sure hands.  Like...I have hands of a surgeon.  I have long, dexterous fingers.  LONG, luxurious fingers.  I'm sure handed.  I could have been a proctologist.

(Not TOO far from the truth of my hands!)

I was finishing up my business and text messaging madness and my phone was caught by a FURIOUS wind and was blown asunder in my always sure hands. 


And my brand new Android phone, replete with shiny new snap on case and screen protector, surely tumbled.

And it fell in slow motion.  Turning and catching the gleaming florescent light as it did.

And it plopped straight into the water of the urinal.

The urinal I had just made a deposit into.

I mean...it could have been worse.  See THIS picture I found when Googling images for this blog.

(I'm not sure what is more shocking...that he lowered her down into the pit, or that she did it and is laughing about it.  This couple has a healthy, HEALTHY relationship.  Just sayin!)

I was shocked at how fast I sprung into action.  My neurotic, Jerry Seinfeld mind said, Whoa, whoa WHOA, man...you just dropped that into that pit of germs!  Let it go man...'cause, man...it's gone!

But my cheap, refusing to spend any more money side steam-rolled that emotional talk.  

My hand shot like a laser into that warm water and removed the phone. 

I was like a Marine in Boot camp at Paris Island as I disassembled that phone.  I meticulously dried every part of the phone, the case and the battery.


I reassembled it later that day and it worked fine.

I had to laugh as I told my coworkers about my mishap.  Strangely, none of them wanted to use it to play Angry Birds anymore.

All in all, I feel pretty stupid.  My phone lives, I didn't have to spend another $200, and I'm lucky.  The only drawback is that my phone still has the faint aroma of my work's bathroom.


I still got off lucky!


Keep the phones out of the bathrooms, kids!