SilentThief, I can so identify with that. I was a pro chef for years too, and I've chopped the very tip of my left thumb off at least 3 or 4 times. Every time, while chopping heads of lettuce. There's just something evil about the combination of a just slightly dull knife and a whole head of lettuce. That's why I always buy the bag salad nowadays.
AFA gross stories, well, I can tell you a million kitchen related ones. But there is one that sticks out most.
I was working at a big Hotel/Banquet facility, and we were getting ready for a big party. One of the assistant cooks was slicing steaks off a rib roast. He had the meat slicer(identical to the ones you see in deli's) set to cut 1 1/2" slices. He was working his way through a pile of roasts, and the rest of the kitchen was busy with preparations for a big banquet.
Well, at some point, someone was carrying a large tub of oil from one end of the kitchen to the other, and it was leaking, leaving a small trail of oil all over the floor. I was walking by with a stack of baking sheets, so that I could load the steaks onto them and get them ready for grilling. As you probably guessed, I hit the oil, lost my footing, fell into the guy, and *ZIP*, there went his thumb. He started screaming, obviously going into shock. I scrambled up, whipped off my apron, and clamped my hand and apron around the stump. The soux chef managed to find the thumb, we packed it in ice, several of us carried the guy(who had passed out about the time that I grabbed his hand and applied pressure) out to the hotel van, and we got him and his thumb to the hospital.
Fortunately, we got him there in time and the thumb was re-attachable. It was always a lot stiffer than before, and he had some trouble with holding things, but he was ok overall. Lucky for me, he never blamed me, so we remained friends. He was ready to kill the guy with the oil container though.