Siren Song
I used to work in a warehouse packing screws into boxes. It was attached to the factory that made the screws, so the noise volumes were impressive to say the least.

Some bright spark in the office had the idea of attaching a siren to our phone to ensure that we could hear it when it rang.

Our phone rang a lot. Generally every 5 minutes. So we were subjected to a barrage of a constant siren, but it's surprising what you can get used to after a while.

We used to get school leavers come and work for us - never the sharpest tools in the box, but often good entertainment value.

I was sat at the computer carrying out some stock control when Richie, my boss, wandered over with a strange look on his face. "Watch Darren". Darren was our latest recruit.

So we watched. The phone rang. The siren went off. Darren went bright red and was clearly about to explode. "The siren's driving him nuts" chuckled Richie.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, and the phone rang again.

At which point Darren carried out his experiment: he looked down at his index finger on his right hand, walked over to the wailing siren - and shoved his finger in it, presumably to make it stop. We just stood and watched in fascinated horror.

A siren is made of two metal discs with holes in which rotate at different speeds. If the experiment is to see what might make this stop, a fleshy digit may not be the preferred option.

It certainly wasn't for Darren - it took the end of his finger off. We were still laughing as he was carted off to hospital.

Top experiment - but one that left Darren unable to point.


[True story - I wasn't actually planning on making a dumb pun at the end, it just kind of came out.]
(Steve The Monkey, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 14:23, 1 reply)

just as funny
as the first time I read it
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 17:09, closed)