Spillages!!!

[Dave1982]

Ah yes, spills.....or as my local supermarket calls them: "wet breakages."

A few highlights, followed by the Worst of All.

•A rotten cantelope that somehow had a hole punched in it. This was not noticed until the cantelope was turned slightly and VOMITED it's rotten guts all over the floor. Looked just like real vomit, too.

•Three cheese pasta sauce. You know, that thick yellow crap that is exactly like nacho cheese sauce, only for pasta? I HATE that crap, so naturally, I was assigned to clean it up. And the only way to do it was to get a whole roll of paper towels and start scooping up globs of it.

•While I was in the store picking up my check, three bottles of rice wine vinegar committed suicide. Like in the Tide story above, no one bumped into them, and they weren't stocked incorrectly. Hell, that entire aisle was empty, and they just fell, to the slack jawed horror of one of the head cashiers. I saw it happen. Made a VERY satisfying shattering sound (all the more satisfying because I was not working that day and so didn't have to clean it up).

•I wasn't there to see this one, but one of the grocery department guys decided it would be a good idea to practive juggling with three 16 ounce jars of Chinese sweet & sour sauce (with the pieces of fruit in it). *SMASH SMASH SMASH!* "F***ing s***!!!!!!!" The guy who did it (thinking was one of his weak areas) got a vicious ass-chewing for that little stunt. Fortunately this happened after closing time.

•Two extra large jars of extra virgin olive oil. As I'm sure you guys know, oil on the floor just does NOT clean up. I wound up writing off about 8 containers of table salt to try and absorb as much of it as I could, then just parked a shopping cart (flanked by WET FLOOR signs) over the slickest area until the night cleaning crew could use the power washing machine on it.

•I never found out who the asshat was who did this. Someone stashed a bunch of damaged goods on the end of an unused checkstand. Among this pile of stuff was a 1 gallon bottle of AMMONIA that had been punctured. Whoever put it there let it tip over and it FLOODED the bagging end of the checkstand. The puddle was over an inch deep and OH MY GOD the smell!!!! And it was yours truly who discovered this mistake, and who had to clean it up. I could barely breath while doing it. I wanted to murder the idiot who let it happen.

•A very good friend of mine who worked there had a bad day for dropping stuff once. In a ten minute period, he dropped not one, not two, but THREE 1 dozen packs of eggs. I cleaned them up each time while he apologized to the customer and went to fetch more eggs. Luckily, I was in a good mood and ust found the whole thing hugely funny.



Okay. The Big One.

Like all stores, we had "wing" displays. Basically, a stack or bin of product would be placed at the end of an aisle as if it was a "wing" on the end cap. I hate wings, as they do nothing except get in the way.

So one day, the assistant general manager came running up to the front and said he needed "a few guys" to clean up a soda breakage in an aisle. The head cashier was puzzled as to why he'd need more than 1 guy to clean a mess.

AGM: You don't understand. There's soda EVERYWHERE.

So myself and two other guys grabbed sawdust, broom, and trash bag and headed over to the mess.

OH. MY. GOD.

There had been a wing display of Sparkling Red Grape Juice. SIX cases, six bottles to a case just stack up, with FIVE of the cases cut down to just trays. And someone had wiped out the ENTIRE DISPLAY. The ENTIRE display. EVERY SINGLE CASE was knocked over, and fully 3/4 of the bottles broke. It was the like the Red Sea. The entire back 1/4 of the aisle was flooded and glass was everywhere.

It took the THREE of us well over 45 minutes to clean up this disaster. First we picked up all the intact bottles and put them in the back room. They we carefully picked up the largest chuncks of glass, then just started dumping sawdust over the mess. Bag after bag of sawdust. So much that we had to eschew the broom and dig up the snow shovels from the deepest recesses of the janitor's closet.

And as I'm sure everyone knows, simply wiped/soaking up any kind of sugary liquid does NOT suffice. And since the mess was so big, we couldn't just start mopping, because then the mop would get all sticky and we'd just be smearing it around. What we really needed to do was break out the floor washing machine and do a couple passes through that aisle, but the AGM wouldn't let us because the machine is huge and too unweidy to use in the middle of the day, when it's busy.

So we ended up using three bottles of seltzer water to try and dissolve as much of the stickiness as possible, then it was round two with the sawdust and snow shovels. Finally we mopped the entire area three times. And it STILL was sticky afterwards, so much so that I was sent back there an hour later to mop it AGAIN with fresh water.

And needless to say, despite cordonign off the area with empty carraiges and wet floor signs, people were still trying to get through this end of the aisle, and got all huffy when we wouldn't let them pass. One guy actually broke through our barricade and wheeled his cart through the mess while we were in the middle of cleaning it up and tracked sticky sawdust all the way down the aisle.

Now after this, one would assume that no more wings of glass bottle would be set up right? Hell no! Not two weeks later the same damn thing happened AGAIN with two key differences

*it was sparking mineral water, not juice

*I didn't have to clean it up this time

Instead, we teamed up our most incompetent bagger with the night crew leader (it was a Sunday, so he was working during the day) and had THEM clean it up. The night crew leader had a very low tolerance for foolishness or stupidity of any sort, and it was pretty amusing to watch the sparks fly as they spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up THAT flood



Thank GOD I don't work there anymore.

[Lehk]

•Three cheese pasta sauce. You know, that thick yellow crap that is exactly like nacho cheese sauce, only for pasta? I HATE that crap, so naturally, I was assigned to clean it up. And the only way to do it was to get a whole roll of paper towels and start scooping up globs of it.

find a stocker and steal some of his or her cardboard boxes, when you cut the top or bottom tabs off a box they make a perfect squeegee for cleaning up anything equal to or thicker than eggs. runnier than that and you need to soak or mop it up but cheese, eggs, jam, mayo all comes up real quck with the factory cut straight edges from a cardboard box scraped along the floor, the cardboard also is just absorbant enough that liquid residue often will be soaked up leaving the floor perfectly clean and dry

•Two extra large jars of extra virgin olive oil. As I'm sure you guys know, oil on the floor just does NOT clean up. I wound up writing off about 8 containers of table salt to try and absorb as much of it as I could, then just parked a shopping cart (flanked by WET FLOOR signs) over the slickest area until the night cleaning crew could use the power washing machine on it.

cat litter is best for oil, any oil at all whether it is cooking oil, bath oil, or motor oil. at my store we are not only allowed to use damaged containers of cat litter we are encouraged to do it since it is finding a good use for something otherwise damaged and not fit for sale. cat litter bags always get ripped so you can usually find a torn one right on the shelf or in the damages pile.

for that matter cat litter will also do a great job cleaning up soap, much better than sand or salt.

[Rapscallion]

We use bran for battery acid at our place...

Rapscallion

[Dave1982]

Thanks for the cleaning tips. I knew about the cardboard trick; I think what happpened was (this was 6 years ago so I don't recall for sure) was that there were no suitable boxes readily available, and the mess has to be cleaned up right away, so rather than keep searching I just had to do it the hard way. Thankfully I do not work there anymore, and unless I find myself flat broke and depserate, I plan to never work there again (they screwed me), so hopefully I won't have a need to put these tips to the test.

[Mildew]

When I worked in the bookstore one night the espresso machine in the cafe sprung a leak and there was water all over the cafe floor. They were there forever with mops and bucket and after I finished up in the cashroom I went out to help and reminded the MOD that there was a wet/dry shop vac in the electrical closet...things went a lot quicker after that. But water soaked into the display shelf in front of the machine. The shelf unit is made of particle board and soaked it up like a sponge and for days it smelled so strongly of mildew no one wanted to be near it. can we get a smiley with a mop?

I don't smell THAT bad. Geez.

[Becks]

How'd I miss this one for so long??

Anyhoo...

Customer's fault(s)--
-coffee
-soup
-soda
-water
-shampoo
-eggs
-salad dressing
-basalmic vinegar
-olive oil
-ketchup
-mustard
-relish
-pickles
-milk
-juices
-olives
-pickles
-tuna salad
-chicken salad
-seafood salad

And I'd say at least 75% didn't tell anyone about the messes they made. As I've said, I don't mind people accidentally breaking something or otherwise making a mess, AS LONG AS THEY TELL SOMEONE ABOUT IT.

Things I've dropped/spilled (sometimes on myself)--
--ribs
--BBQ sauce
--liquid butter substitute
--liquid eggs for the breakfast bar
--cut fruit
--hot wings
--salad dressing
--cheesecake
--soda (but this one wasn't MY fault, the supplier stacked them bad and they collapsed AFTER I'd left for the night)

...and I think that's about it.

[MystyGlyttyr]

LONG. I got into a serious thing while remembering this story, heh.

Well, here at the paper, the best thing we've done was accidently explode the toner container in the copy machine once...however, I was able to jump back to safety fast...the senior sports reporter who was standing next to me in his clean white shirt, however...

The worst spill I remember was while I was working at the candy store in the mall. It was a slightly higher-end one with a shelf filled with about 40 different flavors of various jelly beans, among other things...but the other things aren't what the story is about. It's all about the jelly beans.

Me and my coworker that night, a 16-year-old named "C" worked together frequently and got along pretty well...to be honest, the reason we got along so well was our deal. It did NOT take two people to work the candy store except during the very busiest of the Christmas rush, so seriously I could only use the register once or twice in an hour. For a 6-hour shift, you can see how unneccessary we were. So, since I liked to just sit behind the counter and write, and C liked to meet up with his friends and run around, we had a little deal worked out where he could go roaming the mall with his boypack all he wanted and I would stay in the store, so long as A) his friends left me alone, and B) he kept his cell phone on so I could call him back immediately if I really needed him or if the manager was coming (and he would come literally running, too, so he was good about it.)

For further set-up, this was a two-and-a-half story mall...there were two full levels and then half a level at the other end of the mall that was the food court. Our candy store was on the top level, and there was an overlook just in front of our store so you could see down into the lower level.

So, it comes to pass that C is out doing his teen boy thing and I'm sitting behind the counter reading when a woman and her little daughter come in. Woman is cheerful and everything, and she heads over to the sugarfree candy and starts scooping some almond bark while her daughter is looking at the candy on the other side. Keep in mind that the store was about seven feet across so she didn't leave her daughter unattended...however, she and I both made the same mistake of turning our back.

I'm idly chatting with the woman about the almond bark and how much we both liked it, when I hear *skkkkkkkkkkktCRASHrattlerattlerattleshhhhhhh* ...approximately. The actual noise was really quite spectacular. Even though I knew what I was going to be looking at, I turned to see.

Daughter was laying in the floor, holding two of our candy bins and looking quite amazed...cherry Jelly Belly and popcorn Jelly Belly. And there are now skittering across my store floor approximately 35 pounds of yellow and red jelly beans.

Out the front.

To the overlook.

And proceed to begin raining down on the people below who were just minding their own business and going into the Gap.

I decided the best response was to put my head down on the desk and then call C in while the woman, alternately apologizing and fussing over her freaked-out daughter, was vainly trying to sweep up jelly beans with her hands.

After I summoned C, something occured to me. ...I didn't tell him not to run.

Fortunately, being the sure-footed teenager he was, he didn't go sailing into the wild blue yonder. C hit the jelly beans with, to paraphrase Tommyknockers, all the grace of the elephant ballerinas in Fantasia, but he stayed on his feet, arms pinwheeling as though he might try to take off, and then he put his hands down and fell back onto his butt and RODE the beans for a couple of feet before he lost his momentum. (He told me later that was what you were supposed to do when you were losing your balance when ice skating. The More You Know.) However, his skidding sent even more beans over the edge and down on the poor confused Gap patrons...AND into the adjacent...and CARPETED...Dillards men store.

Longer story slightly shorter, security was involved, managers were called, people came along and gawked for a while, but in the end, all was well. We managed to sweep up all the jelly beans that hadn't yet been impacted into the floor and the cleaning crew got up the ones that were ground into powder underfoot...although the Dillards rug did have some odd spots in it after that. The lady apologized constantly but we assured her it was just a simple mistake anyone could make...namely not realizing that a 4-year-old could pull that much dead weight forward the 17 inches necessary to spill it everywhere. The girl was fine, if a little befuddled, but I gave her a .25-cent sucker (she wasn't TRYING to cause chaos, she was just doing what kids do) and she was satisfied to sit and be quiet. All in all, all was well.

At the time, it was horrific, but now I think it'd be a good scene in a Jim Carrey movie. I bet he could do wonders with C's skidding scene.

[NightAngel]

Many years ago my son's father, some of our friends and I were at a restaurant together. We were in a booth in a back corner- so there was a wall parallel with the back side of the booth. I had gone to the restroom and was returning to the table- a waitress was walking in front of me. I didn't even realize she was carrying anything.

She had, in fact, been carrying one of those industrial sized tubs full of ranch dressing. She dropped it and it exploded- all over the wall and those unlucky enough to still be sitting at our table.

My friends looked stunned. My brain assessed the situation and then I fell into a fit of hysterical laughter. The poor waitress was nearly in tears apologizing and running for towels for them.

We all told her it was fine- not to worry about it. I thanked her for making my night and we tipped her pretty well as I recall. We left, I couldn't stop laughing, with my friends making joking comments like, "You only think it's funny because you're not covered in Ranch!"

True that.

[reformedwaitress]

And there are now skittering across my store floor approximately 35 pounds of yellow and red jelly beans.

Out the front.

To the overlook.

And proceed to begin raining down on the people below who were just minding their own business and going into the Gap.

I'm sorry, but that's just TOO funny. The only thing better would be if the Gap store was a toy store. I can see it now:

"Mommy! Mommy! God must love me! It's raining jelly beans!!"

[HYHYBT]

can we get a smiley with a mop?

Sorry, there's no such thing.

[pookalamouche]

Over the summer I work in an Opera House, I kinda end up all over the place; top restaurant, tearooms, cafe for the opera singers and the long bar

Which is where this fantastic spillage takes place!

A bloke walks up to me and asks for a bottle of champagne, luckily it was house champagne (still £50 a bottle)

Now I have no idea how this happend but as I twisted the cork to remove it, the bottle slipped from me hand, crashed to the floor and propelled itself the whole length of the 40ft bar leaving a trail of champagne in it's wake.

I was left standing (still holding the cork) staring it until it crashed into the glass washer when I burst out laughing!

My co-worker had to take over serving my customers while I went to recover the bottle and calm down.



So if anyone is wondering how far a full bottle of champagne can propel itself, it is at least 40ft on a flat surface!

[DGoddessChardonnay]

He probably never seen that much crap before. I've seen some piles from dogs, that you have to think " how....what....no way that came out of that small dog."

Then you'd really have a stroke if you saw what a large dog can produce.

[Guyver]

Beer spills

I really hate how 6-pack bottles of beer come in their boxes. 3 times while stocking the cooler, I'll lift the 6-pack out of the box and the edge of the 6-pack carrier will hook on the pop top of a bottle in another carrier. I'll end up picking up 7 bottles with one 6-pack and sure enough, the extra rider will come crashing down.

Another time, I was stocking beer on the top shelf in the back of the cooler. The main blower for the cooler is right there. You have to turn the 6-packs that go on that shelf a bit to get them in there. They are 6-pack cans btw. Anyway, I bounced the 6-pack off of the corner of the blower and punctured the can. I got showered with beer, a particularly nasty beer, and got asked if I was drunk 3 times before I closed.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

1. Two year old kid in a cart reaches out onto the shelves and knocks off two jars of Gefelge fish.......I know it's spelled wrong, but it's the globs of fish you see in nasty looking water, in the kosher section. I hate the smell of FRESH fish, let alone crap like that - it is FOUL.

I believe it's called gefilte fish. Sounds similar to lutefisk, which is also some nasty stuff.

Gefilte fish is also a very funny sounding phrase, so I'll say ti a few times for shits and giggles:

Gefilte fish
Gefilte fish
Gefilte fish

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I don't think it's the strength of the sauce that's staining the tile. Probably just the color. Anything red will stain and be next to impossible to get out.

We've got a couple small red nail polish stains on a couple of our floor tiles that have been there for a few years at least. We can't just replace tiles when they get stained.