Sunday, September 9, 2007

Bleach

Working yesterday at one of the little pharmacies I work at I had an interesting question.

"How much bleach is too much to drink?" asked the woman, who was a little hesitant in her question. I assumed her demeanor was due to the ridiculous nature of the question.

Not quite sure how to respond, I asked her "How much did you drink?"

"Well, to be honest, not a lot. I had a glass on my nightstand and took a drink, I thought it was water but spit it out as soon as I realized it wasn't." she replied.

"Well, I don't think you've done too much damage if you didn't swallow any, I'd say you should probably drink lots of water today though, just to dilute anything that may have gone down." I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about but hoped that I sounded confident enough to not scare her into going to poison control.

She left with a sheepish look on her face and we were both kind of laughing at the situation. It was pretty funny... no one was hurt, right? Lets hope.

Moral of the story: If you're going to leave a glass of bleach just lying around, maybe slap a label on it. Or... sniff whatever you're about to drink before you drink it.

2 comments:

Reena said...

its her own stupidity.. who the hell puts bleach in a drinking glass?

Anonymous said...

HA HA. Good story. I have a similar one. A lady came into my pharmacy last week asking for Dettol. I had never heard of it prior, but tracked it down to the household cleaning aisle. After showing her where it was she immediately grabbed a bottle and ran off laughing saying she uses it to gargle with. I don't know about you, but I don't put anything in my mouth to gargle with that says "CORROSIVE" on the label. Further inspection of the label says to dilute the cleaner (1ml in 100ml H2O) before using to clean your kitchen. Nice.
Ttyl,
Brooke