Straps and Safety Harnesses Required

It has to be said that the individuals I work with are each unique and bazaar in their own way, definitely worth working with on even their worst days.

With the plant closing comes long days with very little to fill them. We have been left, pretty much, to our own devices, to create work to fill our days until our last.

Probably not a good thing when it comes to 'the gang', the group of misfits I call my friends. It is only in our group we could have such stimulating conversations about safety signs and hot dogs.

While it is not in my usual character to join in on potlucks and such at work, I decided today, because there are only 2 weeks of employment left for us, that I would do just that. After carefully scanning the food and analyzing who brought what and what was safe to eat I noticed, at the end of the table, a tin foil tray full of gigantic hot dogs.

Unable to keep my thoughts to myself, I return to the lunch table we had perched at and comment about the 'ginormous' hot dogs at the end of the table.

The conversation immediately heads for the gutter.

My cube mate laughs, and comments about their 'sheer size'. D, the gay man in the group, decides to comment on how the 'buns' are cringing with fear over the magnitude of the hot dogs girth and weight.

We are laughing, hysterically, and almost don't notice a passerby has picked up part of our conversation and does not realize we are in fact being lude and crude.

"I know," she says innocently. "These are great hot dogs! You don't normally find them this big, I can barely get my mouth around them." Peels of laughter come from our table. "They are quite the value! I need to find out where they were purchased," she has started trailing off, in search of her own group of friends.

Trying very hard, I somehow manage to gather a straight face, and pull one of the manufacturing magazines from the rack sitting beside us.

"There's something missing, I think," I state. Everyone is, by now, looking intently at me, wondering just what in the heck I'm doing. It was at this point that I opened the magazine to a page I had seen previously and somehow remembered. It was a page with a giant sign that read 'Straps and Safety Harnesses Required'.

"Someone could dislocate a jaw if they're not careful, a sign like this could save a life." Unable to stop myself, I continued, "especially if they are inexperienced at having such large objects placed in their mouths."