Thursday 2 May 2013

"The Fly"

At my place of work we have a system for reporting accidents and near misses, as do most places of work.  Sometimes people make informative and factual reports, with or without grammatical errors, but once in a while a modern classic gets into the system.

One such report went like the following paragraph.  I have edited it slightly but only to correct the punctuation and not to change the words or meaning.  In local folk-lore it is now known as "The Fly". 


[Our building] has a fly problem. Recently a large bug zapper has been installed. It's very impressive. Whilst waiting for a key exchange I observed several winged insects meet their end in the device. One in particular was most spectacular, lodging between the electrodes and catching fire as the miniature lightning bolts seared over its dancing carcass. Then its fried insides explosively outgassed through a weakness in its exoskeleton and the flaming body erupted from the grill. Clearing the insect collection plate it tumbled down under the force of gravity onto the paperwork beneath, still aflame. The solid paper sheets didn't have me launching out of the seat to beat them out, but had the remains landed in the tissue box I suspect it would be a different story.

Of course the author has to remain anonymous, but I credit him all the same. 

1 comment:

LadyAtheist said...

Excellent! I wouldn't jump up to save a stack of paper in an office, either. ... unless I'd be the one who would have to re-do it and get half a dozen signatures on it.