The worst I had was in the Army. In my training company at Ft Devins, we volunteered to help the SF train doing blood draws. My arm was FUBARed for a month lol.
Hahahaha...military with their needles and injections!
When I was in Boot Camp at Great Lakes, there we were, all in our underwear, freshly shorn heads, standing in several long parallel lines, one behind the other, each line marching to a separate desk at the front of the room where our blood was to be drawn.
There was a guy on a platform at the front of the room behind the row of blood draw desks, and he was yelling out instructions to the recruits:
THERE WILL BE NO TALKING. ANYONE TALKING WILL BE SENT TO HAPPY HOUR. THERE IS A CORPSMAN COMING DOWN EACH LINE, YOU WILL BE HANDED A GLASS TUBE FOR YOUR BLOOD SAMPLE. YOU WILL HOLD THIS TUBE IN YOUR LEFT HAND. YOU ARE NOT TO EXAMINE IT OR DO ANYTHING WITH IT UNTIL YOU ARE ASKED FOR IT WHEN YOU GET TO THE DESK....
My best friend who had gone into the Navy with me on the Buddy System was standing right in front of me, and I remember looking at the back of his shorn head and thinking how funny it looked, and saw that his head was inclined slightly looking down.
Right at the point the shouting Petty Officer said “...YOU ARE NOT TO EXAMINE IT OR DO ANYTHING TO IT...” I heard a soft “bloop” come from the front of me. I saw my buddy’s head freeze, then saw it moving slightly as if he was doing something. Suddenly, I heard him whisper in a panic “The top came off! I can’t get it back in!”
He had been examining it and fiddling with it, and the top popped off the vacuum tube! I think I heard him whisper something like “should I ask for another one” but then he said with unmistakeable relief “I got it!” so he got the rubber stopper back in.
But the vacuum was gone. When he got to the front, I recall the Corpsman drawing couldn’t get any blood to come out, and he looked up and eyed my buddy suspiciously, and I think he grabbed another tube!
That same day (I think) as we were sitting side by side on the deck while they were distributing clothing articles to us, he was fingering his shorn head and making some comment about bumps and scars, and I whispered hoarsely “Shut up! Don’t talk, or...” and this guy yelled out YOU! SPOT DOG! STAND UP!
I was wearing wire rimmed glasses, the first pair my parents had ever bought for me, and as an added feature, they allowed me to get those lenses that darkened in sunlight, a fairly new feature in glasses then. Up until then, I had worn those black plastic BCD glasses (Birth Control Device glasses!) and these were an extravagance for my parents. But a month or two before I went in, I broke one of the lens, and they replaced it for me, but...they didn’t get the same amount of the chemical in the lens, so when there was ANY light, one lens got far darker than the other, which gave me a bizarre Dr. Strangelovian look! (When I went into the AFEES building in Boston on the day we went in (Armed Forces Entrance Examination Station?) they almost didn’t let me join because of my bizarre glasses!
Anyway, when the Petty Officer yelled out YOU! SPOT DOG! STAND UP! my heart sank, because I knew it was ME! They didn’t send me to Happy Hour that day, but I had to stand there for the next hour at attention in my underwear while everyone else got processed, my dark blue navy issue utility hat held in front of my face by the bill of the cap clenched in my teeth, and the people processing us walked by and threw gum wrappers and other pieces of refuse in it which I probably went cross-eyed watching them drop in!
That was a long day...:)