So yesterday I splashed hot water on my hand while making an Awake hot tea. Blisters...I also have burned myself on everything there is possible to burn one's self on in the store. What types of work injuries have you sustained?
Work related injuries: aka the hot water is REALLY **** hot
(56 posts) (43 voices)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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i've scratched myself a couple times on sharp plastic bits, but i've never received a blister from a burn. true story. i've splashed hot water on myself, split coffee over my fingers, had hot latte splashed on my hand, nothing.
usually i'll run the burned area under cold water for a bit. it gets pretty red, but it's never blistered or anything. weird.i guess another injury would be sore wrists, from shaking whips, tea lemonades, unscrewing things, etc. for a while it was excruciating to even bend my wrist, but i don't know. it went away after a bit.
now watch me mega-burn myself at work tomorrow & get an awful blister.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@stagworks, hope not! We call it caramel-tunnel syndrome...the sore wrist from squeezing the bottles. And DT thumb from the headset button.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've gotten blisters making many teas. :< The water really is way too hot! We invested in a big can of burn gel in my store - it's definitely worked since then and you won't get blisters if you apply it right away.
Another thing I hate is when whoever filled the caramels didn't warm them first, so when you go to squeeze the bottle you end up choking the life out of your own hands because it's coming out so slow and you've got like 30 other frappucinos to make.
Probably the worst is when they make me (and it's always me) unpack the order of whole beans for the week. I always nick myself with the boxcutter. :P
Posted 1 year ago # -
That water is hot! I caught it across the forearm once. I still have a nice scar.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've spilled the water on myself tons of times but never gotten an actual burn from it. Other partners have gotten blisters from it so maybe I just have skin like an elephant.
I have a pretty sweet repetitive strain injury though. I spontaneously lose all the strength in my left hand and my fingers go numb. In the process of getting that checked out/fixed.Posted 1 year ago # -
I used to have a cool scar shaped like a butterfly on my wrist from trying to get a pen that had fallen behind the panini grill.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I circumcised my thumb at one of my older jobs. Worked in a deli. Gotta love those meat slicers.
Posted 1 year ago # -
sliced my finger open on a stainless steel ridge while cleaning the fridge - good times
Posted 1 year ago # -
That water is dangerously hot. Ive considered if its even necessary to have it that hot. You should've seen how far my jaw dropped when a lady asked me to make her an XH Americano.. No Room. I looked at her like, "O.o.. Thats impossible, and I wouldn't even try."
During my first week of training to make drinks, My boss was teaching me the Americano though, and she forgot to tell me we shouldn't travel with cups too much. SO I went to turn around and sloshed steaming hot water all over my hand. She freaked out, "Are you okay? Omg, its so red. Are you sure?" Im like, "Calm down. Im pale as hell, of course its red." It burned, but no blisters.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Blisters, blisters, blisters. Bubbling, seeping, bleeding, scabbing, re-opening, bleeding some more, blisters!
Posted 1 year ago # -
My first injury was from pouring a traveler. I got most of the coffee on my hand rather than in the box :\ We have a lot of doctors that come through our store and I stood there with about 3 of them as they tried to tell me what kind of burned it looked like and what I should do about it. Blistered a little but no scar. Hot water burns....cheese burns...oh and I just got a burn from a warmed morning bun that blistered up. I've sliced the top of my hand a few times on a screw or something under the espresso machine. Bruises from running into the open sanitizer....more bruises from slipping while monkey climbing the metro shelves.
A co-worker got a really bad burn on his leg when he was filling up the mop bucket. The hot water went into a shoe and blistered up and down his leg. It was a nasty looking burn :\
Posted 1 year ago # -
bathroom cleaner right in the eye.. rinsed for like 15 minutes lol
Posted 1 year ago # -
I knuckle myself all the time cleaning the espresso machines, the blender tops are impossible to take off, and our dish machine has the sharpest **** edges ever when the door is down
Posted 1 year ago # -
lulu... love the "caramel tunnel syndrome" :)
Where to begin...
- Burns from hot water, of course.
- Tiny little blisters and cuts in my hands from submerging them in freakin hot sanitizer.
- Cuts from all the sharp-edged objects we have at the Bux. Like the edge of the tea container, and even from the handles of the old milk pitchers.
- Repetitive use injuries from pumping syrups and carrying heavy urns of coffee.
- My feet hurt all the time.
- Hot coffee or coffee grounds in the eye... that hurt like heck when it happened.The biggie though was when I hurt my shoulder trying to hoist a way too heavy trash bag of coffee grounds into the dumpster (since people are too lazy to change the bag when they see it getting full. They're also too lazy to double bag it.). The bag burst, coffee grounds got all over me, and I still have a sore shoulder.
Now I'm done complaining. :)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Cuts all over my hands.. Everything is so damn sharp!! And impossible to heal when your hands are constantly wet, and in sanitizer ALL DAY??!! Then adding oven cleaner to the mix.. I'm surprised they just don't fall off..
But I'm now wearing a wrist brace because of Frap Happy Hour.Posted 1 year ago # -
I have destroyed hands from sanitizer too. Ugh. Peeling nails, skin, the works. And I haaaate garbage duty. I'm short and our bags, though double bagged, get SOOOO full they leak and weigh about 50 lbs. It must be HILARIOUS to see me struggling to heave a huge bag into the dumpster with one hand while holding the lid open with the other. Repeat about 4223353 times. Gah! So yeah, shoulder pain is kinda chronic. Oh yeah! Deaf ear from DT headset.
Posted 1 year ago # -
The drawers on our espresso machines are death traps. Whenever I pull them out to empty them or clean them I have to be very careful because the metal handles are really, really jagged because they're broken. Both me and a coworker have sliced our fingers open, and it goes through skin like **** butter. It's scary. His was worse than mine because his didn't stop bleeding for like an hour and he had to keep changing the bandaids because the blood would just saturate them. We thought that he was going to have to go get stitches.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Many injuries at work, no burns though, mostly cuts and bruises. We used to have the old machines and the espresso bar drawer handles always broke, can't tell you how many times I sliced my fingers open on them. Also, just for the record, mango juices burns like hell if you get it in your eye (my eyes were red and watery for days afterward).
Posted 1 year ago # -
squeezing caramel bottles doesn't actually affect me at all. i have no problem with that. it's twisting off the whip charger things that's killer. untwisted a particularly stubborn one today & got a nasty sharp pain for my efforts. oh, summer, i am not looking forward to you.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I had a glass of water near our 3 compartment sink. I do believe some red sanitizer got splashed into the glass. I got real dizzy and started to go blind. Sorta tunnel vision. It lasted for about a half hour.
Posted 1 year ago # -
*someone sprayed hot steam in my eye, i couldnt see for 3 days.
*got a legit burn from my knee to my foot unloading the dishwasher and hot water spilled on me.
*burned hands/fingers numerous times on the urns/hot coffee spillagePosted 1 year ago # -
We get the burns and cuts and blisters. But honestly, most of our injuries come from other partners. At my store half of us are 5'2" or under and the other half are like 6'5" or higher. Which puts the shorter contingency's nose and eyes right in line with the taller sides' elbows. Add that to the amount of sudden turns and a really small bar area for such a busy store and you have a perfect recipe for injuries. We had a partner get elbowed right on her nose. She had two black eyes for over a week.
Posted 1 year ago # -
i stabbed myself in the leg with the jaggedy edges of the dropbox door. i didn't look down and see that it was open and when i leaned forward to avoid a barista collision it stabbed me. there was blood galore dripping down my leg, but the most upsetting part was that now there's a hole in my favorite pair of work pants. i'm glad i didn't get tetanus because those boxes are old and kind of rusty.
i've cut my hands numerous times on the sharp edges under the brewing station, wiping down spills and collecting stray coffee beans.
i had hot milk spill on me once when i dropped a pitcher right after steaming it. it got all over my lower torso and leg, but no permanent scarring.
i get dry skin/numerous small cuts whenever i do deep cleaning and use Spirit or TurboChef cleaner. i use pastry gloves to minimize contact while i have to clean but it always eats through the gloves. the reason i use pastry gloves to clean is because i have to take them off whenever a customer comes in while i'm cleaning and i have to ring and/or bar, and i'll end up going through like 10 pairs if I keep getting interrupted.
recently i got burned by a newbie partner. I was getting hot water for a pour over from the brewing station when the new partner decides to switch out the coffees right by me, and pulls out the basket that's just finished brewing, which dripped scalding coffee all over my hand.
the work injury that pisses me off the most is when an eager beaver customer grabs the lidless coffee refill out of my hand before I can set it down on the counter. this has happened to me like three times, all very painful experiences.
the only time i've seriously thought of filling out an incident report was when i got stabbed in the knee because of the amount of blood, but i ended up not doing it because i didn't feel my injury was serious enough, and to just man it up. i just felt like it would create more paperwork and hassle for everyone and it would be another thing to deal with besides everything else going on at work.
Posted 1 year ago # -
i still have a bruise on my leg from when i walked into the corner of the sanitizer (that someone brilliantly left open)...last july.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I cut my hand to $hit on ice.
I was scooping ice out of the bin when it decided to dump a new batch -- it fell all over my hand and it hurt a bit, but I didn't really think anything of it. A few seconds later, there are a dozen or so tiny, bleeding cuts on the back of my hand. WTF ensued.
Posted 1 year ago # -
My hands and arms are covered in cuts and burns from hot water and fresh mocha and dont forget the steam wand ;)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Speaking of the steam wand, you know those bulbous handles? Our main Mastrena has its handle unscrewed... I scraped a chunk of skin off my forearm on the thin metal end, while passing a drink over a coworker. It's a scar now.
Posted 1 year ago # -
It's not just a scar, it's a badge of service!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Burns and scars from the hot water, badly sprained thumb from lifting a full coffee urn the wrong way (i tried to do it with one hand) neck and shoulder pain from toting full coffee urns across a larfe store countless times a day, and I agree, the sanitizer does weird things to your hands.
Posted 1 year ago #
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