The world round

 Repeatedly being shown this commercial on Bloomberg TV (for the little graphs of the market indexes) without listening to the audio.  And over and over I get annoyed with this lady bending over to pick up one of those five-gallon plastic water bottles to replace the one she'd emptied.

Sure, it's possible to safely move the things, I've done it many times.  But certainly not the way she does it.  Apparently the character she's playing (I doubt the actress injured herself) doesn't realize how heavy that much water is.

Basic rule I learned in the late 1980s in cooking school, "A pint is a pound the world round."  That's the approximate weight of a pint of water.  It's actually 1.04 pounds and change, at 62 degrees F, but close enough for estimating.

So, a pint is a pound, roughly.  Two pints in a quart, so a quart weighs about 2 pounds.  Four quarts in a gallon, so eight pounds in a gallon.  So... that five gallon bottle weighs about 40 pounds.

You do not try to lift 40 pounds with your back, you use your legs. 

I know this far too well, given I foolishly decided I'd be fine to throw a 50-pound sack of chemicals on my shoulder to haul it up to my line at the plant, cause all the younger machine operators were doing it.

Then I went to the Workers Comp doctor, got surgery, and spent six months on extremely light duty.  I knew better, but "all the other guys do it..."

Water doesn't seem like it should be all that heavy.  We lift a gallon here and there with no major concern (eight pounds), so we don't think of water being that heavy, especially when we're still young, immortal and indestructible.

Till we get injured.

Lift with your damn legs, lady!  Geesh.