cimorene

At work there's a big cardboard shredder-compactor for all the boxes we use and there's a little control panel next to it that has an emergency stop knob. But the emergency stop knob has several papers taped all around it that say like, "STOP! DO NOT PUSH STOP BUTTON FOR ANY REASON! AN AUTOMATIC EMERGENCY CALL GOES TO THE LOCAL EMERGENCY SERVICE EVERY TIME THE BUTTON IS DEPRESSED! THE COMPACTOR CAN BE LEFT ON ALL THE TIME WITHOUT ANY NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES." This signage is right in your face every time you go to use the compactor and is essentially at eye level, so I frequently take note of it.

Well, earlier this week when I was edging between the control panel and a row of loaded warehouse trolleys with a box full of trash for the other trash compactor, I bumped my shoulder on the trolley and the rebound slightly knocked me into the stop button! And the compactor stopped!

I just stood there in stupefied silence, staring at the compactor like 😨 and wondering what to do while time slowed down around me, automatically thinking: is that really what happened? Was it ME? Yes, nobody else is here. Did I TOUCH it? Yes. I felt it. Did it really DO THE THING? Yes, it was on and it turned off... and right then one of the regular employees came into the warehouse and I was like,

"Hey... um... Ed... uh... I thiiiink... I... accidentally... pushed the stop button... on the compactor... when I was walking by... and... it stopped..."

He came over still totally calm, peered at the compactor, then twisted the stop knob and it popped back out again to its unpressed state. "You just have to pull it back out," he explained. "Then you can turn it on again." And he did.

"So... it's not going to call...?" I pointed at the sign.

"OH! That! Yeah, that's not true. Yeah, I've totally hit it accidentally two or three times and nobody ever came." He shrugged.

I thanked him and said WHEW a bunch and then sort of slumped over with a nervous chuckle, temporarily turned wobbly with relief.

And then when I stopped wobbling I had like twenty minutes of endorphins. There's nothing quite like that sudden and unexpected defusion of terror!