Rotten Office Fridge Cleanup Sends 7 To Hospital 410
bokske writes "An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill. Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday, after the flagrant fumes prompted someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in. Just another day at the office."
Paaaleeese (Score:4, Insightful)
Bring on the comments about how so-and-so knows somebody's grandma that was so affected by smell xyz that something bad happened. Big whoop. Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
And please, just because you don't have a sense of smell, doesn't mean you're immune to pathogens.
So much wrong.. must resist reference to idle section... oops too late!
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Insightful)
Untrue. The article explicitly states that the person cleaning the fridge was not affected (effected?) due to allergies which prevent her from smelling. Allergies do not give you superhuman resistance to chlorine gas.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Smell alone can cause violent reactions. While I was in the kitchen one time, for some reason the smell of the cut tomatoes got to me and I started getting very ill.
The tomatoes were perfectly fine, there was nothing toxic in the air, but the tomato smell was just so incredibly overpowering I was a hair's width away from puking.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there is a difference between "the smell of the diaper made me hurl" to "the smell caused me to go to the hospital". Maybe I am wrong, but I would tend to think some folks might have overreacted a bit to the stench. Sounds to me like one person became ill, and then the programmed herd instinct took over. Then, the cynical side of me wonders how many folks wanted a day off of work.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, I am now officially this thread's troll.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, they should get a free training day as a digestion tower diver from their boss.
If I were their boss, I'd totally do it. :D
And: Yes, that is an actual job! You wear scuba gear, and jump into a 40C hot pool of shit, pee, an other "enzymes" and stuff. I think you have to have a dead nose and no wife to do that job. ^^
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Insightful)
Mocking medical conditions isn't really a good way to endear yourself.
Further, these people weren't exactly garbage men, plumbers or others who have to expect green haze during the daily grind. This is cube farm work. These people didn't expect to be drenched in the foul odor of Beelzebub's flatulence when they clocked in.
Finally, when you get a call about an office keeling over from smells, are you going to (a) figure out what happened or (b) make sure the people are all right? I'm not the most humanitarian person but I'm going to pick (b) and err on the side of caution.
The one cleaning had allergies and wasn't affected. Good. But maybe she just has a poor sense of smell through genetics? Some people can't taste broken aspirin. Others...can.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's what I'm saying. Buck up! It's just a smell. Some people work around bad smells, they learn to live with it.
If a smell makes you puke are you sure it was just the smell and not something else? How do you tell?
Nature has conditioned most animals, including us, to puke and otherwise have bad reactions to harmful substances. Sometimes it is simply due to some sort of genetic programming wherein our bodies know that some bad tastes and bad smells mean something is fucked up and we don't want that shit anywhere near us.
What would you do? (Score:5, Insightful)
So here you are working in an office building, when you start to smell a terrible stench of decay and harsh chemicals. You have no idea what caused this smell. You then proceed to vomit due to the smell, but you don't know that it is only because of the smell. What would you do?
You got marked troll because you demonstrated not only an inability to put yourself into someone else's shoes, but a smug sense of superiority over those people that you can't empathize with. And then you had the gracelessness to whine about getting marked troll. Paaaleeeese.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Funny)
Effect = Noun
Not always!
"Barack Obama sought the office of President of the United States of America because of his deep desire to effect change in Washington."
Grammatically correct, yet factually wrong. He wanted to "effect change" in his wallet. And in his KFC bucket.
Oops, too soon? Sorry.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Informative)
"Affected" is correct in the text provided by MyLongNickName, so the statement by Tiny1877 is at least partially correct.
Tiny1877 is also correct for general usage - when you visited the dictionary, you would have found the first few entries of "Affect" treating it as a verb, whereas the first few entries of "Effect" would have referenced usage as a noun.
Oh, maybe I should have thrown in a sensational start to this post, to increase my chance of being noticed...
Ammonia & Bleach (Score:5, Informative)
I think it was when they began cleaning with bleach and chased it with ammonia that did the trouble started.
For the uninitiated: http://everything2.com/title/Mixing%2520bleach%2520and%2520ammonia%2520does%2520not%2520make%2520a%2520super%2520cleaner [everything2.com]
"Exactly why should you not mix ammonia and bleach?
In a nutshell, the combination produces corrosive substances in your airways that cause your lungs to fill with fluid. You drown.
Household bleach is usually about 5% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl).When mixed with ammonia (NH3), mono- and di-chloramines are formed: NH2Cl and NH2Cl2. These cause respiratory tract irritation, tearing, and nausea.
Worse, these compounds decompose in water to form ammonia gas (nasty in itself) and hypochlorous acid. This last in the presence of water forms hydrochloric acid and nascent (monoatomic) oxygen, which are highly reactive and can lead to pulmonary edema and pneumonia.
There are several ways household ammonia and bleach can react. All of them are dangerous.
Reaction type 1: Ammonia directly reacts with bleach to form hydrazine (N2H4, which, in addition to being extremely poisonous, can burn even in the absence of air! It explodes on contact with rust!
2NH3 + NaOCl -----> N2H4 + NaCl + H2O
Reaction type 2: Bleach hydrolyzes into sodium hydroxide and hypochlorous acid, which in turn decompose into chlorine gas and nascent oxygen (both poisonous). The chlorine gas in turn reacts with the ammonia to form chloramines, also very poisonous.
NaOCl -----> NaOH + HOCl
HOCl ---> HCl + O (monatomic oxygen)
NaOCl + 2HCl -----> Cl2 + NaCl + H2O
2NH3 + Cl2 -------> 2NH2Cl (chloramine)
4NH3 + 2Cl2 ------> 2NHCl2 (dichloramine)
6NH3 + 3Cl2 ------> NCl3 (trichloramine or nitrogen trichloride)"
Re:Ammonia & Bleach (Score:5, Funny)
I know what I'm doing this weekend!
Re:Ammonia & Bleach (Score:5, Funny)
Getting ass-raped by Homeland Security?
Re:Ammonia & Bleach (Score:5, Informative)
While the parent does an excellent job at explaining why one should not mix ammonia and bleach, and as much as I hate to admit (on slashdot) that I read the article, it must be mentioned that the article does not specify the chemicals used. So, we can't assume that it was this combination that caused the workers to need hospitalization.
Re:Ammonia & Bleach (Score:5, Informative)
This didn't happen. The person cleaning the fridge wasn't affected.
Hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
> It wasn't really the smell per se...
No. It was the hysteria. "Ohno! A smell! A SMELL!! A STRONG SMELL!!! Oh my god! We're all going to DIE!! Call 911!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Interesting)
That's really interesting. I have the opposite reaction— my immune system doesn't recognise new pollens until I've been exposed to them for about a year. Living abroad was heaven.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Funny)
The fungus took my baby!
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Funny)
A bebbee et mah dingo!
sounds like vegimite (Score:5, Funny)
just smelling it killed my apetite for a month.
new Zealanders eat it like as if it were creamcheese
could have been vegimite
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's "Vegemite" and yes, it is an "acquired taste"
(best acquired in childhood)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You think that's bad, try the most ethnic thing I cold find in the world of Japanese cooking: Natto.
It's a mixture that looks and smells and tastes exactly like barf. Unrecognizeable multi-colored chunks of who-knows-what are mixed together in a clear sticky slime apparently gathered from the tracks of snails, almost like a glue, far stickier than honey, and otherwise flavorless. Anyway, that's my memory of trying it-- a life-altering event, to be sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natto [wikipedia.org]
Now remember, this is
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Informative)
It's one thing if spores cause an infection- but going to the hospital cause you don't like a smell? I mean come on. Grow a pair, you know?
RTFA. The fridge was full of mold. Many folks are allergic to mold, especially in quantity.
Re: (Score:2)
Some forms of mold can be toxic even to those not specifically allergic to mold.
A friend of mine and his wife got quite sick after cleaning out her brother's fridge, and he still has some lingering health effects from the mold exposure.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
Now, from TFA:
Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment - she can't smell because of allergies.
I don't think a lack of the sense of smell makes you immuned. They were grossed out by a harmless smell, apparently. RTFA.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What do you think odors are? They are chemicals.
If chemicals induce vomiting, they are affecting your health... repeated vomiting can have some nasty effects (like difficulties breathing due to rib muscle injury, or major capillary damage that can affect eyesight, or aspiration of stomach contents leading to pulmonary infection).
Never mind potential allergic reactions.
And never mind
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Insightful)
If chemicals induce vomiting, they are affecting your health... repeated vomiting can have some nasty effects (like difficulties breathing due to rib muscle injury, or major capillary damage that can affect eyesight, or aspiration of stomach contents leading to pulmonary infection).
Don't forget vocal chord rupture. [progrock.com] James Labrie of Dream Theater had this happen after eating in Cuba and getting food poisoning. Ten years later, he was fully recovered. In the meantime, he had nowhere near the vocal range that he used to. (parodied in the James Labrie Action Figure [blobvandam.com] commercial)
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Insightful)
It is human nature to vomit at the smell of noxious fumes (that's why they are called noxious); this is a biological trait that has evolved as a survival response to eating tainted food.
I don't know if you've ever had a bout of violent vomiting that lasted several minutes. Pulled rib muscles, capillary damage resulting in bleeding from nasal passages and the eyes, esophageal bleeding... a couple of these items require medical examination. When I was an EMT, we had a guy who was throwing up due to overeating and not chewing his food properly, and he had a heart attack, likely from the increase in blood pressure/pulse rate while vomiting. He had no idea he was having a heart attack, he thought he just had painful vomiting.
If there is an unknown risk (which is quite possible), seeking medical evaluation is important. Both for liability reasons (you KNOW the employer needs to cover their ass) and for humane reasons. What if there was a bigger issue, such as toxins? Are you medically qualified to rule that out? Do you think anyone in that office was?
And I'll give you a little hint about office morale... having several employees puking their guts out is a bad idea. Sending them directly home is callous. Making sure they are OK is the right thing to do, and medical evaluation is the right way to do it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bring on the comments about how so-and-so knows somebody's grandma that was so affected by smell xyz that something bad happened. Big whoop. Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
How about comments from the spouse of a US Army master sergeant (26 years, now retired) who can describe olfactory assault agents that cause "nausea and vomiting" (per TFA) so severe that the the target is disabled for days to weeks? The gastrointestinal system continues to react to anything ingested with physically debilitating spasms for days, and the sphincter and peristalsis musculatures is strained to such a degree that they can't function properly for weeks. Unless they are allowed to heal by providi
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst smell I've ever encountered: In a former life, I used to be a sheriff. One day I went to impound an old station wagon -- I could smell it from many feet away. I broke a window on the side of the car with the intent of seeing what's what, and immediately vomited on the street and ran away as fast as I could. I called the fire department to come with their Scott air packs to hook up the car and tow it to furthest back corner of the impound yard. After getting it to the impound yard, we examined it and discovered a liquified goo in a couple of large garbage bags in the back of the station wagon. The goo also contained small bones. We sampled it and sent the goo to the crime lab, thinking that it was parts of a rotted-away body. It turned out to be the remains of a large dog.
Nobody could go near that car without breathing apparatus. The smell apparently wouldn't kill you (I'm still here) but it sure did make me sick.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I used to work in residential property management. We had a "skip", where someone behind on their rent just moves out in the middle of the night and you have no idea they're gone until you show up with the Sheriff to boot them out/change the locks. Upon entering this one apartment, it was obvious the power had been off for quite a while. Yours truly was the lucky guy to open the fridge. Not only was it full of food, but in the freezer was what used to be at least a 15 lb turkey. Needless to say, it was more than aromatic. After several attempts to fumigate/disinfect/deodorize, we had to dispose of the fridge altogether and buy a new one.
2. The worst one was, in my early 20's my roommate (at the time) and I lived in a rather seedy section of town in a cheap apartment. The laundry room at the bottom of our common hallway flooded and mildewed the carpets, which began to smell pretty bad. After the smells got unusually overwhelming and after many many many complaints, management entered the unit down one floor and across the hall from our place (the one we walked past to get into our place every night). Turns out our neighbor had been stabbed, and died while trying to crawl for his front door. His body was literally melting into the carpet on the other side of the door. My poor roommate happened to be walking by the door while the homicide cops were there. The body had been removed, but he later said that it looked like someone had dropped a Jello mold on the carpet. **shudder** I will never forget that smell.
Re:Paaaleeese (Score:5, Informative)
You can handle it most of the time, and to a certain extent.
I spent a year working in a lab where one of my duties was preparing fluid extracts from drilled core samples of landfills for analysis. Most of the time it was just a nasty smell, and work was done under a fume hood, so it wasn't that bad.
But one or two times the core drilling had really hit jackpot; the slightest whiff out of the fume hood and breakfast was coming up. None of the usual 'eww, ick, blech, that really stinks', just the sensation of something hitting the olfactory sense followed by immediate backwards rerun of the last meal, then wondering what the hell just happened. And then continuing further work without breathing through the nose (or, preferably, breathing elsewhere in the room and holding my breath while working with the samples).
Of course, as I knew pretty much what I was working with and knew there was no significant exposure anyway there was no need to seek medical attention. But if they managed to strike similar gold in the realm of olfactory adventures, I can certainly understand that they may be a bit shaken. In combination with an uncertainty about the cleaning chemicals a visit to the doctor might not be entirely uncalled for.
With some nauseating fumes toughing it out simply isn't an option, they trigger some form of autonomous immediate purge signal. Considering the number of vomiting agents that have been developed as non-lethal weapons, it's not that surprising if random decomposition biochemistry happens to brew us one of its own every now and then.
Cowboy Bebop, Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cowboy Bebop, Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
It's livin' in the Fridge! you can't stop the mold from groooooowwwiiinnnn...
Re:Cowboy Bebop, Anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure if you're referencing it, but someone already made the link:
Cowboy Bebop / Weird Al Anime Music Video [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I came here to say this, but I see you have it covered.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Toys in the Attic:
"So what was the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge."
I was just about to post the same thing. I wonder whether the hazmat team included a kid to just eat the offending rot.
Apparantly (Score:3, Funny)
Chemistry lab (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chemistry lab (Score:5, Interesting)
Be glad you weren't working next to an intense lachrymator like some of the ethyne derivatives. It's amazing to watch someone open a container in a fume hood and within ten seconds everyone in the lab is running for the door with tears streaming down their faces (and retching.)
A terminal diamine only one carbon off cadaverine is named putrescine. It's also pretty nasty. Even purified butyric acid is astoundingly horrible stuff: years later, even a whiff of slightly rancid butter (from which name butyric acid derives) makes my stomach turn.
Re:Chemistry lab (Score:4, Funny)
Occasionally you get a chem student who thinks the fume hood works like the sneeze guard at a salad bar and forgets that he has to actually turn it on himself.
Re:Chemistry lab (Score:5, Interesting)
A highway traffic patrol officer I used to know had an accident at his weigh scale station once. A shelf containing toilet bowl cleaner and a bottle of bleach fell off of the wall behind the toilet and broke. He had to crawl out of the station on his hands and knees. Afterward he showed me his cap badge which had corroded where it was hanging on a coat hook. They had to replace most of the electronics in the scale after that.
Moral: Never put bleach and toilet bowl cleaner on the same shelf.
Better be careful... (Score:2, Funny)
I hear you can be arrested for taking pictures of an open 'fridge's innards. ;-)
=Smidge=
Indiana Jones (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Indiana Jones (Score:4, Funny)
Of course not. He has never, and will never, be in a fridge. NEVER EVER!
The main rule (Score:5, Funny)
If you can't tell what something is through the plastic wrapper due to strange color or texture, then don't open it! Nothing good ever came out of one of these packages.
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Funny)
Likewise, when someone says 'Hey, smell this,' never, NEVER do it. It will not end well.
That's the first rule I taught my children. Then I moved on to that talking to strangers thing.
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Informative)
As a former chemist, I'm willing to smell something, but I never let anyone stick something in my face; if I'm going to smell something, it's either going to be on a flat surface, or in MY hand. Then I "waft" the scent towards my nose from a good distance with my hand, and if I still can't smell anything, then I might go closer.
Acid fumes teach you that lesson real quick.
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Funny)
if I'm going to smell something, it's either going to be on a flat surface, or in MY hand.
Acid fumes teach you that lesson real quick.
Let me get this straight so I don't mess it up ... if I'm going to be smelling acid fumes, I should pour the acid on my hand first?
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Funny)
That's a pretty good rule for dating, as well.
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Insightful)
My last employer was decently small (~100 people), and there were strict rules to try to prevent this problem:
If it has no name, throw it out, even if it's not yours.
If it has a name but no date, ask the person about it, and throw it out if they don't say "keep it". If they tell you they'll take care of it, don't believe them.
If it has a name and an old date, ask the person about it, and be prepared to throw it out.
Every month or so, send out an e-mail saying "Everything in the fridge gets thrown out by the end of the day.", and then do it.
My current employer is a larger company, and just has a policy of emptying all fridges at the end of every week.
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for a company that built label printers. They conveniently placed an automatic label printer at every fridge. You pressed a button, and a label would print out with an expiration date. Anything past expiration or without a label was tossed daily.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked for a company that built label printers. They conveniently placed an automatic label printer at every fridge. You pressed a button, and a label would print out with an expiration date. Anything past expiration or without a label was tossed daily.
How did the printer know what the expiry date should be? Or was it always just one week hence or the like?
Re:The main rule (Score:5, Funny)
If it has a name but no date, LEAVE IT ON THEIR DESK ON FRIDAY at 5:00PM.
If it has a name and an old date, LEAVE IT ON THEIR DESK ON FRIDAY at 5:00PM.
Every month or so, check if anyone is on a 3 week vacation, then send out an e-mail saying "Everything in the fridge gets LEFT ON THE VACATIONERS DESK", and then do it.
And the one cleaning the fridge? (Score:4, Funny)
28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.
There is no justice.
Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment â" she can't smell because of allergies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like 28 people made shit up to go home early and take a couple of days.
Strange coincidence (Score:2)
There's something weird in the fridge today... (Score:2)
...I don't know what it is.
Food I can't recogni-i-ize...
Re:There's something weird in the fridge today... (Score:5, Funny)
You idiots.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"Someone has disposed of all our blue, furry food!"
Oh Man! They threw Away My Lunch! (Score:2, Funny)
Aha! (Score:2, Funny)
My fridge... (Score:2, Funny)
If someone opened my fridge right now....I'd be charged with chemical or biological warfare...it's horrendous.
The lower compartments I haven't opened in several months and I know whatever is growing down there is alive...
Food goes to its grave in my fridge.
It wasn't the Fridge... (Score:5, Funny)
Note that if you read the sentence carefully, there is nothing that said the fridge itself was the cause of the odor!
"AN OFFICE WORKER cleaning a fridge full of rotten food CREATED A SMELL so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital..."
I'm pretty sure every office has one of those guys...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know what it was, but it had the power to clear the second-floor break room in about 30 seconds.
Not Friday... (Score:3, Funny)
Just another day at the office for me... (Score:5, Informative)
--of course I have job sites on sewer pumping stations and waste-water treatment plants.
Not only does it smell bad where I work, but it can kill you if you're not careful. People dump all sorts of things down the drain that they shouldn't. I've heard stories of entire tanker loads of gasoline getting dumped, Ether, Perc [epa.gov], Jet fuel, and some mysterious stuff that glowed blue coming from what used to be called the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST).
During large thunderstorms, the sewer pipes often see huge flows that scour all the grease that people dump down the drain (DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!) in to large globs the size of beach balls. These tend to block flow at the waste-water stations and cause sewer backup until someone can get down there and pitch-fork it apart.
And Mike Rowe thinks HE does dirty jobs...
Re:Just another day at the office for me... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The hard part is getting him there exactly when we have the first few thunderstorms of the season. That's when most of the grease from the previous fall and winter gets scoured from the pipe walls.
Re:Just another day at the office for me... (Score:4, Funny)
>During large thunderstorms, the sewer pipes often see huge flows that scour all the grease that people dump down the drain (DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!) in to large globs the size of beach balls. These tend to block flow at the waste-water stations and cause sewer backup
There's an easy solution to this problem: start dumping chips of plutonium down the all the drains. Whenever there's a stop-up, they'll collect in a mass and that'll fix the blockage.
You may observe that there are some collateral problems with dumping lots of plutonium down the drain. I have an answer for that, too: we train gorillas to go into the sewers and collect all the plutonium chips that haven't been used. Then once winter comes...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Radioactive Gorillas? That's almost as good as Sharks with Frickin' lasers!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was actually basing that on a real-life incident at Hanford in Washington. They had lathes machining plutonium under oil lubrication, and they had drain systems to catch the oil and pump it to a place where they could recover the plutonium.
At one point in the drain system there was a low point, that somehow the designers missed. Plutonium chips would settle there. At some point, enough had accumulated that it exceeded critical mass, and began to heat up, at which point the oil boiled, blasting all the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you ever happen to stroll around in sewers (it's not as terrible as it seems) - you'll find these little 'white mice' have a habit of all congregating in one place, due to their similar buoyancy properties, I imagine.
Under London, in the famous River Fleet sewer, there's a little side-tunnel named 'Tampon Alley', for a very good reason.
true story from my brothers office (Score:5, Funny)
My brother used to work in an office that was (badly) converted from an old bakery about 10 years previously. There was the usual large store/junk room around the back where stuff was just piled up until they ran out of room. Eventually they had to clear it out. Right at the back of the room buried under a huge pile of stuff was quite a large chest freezer. It wasn't turned on but it was locked shut.
They tried to shift it but it was too heavy and obviously full. This should have rung a few alarm bells but no. They busted the lock open with a crow bar and opened it up. Projectile vomiting all round the moment the lid was opened. 3 people taken to hospital. It required a very specialised hazmat / cleaning team to sort it out in the long term as it turned out the freezer had been used to store raw meat for pies and pasties and that meat had been in there for about 11 years or so. Did I mention the room got very hot in the summer...
Re:true story from my brothers office (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a similar experience when one of my kids unplugged the deep freeze where we'd stored a quarter hog that we'd gotten as a present, and no one noticed for about 6 months. One day I wondered why there were so many flies around the back of the garage, opened the deep freeze, and instantly puked. It wasn't a matter of "being tough" or "strong stomached"; something raced from my olfactory nerves to the ancient, reptilian part of my brain which immediately issued the "purge upper GI tract" interrupt.
It was horrible. I ended up painting my nose and upper lip with Vick's Vapor Rub, tying two bandanas and a sweatshirt around my face, and shoveling out the re-frozen pigslush with a snowshovel. Neighbors from down the block were coming outside to find the cause of the stench.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It wasn't a matter of "being tough" or "strong stomached"; something raced from my olfactory nerves to the ancient, reptilian part of my brain which immediately issued the "purge upper GI tract" interrupt.
awesome story... and told well, but...
and shoveling out the re-frozen pigslush with a snowshovel.
why would you do that? Did you keep the deepfreeze? God, man, why?
Re:true story from my brothers office (Score:5, Funny)
why would you do that? Did you keep the deepfreeze? God, man, why?
Well, a younger and more naive me thought that I could just blast it out with a powerwasher. For those contemplating similar projects: give up. Seriously. It can't be done. If my wife and I can't scrub something clean, it's uncleanable.
Thinks tried and abandoned:
We eventually resorted to selling it to my cheap friend Curtis. There's nothing he won't tolerate for a bargain.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wusses....
I went to New Orleans four times after Katrina doing relief work/cleanup. Same thing there, people's home fridges that had been obviously without power for months, were full of food and of course had been under water as well. We'd wrap them in duct tape, put it on a dolly and work them out to the curb, all the while the duct tape isn't holding and the contents are pouring all over our Tyvek suits.
Granted, we had N95 masks, but those don't filter smells, just the mold and such. Sure, the smell w
Re:true story from my brothers office (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone in congress simultaneously projectile vomiting? Nothing in the history of humanity would ever be funnier.
I see this every day on CSPAN; the amusement wears off fast.
New Slashdot Meme: (Score:5, Funny)
"Throwed up all over monitor."
Thanks.
Reminds me of 5th grade (Score:3, Funny)
I used to stock thermoses with rancid milk to clear out class at Catholic school. Just let them sit in the back of the class locker for 3 months and pop one when you need one less Religion class to deal with in your life.
What no Dirk? (Score:5, Interesting)
I figured I would have been a Dirk Gently comment in here at some point. Something about a lurking refrigerator springing forth a Guilt God...
Re:What no Dirk? (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to, but I was stuck trying to figure out how to get my couch out of the stair well.
As far as I'm concerned... (Score:4, Funny)
That's totally something for one's resume. It's a mark of distinction.
I can picture it now:
AT&T Research, San Jose (1999-2010)
* Made things suck less
* Shuffled papers
* Almost got killed by rotten office fridge.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Score:5, Informative)
Has nobody else read Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul [wikipedia.org]? Don't mess with the god of guild living in the fridge...
Must have been chemicals (Score:5, Funny)
When I was in college, someone left a fridge on the third floor of the fraternity house with leftover pizza, a watermelon, and about a quart of turkey chili in it over the summer. Someone else, possessed by his own moral righteousness, or because he was a dick, unplugged it. About three weeks later, we had a plague of flies. I found the fridge in a pool of black spooge with maggots in the carpet.
On discovering the fridge would fit through the window, I chained the ol' Jeep to the dumpster and drug it under the window. We then shoved the fridge, on it's back, out the window.
And missed the dumpster
The fridge struck an electrical box on the outside wall, and flipped, which caused it to hit the side of the dumpster, burst open, and land in our parking lot.
Nobody went to the hospital, but it took days to get the smell off our hands.
At my office... no fish... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fark (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, young 7-digit poster. Welcome. Yes, occasionally there is overlap between Slashdot and Fark, Reddit or even Digg. It's okay. You read it in both places, so obviously you frequent places that think their audience is interested -- meaning either you frequent the wrong sites, or this is interesting to your kind of person. Not that it auto-loaded the link... it only provided the description to allow you to judge it.
If you don't like what Slashdot posts, send in links to better sites. Find better News for Nerds, more gross News for Nerds with Desk Jobs or whatever, and send them on in. You could even be a Badass Link Gamer and rake through other sites and submit them to Slashdot. It's been a long time gone since this was the Hack a Netpliance and QueCat site it was when I signed up, but I've stayed through. I've since found Digg and don't need to load Slashdot more than twice a day any more.
If we're lucky, a crotchety old 5 digit poster will come along and say how different things were 6 months before I joined than they are today.