Egads, the FUMES!!!

[Phoenix79]

All was going well today until the catastrophe clean up folks showed up today to clean our mail room (someone used it as a restroom, multiple times).

I'm very glad they are here to clean up the icky mess, but their vacuum cleaner is extremely loud, and the cleaner they are using is giving me a headache!!!

I haven't complained to my boss or anything, they're just doing their job (and what an icky job it is!). But these fumes are really starting to make my eyes water!

Anyone else have stories about cleaning crews and the lovely fumes that sometimes come along with them?

Phoenix - who wishes she had a gas mask at the moment . . .

[strawbabies]

Who the hell would've gone potty in your mail room?

[wagegoth]

I got really sick one time because some carpet cleaners mixed some chemicals they shouldn't have. It was at night, and I had to walk through the area they were cleaning, and you could smell that they had been drinking. They were cleaning with one product, then the second guy would keep squirting from two different bottles onto some of the spots.

I started coughing, off and on, dry, asthma-like, but it didn't stop; I couldn't even sleep. I was in the ER on Saturday and Sunday, getting breathing treatments, different meds, then still had to see my doctor on Monday, because the treatments worked temporarily but didn't stop the cough.

I filed a worker's comp claim, and then complained about the janitors. Drinking and chemicals do not mix ever.

[wagegoth]

Who the hell would've gone potty in your mail room?

Someone has a LOT of issues.

[MadMike]

Who the hell would've gone potty in your mail room?

Maybe the same guy who pissed in my one cowoker's trash can one night?

You'd think that having an office job would mean that you don't have to deal with stuff like that, but once in awhile that kind of stupidity still happens.

Oh, and someone scratched up the wood paneling inside of one of the elevators a few years ago, and they still haven't fixed it. They left a letter "F", about 2 feet high, followed by a "U", and then part of a "C." I guess the doors opened before they could finish it.

[Witch of Endor]

The worst I've seen here is that someone keeps scratching large crude ballpoint-pen drawings into the elevator door on the inside (between floors, I guess). We either get a giant cock and balls, or a woman's body (no head, hands, or feet) with thighs spread.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've always blamed it on bike couriers. You don't need a passcard to get into the elevator, only to get into the actual offices once you step off the elevator. It could be anyone from inside or outside.

[Phoenix79]

Who the hell would've gone potty in your mail room?

A very disgruntled employee, and we know exactly who but can't prove it because there aren't cameras in the mail room. It's been going on all year long . . . until said employee was offered a severance package and packed his stuff and left . . . then the pee stains mysteriously stopped getting larger, and the boss decided it was time to finally have a hazard crew clean the carpet (because what's the point of cleaning it if he was just going to do it again while he was still here?).

Phoenix - who can now walk into the mail room without smelling pee . . . woohooo!!

[SuperDan]

I was once stripping wax off of the stairway to the store manager's office. Our old floor crew decided it would be funny to wax the stairs that were rubber-coated to begin with (no tile on the stairs) as well as wax them (and everything else in the store) without cleaning them before putting new wax down. Anyway, I ran out of our aerosol wax stripper we use sometimes and I wasn't done with the stairs yet, so I decided to use ammonia. I then learned quite quickly that you're supposed to dilute ammonia 8:1 or more with water.

The SM didn't go back to his office until the very end of his shift.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Didn't usually have too much problem with that. Only outside cleaning was the carpet cleaners a few times a year, and they didn't start until the store closed, and we were only there another half hour. Most of the time we were there at the same time they were still getting things set up. I don't know about the manager who got to stay all night with them, though. Oh, and the window cleaners, but they only did the outside.

Worst clean-up I ever saw was at Store1. The Starbucks (not BN Cafe), which takes up the front corner of the building and shares a wall with Receiving, had a backup in the sewer pipes in the bathroom. A bad one (talk about fumes!). And it seeped through the concrete wall into receiving. And soaked some boxes of books. We managed to move most of the stuff that was in danger against that wall, but a few of them just got thrown right into the dumpster. Luckily (for us, anyway) that one required the professionals to clean it, although my manager was trying to keep the flood at bay with a mop until they got there. Starbucks had to close for the rest of the night, and their carpet had to be ripped up that night. Their bathrooms are at the back of the shop, and only the front half was carpeted...which gives you an idea of how far the flood spread. We had to keep the receiving door open with a giant fan going for a few days to dry the place out.

It was also fun trying to explain to customers why Starbucks was closed without being too graphic...I think we just said they had a flood...

And this story would be a good place for this smiley:

[digilight]

Ahhh lung burning fumes. I've had 3 horible experiences along these lines. One was at home when I was a stupid kid, I was in my dads shed and opened a jug of something and took a sniff....hmmm that burns, crap WTF is that shit, to this day I still have no idea but it sucked.

The next time I was working at the summer camp. It was a saturday afternoon after the kids had all gone home (we had camp from sunday at 5 until saturday at about 10 or so with a new group each week). I was up at the staff house and my boss (the kitchen manager) lived in a house next door to the crappy staff house got a call from the big boss saying there was a fire by the stone lodge (actually in the creek area which has a large dry river bed around it). Mind you this is in the mountains, in a fire zone anyways. So I run down there to do what I can. I grab a house and start spraying water to keep the fire down as much as possible. The fire crews get there a few minutes later and start spraying down the fire and the area, did you know that the foam not only burns your throat but smells like lemons?. Nothing got damaged but our throats from the fumes/smoke/and crap, but the lemon smell stuck to all the vegitation down there for a few weeks.

The next time was at the office. Someone had tossed a lit cig butt in a planter, under a eucalyptus tree (full of bark and leaves) and it started smoking. I spoted it and had one of my employee's call the fire department while I grabbed a fire extinguisher to put it out. Holy shit fire extinguisher foam mixed with burning eucalyptus and trash puts out a ungodly toxic burning smoke...Saved my car which was two spaces away from the fugging tree and the building as well. Yea Me... God I've gotta stop playing around fire.


Heres a map of the summer camp to give you an idea

[Andara Bledin]

Heh. The worst fumes I have ever had to deal with? That would be one weekend at a renaissance faire.

Our guild encampment had the pleasure of being about 100 feet from the gumps, aka port-o-potties. If you have never had the pleasure of being nearby when they clean out port-o-potties, take my word and do whatever you can to avoid it.

No matter how bad a collection of port-o-potties that have been in heavy use for an entire hot summer day, it is nothing compared to the miasma released when they come to clean them out for use the next morning.

Our encampment was not only nearby, but it was also downwind. And they do the cleaning at just about the same time of morning as we eat breakfast.

^-.-^