Unexpected hazards in the workplace

Those of you who know where I live will know that I regularly undergo trials just to get to work. This is a modern country, or so they tell us. ( When I find out who they is I may be forced to give them a piece of my mind.)

This week there have been floods, no they don't know how to camber a road here. Actually they don't know how to build a road. That's why everyone drives four wheel drives. To get through pot holes, floods, over ditches , around mud slides and through jungles, ( and thats the 100km speed limit areas). We are very good at tipping millions of gallons of water into storm drains and then then the sea though, reservoirs..they're for cissies.

Now the floods brought the next hazard.....power cuts. So no computers, tills, or lights. The final straw was the loss of air conditioning. Hellooooo......we can work with candles, abacuses and pencils in the dark but we are not going to sweat!

The most interesting ( interesting?) experience though was the snake. I work in a health centre and we were thinking that the patients were looking at little more frail than usual, and moving a little faster. Then one told us there was a whopping greatsnake just outside the door. Well we all had to go have a look ...all thinking whopping great, yeah right, or whopping great, that'll just be a python then. Mmm further inspection showed a brown coloured snake about a metre long. For those not in the know, it is drummed into us all year...if its brown run away fast...very fast. See that speck on the horizon , thats the local snake handler, try to keep up.

It's amazing the patients were all running in though, and then standing about discussing loudly about how it shouldn't be allowed. Too right it shouldn't. They should all get out so we can shut. Anyway we rang the council, for the number of a snake handler, the guy laughed. He could hear all the women in the background and thought it was hysterical, but he gave us the numbers of about six handlers, they were all out. Or suffering from exhaustion, it's a big problem this time of year. We rang the police, they laughed, and no they weren't coming, didn't we know if it was a brown coloured snake we should keep away. But they gave us some more phone numbers. Of the ones that were different one was 20km away, and fighting a python, one would come after work, in six hours time and one was exhausted and wouldn't have answered if he knew what we wanted.

The crowd inside was gathering. We rang the zoo. They'd got problems enough they said, what with the crocodile pens flooding and washing the crocodiles into the kangaroo pens. We rang the vet, they thought it terrible and shouldn't be allowed but no, they couldn't help. They did have the number of another snake handler though.

My boss by now had shown up to save the day, armed with an icing spatula, yes an icing spatula, for icing cakes. It think he was going to decorate it to death. By this time the snake was a bit worried and the arrival of my boss scared it inside the door. Yep, inside the frame of the door.

Cue snake handler. He said no he wasn't going to put his hand in there. ( Can't say as I blamed him) . Was the snake brown...yes....with a cream belly...yes...no he definitely wasn't putting his hand in there. He sat around, filled the frame with water, which didn't budge the snake. Then went home.

Our solution. Leave the air conditioning on full all night, making outside definitely nicer than inside for the snake and the first person into work today to be very careful. Guess who the first person in today was. Me. I felt like Indiana Jones. When I opened the door would a snake drop on my head? Could I lift a paper bag up? I survived the day and assume the snake had in fact buggered off. Or died of drowning and was going to add a new hazard to work, a bloody awful smell.