Sunday, January 20, 2008

Hugo Chavez paid my bus fare



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2 comments:

ziz said...

Beware ! With Ken on board it may not just be the bus that is burning ethanol.

A time for a cautionary tale ..

Cory Neddermeyer, 42, of Iowa, lost his unemployment benefits in a failed discrimination claim following his retrenchment from an ethanol plant after an almost fatal dose of automobile fuel.

The recovering alcoholic had a near death experience when he swallowed the 190-proof fluid on the sly while working at Amaizing Energy in Denison, Iowa. He was hospitalised with a ridiculously high blood alcohol reading of 0.72; 14.4 times the Australian driving limit and twice what is expected to kill the average adult.

Neddermeyer consumed the fuel when he found an unexpected spill had been caught in a holding pond at the plant. When asked why he succumbed to temptation, the maintenance technician had this to say:

"I am a recovering alcoholic, and I thought about the availability of this alcohol throughout the day."

Eventually the surplus of free booze got the better of him.

"Curious about the taste and its effects, I dipped into this lake of liquor and drank what I considered to be two to three ounces,” Neddermeyer wrote in an official statement. “The next thing I remember is waking up in Crawford County Memorial Hospital."

At the hearing, his boss, Jeff Bruck, was flabbergasted by his employee’s actions.

"This is a fuel alcohol," the plant manager told the court. "This is an explosive product."

The matter came to court when Neddermeyer entered a claim for unemployment benefits. He asserted that Amaizing Energy was jointly responsible for his intoxication because the spill had provided him with an opportunity to drink alcohol. That he was subsequently fired was, in his opinion, a case of discrimination against an employee obviously suffering from the disease of alcoholism.

Justice Hillary had this to say:

"The employer has a right to expect employees not to drink the fuel. Just because some of the ethanol leaked onto the floor is not a good reason for the claimant to drink automobile fuel."

Neddermeyer’s claim was comprehensively denied. When asked why he had tucked in to the potentially lethal fuel, he replied:

"I don't have a good explanation for that. Curiosity?"

The man admitted to having struggled with alcoholism for over a decade.

"Things were going pretty well until that day at work," he lamented.

20 January 2008 at 23:37
Merkin said...

I was sitting in the Town Square in a Polish city with a couple of expat biz men.
Some of the local holigans went past with a bottle of something and, trying to be flash, I shouted for them to give me a slug.
'Ok, once we come back from the shop'.
They did come back and poured me a fair measure.
I drank it in a single gulp and realised my mistake immediately.
They had been in the shop to buy bread to filter the Methylated Spirits and the clear liquid I had thought was Wodka was rather special.
'The next thing I remember is waking up in Crawford County Memorial Hospital.' resonates with me - though in my case I ordered a taxi straightaway and was able to get home before collapsing into bed.
Halcyon Days.

21 January 2008 at 00:50

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