Current Mood: Alarmed

I’ve often had a fear of unexplained death, I mean who doesn’t fear that? You’re just minding your own business and then all of a sudden *poof*– you’re dead! Wow that has to suck. Little did I know that my work place would become a player in a dangerous case involving natural gas.

So here I am at work Friday night. I had just come back from break and was situated in the drive-thru as usual. I’d felt fine before but now 45 minutes later… Not so much. I was really lightheaded and I felt like I was going to fall asleep. I’m standing in my spot taking orders and wondering how I went from feeling just fine to feeling nauseous and super tired in less than an hour.

So I walked over to Nicole, the manager on shift and told her honestly “I don’t feel well”. I didn’t want to come off as a complainer so I wanted to be sure something was amiss before I mentioned it. It’s that moment that she says “that’s ironic because I keep smelling gas”. That really caught me offguard, I figured it was the heat or a stomach bug. She told me to sit down and not long after, when she realized I wasn’t getting any better and others were complining of lightheadedness, she pulled me off drive-thru and I worked on other things.

Another half hour goes by and I’m not feeling any better and that’s when the nausea hit full force. I don’t think I need to spell out the rest of the details but that was when she told me to go home.

About an hour after leaving the headache began to subside and my stomach righted itself. The next morning I headed to work and immediatly get quizzed about my illness and asked how I was feeling. There were trucks from the gas company as well as corporate outside. It seems that after I left it got really bad and Nicole had called the fire department.

To conclude th story they did find a leak, actally they found three. And the reason I had gotten so sick was because the biggest one was on the roof and since gas weighs more than oxygen it was getting pushed down the air conditioning vents and one of those is directly above the drive-thru. No doubt there was probably carbon monoxide involved which is why I felt tired. I’m just glad they found them.