Play with water and you'll get burned... wait a second

The dish washing machine I use at work is one of those automated kinds that pulls the racks of dishes through to the other side, and out of the dishwasher. Since it's longer, dishes can fall out of the racks and cause all sorts of problems. This is why there is a door/hatch/whatever that slides open in the middle so you can easily get to whatever obstruction there may be.

There is a downside to this hatch however: the dishwasher will still start whether it's closed or not. Well that's not so bad. You have to flip a switch to turn it on so why on earth would you turn it on if the hatch is open?

Because its always closed when you turn it on. Except for tonight.

Forgetting that I opened the hatch to remove a plastic cup a couple minutes prior, I turned the machine on while walking past the open hatch. There's a split second between the machine starting up and near-boiling water shooting out of the high powered jets, so luckily I was mostly out of the way when said near-boiling water erupted from the open hatch. I say mostly because I spun around realizing the hatch was still open and tried to hit the switch to turn it off.

It was already too late and I instinctively threw up my arms to shield my face from the scorching torrent, blasting forth from the machine with little regard for how big of mess it was making. It got my right arm pretty good and, thankfully, not much else. I tried to find something long enough to reach the switch but there was nothing I could think of. Carlos, the cook I was closing with, came to the rescue and climbed over the glass rack to the side with the power switch and turned off the machine.

It sucked because for all intents and purposes, it was going to be a really easy night. Hardly any dishes, and no freaking banquets to worry about. Unfortunately there was now a big mess to clean up (it was only water, but there was a lot of it), and my right arm was killing me. Again, Carlos helped me out and gave me some cooking oil to slather on my arm which helped to lessen the pain.

For the rest of the night I kept double checking to make sure the hatch really was closed this time before I turned the machine on. The more I thought about what happened the more scared I became of what could have happened. What if I wasn't already walking as I turned it on? What if I was crouched over, my head right next to the hatch like I always am when I turn it on? I could have really gotten hurt.

What's weird is right now I can't even see where the burns are because of the lighting at my house. At work they were clear as day but it's probably because of the fluorescent lighting there. I don't need to see them to know they're there but it's weird to have a buzzing/tingling sensation
when there's no sign of why. I just hope it feels better before I go to work tomorrow.

Last thing I need is all the steam and errant water sprays pissing off an already irritated dermis. I had enough of that tonight.