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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/roirraWedorehT on 2026-03-12 20:09:47+00:00.
Actually about 20 years ago. I may have posted this previously, either as a comment on someone else's post here or elsewhere; I don't recall.
I was at work where we were all using our cordless rechargeable drills. Mine was (and still is) an 18V Makita, which is pretty powerful compared to some smaller drills. I normally use its torque settings. For anyone reading this who might not know, that means you can use a setting on the drill to "let go" once it reaches a certain amount of torque, preventing me from overtightening and stripping threads.
We were tightening bolts vertically at mid-chest-level (probably about 60 inches / 5 feet / 1.5 meters off the floor) while standing, and my drill's battery was running low. I probably switched my drill to pure drill mode, without limiting the torque, because I knew lunch was coming very soon.
When the lunch break was announced, I put my dying battery on the charger, inserted a fresh battery into the drill, and went to lunch.
Guess what? Lunch is long enough to forget I now have a fresh battery in my drill, and I probably also left my drill on pure drill mode. I positioned my drill to tighten a new bolt. Because it's a little awkward at that height, I'm close enough that when the bolt tightens very quickly, before I realize my mistake, the bottom of the drill handle (where the battery is) swings around with my hand still on it and hits my upper lip. No stitches necessary, but it was definitely bleeding a bit, and numb.
I was able to tape some wadded up tissue across my upper lip and keep working. There's no scar...for that particular injury.
TL;DR: I switched from a nearly dead battery to a fully charged one on my cordless drill right before lunch. Afterward, the drill hit my upper lip very hard, causing a bit of blood and a lot of laughter from other workers.