As a utility worker I encounter animals, wild and domestic, on a daily basis. Sometimes these encounters are beautiful, more often they're annoying and sometimes they're seriously dangerous.
Below is a story about one of the dangerous encounters.
I introduced myself to the woman whose broadband line I had come to connect. We were at her front door. I had called ahead to let her know it was coming but I only got her voicemail so I drove to the house.
It was an unfenced corner lot, the driveway facing one street and the front door facing another. I explained why I was there and she said she had been expecting me. I said “So, I’m going to get my tools and go around back and get started.” She said “Ok, let me know if you need anything,” and closed the door.
It was summertime, hot and humid and I was wearing a fly fishing hat to keep the sun off my face and light cotton cargo pants.
I walked back to the truck, put on my tool belt, grabbed my meter and walked to the back yard looking for the interface box. Not seeing it in the back, I continued through the yard and rounded the far corner of the house to keep looking.
There was a dog chained up there. A big one, some kind of German Shepherd mix and it was just as surprised by me as I was by it. There I was, a complete stranger, suddenly looming over this dog that had been minding its own business in its own yard. I froze for a microsecond and that was enough, it leaped forward and sank its teeth into the front of my right leg just below the knee, growling and whipping its head from side to side. Tearing flesh. I reacted by backing up but the dog wouldn’t let go and I toppled onto my back.
I could see the dog was on a chain but had probably twenty feet of slack and I was worried it would go for my face or throat, (or my nut sack), so I started kicking it in the head with my free foot while crab-crawling backwards on my elbows. Every time I landed a good kick the dog would release its grip and clamp down again lower on my leg, working its way around to the back just above my boot top. The pain was incredible and I knew this was serious. This dog wasn’t just giving me a warning bite, this dog meant to tear me apart.
So I kept crawling and kicking until the dog reached the end of its chain and I scrambled to my feet. My first though was pure anger, I was going to wade back in there and kill this fucker. I had actually pulled out my utility knife to attack with when I looked at my leg and all the anger went out of me.
My pants were shredded and there were multiple jagged, gaping wounds bleeding profusely. I could clearly see my shinbone in the front and my calf muscle in the back and blood was pooling in my boot. The lady yelled “Are you ok?” out the window and I calmly said, “No, I’m pretty fucking far from ok!” I actually said that, I actually quoted Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction!
Then I said that I needed to go get medical attention and that someone would be contacting her.
I took off my tool belt, limped into the cab of my truck and started driving to the health clinic we employees go to for on the job injuries, calling my manager to explain what had just happened. He took the information and immediately drove to the lady’s house to make a report; I actually passed him going the opposite direction on the road to the lady's house, which was only about a mile from the dispatch garage.
She was still rattled when he got there to take her statement and, not having the time to concoct a story, she confirmed exactly what had happened; that I had spoken to her at the door and she never mentioned the dog in the yard. This became important later.
I got to the clinic and before I went in I cut off the remaining shreds of my pants above the knee. This was my first chance to really see the damage, the totality of it, and it was not pretty. There were four really ugly wounds, where flesh was missing, and another dozen or so punctures and tears.
I was surprisingly calm as I walked into the clinic, blood squishing in my boot with each step. There was no sense of panic just a feeling of, I don’t know, resignation I guess. Like, “Great, just what I needed.”
There were several people standing in line at the reception desk and I stood behind the last person, waiting my turn. I could hear people in the waiting area reacting, pointing out the man with the gaping, bloody wounds on his leg. The receptionist had her face buried in a file and hadn’t even looked up yet when I said “Excuse me, could I have some paper towel while I wait? I’m getting blood all over your floor out here.”
Which was true, there was a bloody footprint trail leading in from the parking lot and a stain spreading where I was standing. It was weird; I wasn’t even thinking that I should go to the front of the line, only about the fact that I was making a mess.
The man in line in front of me turned around, looked down at my leg and actually jumped back, eyes comically wide, his mouth a perfect O. One by one the others in line did the same thing; turn, notice, jump back. It was like a twisted Benny Hill sketch and under different circumstances I probably would have found it pretty hilarious.
All the commotion finally got the attention of the receptionist who reacted much the same way. My office must have called ahead because she shouted over her shoulder about the dog bite guy being here and told me to come around.
A doctor was waiting for me in one of the rooms and I liked him immediately. He was a younger guy, no more than thirty, who started making wisecracks as soon as he got to work cleaning and assessing the wounds. At first I thought he was trying to put me at
ease but I soon realized he was just a funny guy.
I wish I could better remember more of what he said but I was, obviously, a bit distracted. One comment that sticks with me though was something about how the dog was now going to develop a taste for white meat.
It took at least an hour and in the end I got thirty nine stitches and a massive injection of antibiotics in my ass, which hurt like hell for days. They also gave me a bottle of antibiotic pills to take daily for the next two weeks which gave me the runs, just like the doctor said they were going to, and a bag full of bandages and gauze and tape so I could replace the wound dressing myself.
I still had my work truck so I couldn’t just drive home. I went to the garage to switch vehicles and get some paperwork to fill out since I was clearly going to miss work for a while and there’s always fucking paperwork.
I endured some gallows humor from the office staff about never being able to be an underwear model again and, hah ha ha, I shouldn’t have had a hamburger in my pocket and, ha ha ha, how could I have not seen the dog etc… I should have listened more carefully to that last comment but I really just wanted to get home.
The local anesthetic was starting to wear off and my leg was all kinds of pain; sharp pain, dull pain, throbbing pain, burning pain, itching pain I called my wife on the way home and explained what happened and by the time I got there she was waiting for me, her brow furrowed with concern. I explained that I was alright and, despite the pain, I really was. I started thinking about a lawsuit; that maybe this was going to be my million dollar golden ticket.
My neighbor John, who is also a close friend, happens to be a labor attorney and I left him a voicemail explaining what happened and what I was thinking about doing. I had nothing against the dog, it did what dogs do, but I was getting more and more pissed off at the stupid lady who let this happen. I was clearly going to be scarred for life and I wanted to make her pay.
I ended up being off work for two weeks even though I probably could have gone back after one. I never developed an infection and most of the real pain dissipated by the third or fourth day. The itching though was another story. This incident happened almost five years ago and I still suffer occasionally from crazy itchiness. And, of course, the scars are pretty ugly. I guess they were right about the underwear model thing.
So when I went back to work I was told there had been an incident investigation by a company safety officer and we needed to have a meeting with him as well as my manager, my manager’s manager and a union rep. Needing a union rep present should have set off red flags but, because the lady had pretty much exactly confirmed my account of the incident, no flags went up. I figured it would be some pro forma crossing of Ts and dotting of Is.
How wrong I was.
The safety officer was a guy named Barry Williams (yes, like Greg Brady on TV) and he clearly took himself way too seriously. The union rep was named Jerry; a good guy trying to fight the good fight without much support from the union hierarchy.
Barry asked me to recount my “version” of what happened, which I did. He then asked my manager to tell us what the lady had said, which he did and which matched my story. Then Barry (God, just typing the fucker’s name makes my skin crawl) pulled up some photos on his laptop he had taken at the scene from when he had done his investigation.
Shots of the house from the street, shots of the yard, shots of the driveway, and shots of the dog still chained up in the same place right next to the electric meters and interface box. He then pointed to one of the pictures and asked me to look closely at it. It was taken from the street on the driveway side of the house and sitting on the ground, leaning up against the brick wall was a small “Beware of Dog” sign.
Although I cannot swear that it wasn’t there that day, I really don’t believe it was. I think the lady, realizing that she might be in deep shit, ran out after my manager had interviewed her, bought the sign and set it up against the wall; conveniently for her, right in front of where I had parked my truck.
Barry asked me if I had seen the sign and I said no, that I couldn’t remember having seen it. Then he asked me if I had specifically asked the customer whether or not she had a dog in her yard. This question was so absurd Jerry and I both laughed out loud and I said something like “No, normally when you tell a person to their face that you’re going to go into their yard and they don’t mention anything about a dog, you kinda don’t think it’s necessary to ask.”
Grim faced, Barry took that in, looked down at his papers and cleared his throat.
“After reviewing all the information, and based on your answers here today I have come to the conclusion that this was an avoidable accident and that your injuries were the result of your own negligence.”
Just like that. My company could continue to claim an exemplary injury-free workplace record. Because, after all, when it’s the employee’s own dumbass fault why, company insurance liabilities can’t rightly be increased. And there’s the small matter of how it might look if an employee were to sue a customer. Bad publicity don’t you know: can’t have that. It’s much easier to find a way to blame the injured party, thus destroying any possibility of a lawsuit. Because a lawsuit could, you know, get messy.
They had cut the legs out from under me and I would no longer be able to pursue the lady in court because, after all, my own employer had found me to be at fault. Any attorney worth half a shit would be able dig that up pretty quickly. In fact, I suspect my company would probably offer it up without even waiting for a subpoena. Also, as a result of being found negligent, I got a permanent notation in my personnel file stating that I hadn’t followed safety procedures.
Never mind the fact that none of my co-workers had ever heard of a rule requiring we specifically ask about dogs. Nope, they had decided it was my own damn fault. I was reckless.
Barry then asked why I hadn’t been carrying company-issued pepper spray. This question made my boss and his boss uncomfortable and they exchanged a furtive look. “I’ve never heard anything about company issued pepper spray.” I said “And if anyone actually carries it that would be news to me.” Jerry, my union rep, said the same thing.
My manager’s boss, Kevin, a decent guy as far as soulless company men go, stepped in and said that this needed to be a learning experience and that he would personally make sure everyone would be issued pepper spray and we would have a safety course in how to deal with dogs. This seemed to satisfy Barry who started putting his notes and laptop away. We all stood up, Jerry was still seething and I actually gave him a nudge, signaling he needed to calm down. What’s done is done. Barry extended his hand and I shook it.
To this day I’m still ashamed I did.
We never got any pepper spray. We never had any training course on animal safety, just a photocopy of a few paragraphs out of some old safety manual that sat ignored in a pile on a table in the meeting room.
My punishment for this egregious lapse in safety protocol was a one day suspension without pay.
It was, literally, insult on top of injury.
About six weeks later I got a letter in the mail that I probably wasn’t supposed to see. It was a CC copy of a document sent by my company's legal department to the lady who owned the dog stating that the company was suing her in court to recoup $5,327 in medical bills due to one of its employees being injured on her property by her dog!
When I showed this to Jerry he said I should take it to the head steward. Which I did. The head steward said I should shove it right up the company's ass. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming however on how I should go about said ass-shoving and I let it go. I was tired of fighting.
I will say this though. I can point to the decision to blame me for being attacked by a customer’s dog as the moment, the exact moment, when my company lost my loyalty forever.