My Job, My Hell...

[TheLastRifleMan]

Shit, he was lucky he didn't get fired from the human race for that stunt.

Jesus. I guess that's why he was only the custodian's assistant!

I thought the same thing. He survived, they told me, although I wonder how.

WOOT! Nine pages!

[shrapnel]

Do you know how fucked up he ended up being? Like, if he lost his eyesight or had lung damage or anything?




Some people just shouldn't be allowed near chemicals.

[JCgoose]

mustard gas is epic nasty! sounds like a runer up in the darwin awards

[TheLastRifleMan]

Do you know how fucked up he ended up being? Like, if he lost his eyesight or had lung damage or anything?




Some people just shouldn't be allowed near chemicals.

Never heard, just that he got treated at the emergency clinic and released. I don't think he had been in there long enough to cause too much permanent damage, but then again, I have no idea how long he had been in there, trying to become a very bad WWI reinactor.

[skarface]

Imagine getting swarmed by zombies!

Every day eechay, every day.



I used to work at Taco Bell, and it was good for a first job: slightly above minimum wage, very interesting people to work with, and a clean environment (this franchise was exceedingly well run). Lots of short stories, but not grandiose ones- like the guy who boozed it up in the walk-in cooler on his first (and last) day, or the manager that came in high, made herself some food, then walked out (she was off that day, but had the munchies).

We often had groups of people hanging out in our parking lot- young people (high school, usually) just sitting around in their cars and loitering. I remember one time when a manager grabbed the 'trash masher' (a big, heavy thing made of metal used to push the trash down) to arm herself in case something happened. Invariably, whenever the scary people outside were congregating and acting suspicious, someone working with me would know a couple of them. I always felt safe.

There was one night that I questioned things there. I was working the cash register (much better than in back) and a manager yells at one of the employees: "Don't do that! Imagine if a customer saw you doing that!"

I looked at the guy in line, he looked at me. We both then went about our business. To this day, I have no idea what that guy did, and I kind of don't want to know.

One thing that was terrible was the single 15-minute break we got (I think we only got 1). It was paid, but it was only 15 minutes. So, in order to eat dinner, I had to scarf it all down quickly. My dad always laughed when I told him my stomach hurt after work. He would ask what I'd eaten. I would tell him 3 gorditas in 15 minutes. Ugh. To this day my body strongly objects to all Taco Bell food.

I kind of wish I had better stories, but I'm kind of glad I don't.

[Black Mantis]

I worked in a cafe/catering business for awhile and heard some great ones. The first one was a story from my boss. He had been working in the business for 20+ years and had seen it all. Back when he was in his twenties he was working at a Red Lobster in Texas. This was apparently a pretty big one with a big and very busy kitchen. Anyone who has worked in a kitchen knows it's a crazy place. In the kitchen of Red Lobsters, and many other restaurants are deep fat fryers. Being a lobster place they had a long row of 5-6 fryers. As you probably know a commercial fryer is filled with several gallons of oil heated to several hundred degrees. Above these fryers are large vents to suck up all the grease, smoke, ect. After awhile the slats in these vents gets mucked up with crap.

The Boss Man decides to tell some kid to clean the vents, judging by how he did it, I'm guessing he was new, stupid, or a combination of both. This glowing beacon of human intelligence placed a series of hotel pans (Large metal pans) across the top of the fryers. (This really should have been done after hours, with the fryers OFF, but the time for everything in a kitchen is RIGHT NOW.) So this kid climbs up and stands on top of the pans, and starts wiping down the metal vent slats. You can probably guess what happened next. He steps on the edge of the hotel pan and it tips sideways. He plunges up to his knees into the fryer. Apparently all you could hear over his screams was the sizzling and popping of his legs frying. His co-workers quickly pulled him out but couldn't even pull off his shoes, as they were melted on to his feet. Having burned myself many times in the kitchen, on the 500* flat top, hot pans and utensils, fryer oil, ect the thought of frying my own legs makes me cringe.

Only other good story I have is of Drunken Barry and Why You Shouldn't Drink and Work in a Kitchen!

[Subdiver]

...motorcycle accident...

This is an excellent example of what can happen to EMT's when they encounter an accident out of their area/off duty. Be aware, if you are the first responder at an accident, you usually have a clearer picture of what has happened than arriving EMS personnel. If someone asks you the rhetorical question "Are you a doctor?" the best answer (in my experience) is "No, but (insert clear and concise turnover + situation breakdown) is what I know." This should result in a positive response, and potentially life/motor function/well being saving information. I've been on the first responder side a number of times, and am now rapidly approaching the EMT side, and this is how I have/will respond. YMMV

Saving lives is not about prick waving, it's about helping the victim to the best of your ability.

[Istvan56]

I know about saving lives is not about prick waving but unfortunately not everyone has learned that lesson. Such as the time I was an assistant scoutmaster who along with the scoutmaster was driving a van load of Boy Scouts down from Mount Hood in Oregon where we had been on a snow trip. Of course we are in uniform but this wasn't our day jobs plus both of us were trained first responders. As we are driving we come up on a wreck and get stuck behind all the "Looky Loo's" as my wife calls them. There is a silver mini-van that has been cut clean in half with a small crowd around the front half where the driver and passenger are. The back half is a couple of dozen yards away. It has a blue tarp over the rear bench seat meaning fatalities there, my guess they are kids while mom and dad are alive but serious to critical in the front half. By the time we are up to the wreck I have my first aid kit out and I'm ready to bail to go assist. The scoutmaster is keeping the teenage boys (all 14-16) quiet and we are looking for where to park while I go to work. There are no EMS personnel on scene, just passersby. About the time the scoutmaster slows to let me hop out one of the bystanders comes up to my open window and angrily shouts for us to keep going, we are blocking traffic. I tell him that I'm medically trained and have a pretty good first aid kit which I offer to him through the window. He cusses me out and says, "Get going!" Since we didn't want to get into a fight, which wouldn't have helped the victims one bit, we continued on. The boys were very quiet for a long time but once they were ready we had a good talk about emergency preps and proper response to accident scenes.

[Istvan56]

Since I went OT and talked about a volunteer job I did instead of my day job I guess I'll have to add another story. This goes back to 1989 during my time in Portland, Oregon and involves fire fighters as well since, of course, we had a fire.

Yep, there I was riding the bus into Downtown Portland early one morning when we have to pull over to let several fire companies race by at Code 3. As they pass the bus I have this sudden feeling of dread that they were going to my facility. Sure enough as I get off the bus at my stop I can look up the side street and see a ladder truck, engine, rescue unit, etc. all staged around the building. Thankfully though I don't see any smoke or signs of fire.

I ran up the street and flashing my ID was allowed access within the perimeter. Nothing is going on at the front of the building, everyone is headed to the back. I ask the Graveyard officer at the front post what is going on, he says there was an explosion and fire down in the subbasement but that is contained and about out so to come on in, get into uniform and report to the command center for an assignment. So that is just what I do. There is no visible smoke inside but I can clearly smell burnt electicals throughout the building. I head downstairs to the basement level where "Protection Services" (as we were called pre-9/11/01) was located and suited up. I get assigned to traffic control out on the perimeter while the building gets vented.

Before I go I get the full briefing. We had a night engineer nicknamed "Earl the Pearl." He was not known to be the brightest jewel in the facilities department which was why he was stuck working graveyard alone. Mostly he found ways to duck out of sight and sleep, especially down in the subbasement engineering spaces. Just off of our emergency generator room in the subbasement the local power company maintained an underground transformer vault. It had three big transformers in it delivering power not only to the facility but to several blocks around us. It was one of the transformers which blew and took out both of its neighbors and started an electrical fire up the main line as the insulation burned off the wiring.

Naturally the explosion woke Earl up. Wondering what is going on he investigates. Pulling open the vault door he gets a face full of hot smoke. Instead of pulling a fire alarm (there were no sprinklers or detectors down in the vault area) or calling the police emergency number (our 911) he decided to be a hero and put it out on his own. He emptied every fire extinguiser in the subbasement before the fire went out, likely on its own. Meanwhile, he propped open a fire door to the north stairwell and vented the smoke up through the building. Only when he had done all that he could wrong did he finally decide to call in the fire, which he did while coughing his lungs out. Naturally the dispatcher who heard his coughed out words of "fire" and could now smell smoke dutifully called 911 which turned into a 3 alarm call out.

Once I'm outside I hear that the facility is being evacuated. This was the only time in my 18+ years at that facility that we ever abandoned our Control Room/Dispatch Center. The reason given was that somebody believed the old transformers were the PCB laced oil kind and those are, of course, cancer causing chemicals that are particularly nasty if breathed in when the oil is burning. I'm thinking how great that is considering the minutes I was down stairs changing in that light smoke. Like how many years off my life did showing up early for work today just cost me?

After the evacuation the fire department wants to do a full sweep of the building for anyone still inside. Since it is a federal facility with lots of secured doors they want one of us to go with them. Since I had the least exposure to the smoke I was the sucker assigned. So I donned a SCBA, took the master patrol key ring and went from floor to floor searching every nook and cranny. It really made me appreciate the job they do and that my job is so much easier by comparison. Only after we were done was it announced that there were no PCB's and the building was safe for reoccupancy. There had been asbestos exposure but only to poor Earl. He retired not long after that and died of cancer in less than a year later at the age of 61.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this knocked out power to the facility for the next five days. We had just upgraded our emergency generator and UPS system the previous week and it hadn't been officially certified as ready for service. However, when the power went out the UPS kicked in and emergency generator took over. Since it only had 100 gallons of diesel in the day tank the main 5,000 tank was filled and we stayed in service until the city power was restored. Needless to say we considered the new generator fully tested and certified it.

[K9Crew]

I worked at a warehouse when I was in high school for a really small, privately-owned company. It was run by a couple of guys who seemed to know next to nothing about running a business, let alone managing a warehouse. They used these large wooden hand carts for moving stuff from the freezers to the loading docks but the floor was all broken up so the carts would get stuck and with 400-500lbs of food on top of them it would take 3 or 4 guys to get them moving again. But it was a good job for a high school kid to make a few bucks.

The fun all started when the aforementioned manager who had a college degree in business but no common sense decides that he can resurface the tar on the roof to fix some leaks and save a few bucks on building maintenance. Some friend of his who claims to be a handyman has a pot for heating the tar and has offered to help him out. So they set up this heating pot in the parking lot and are carrying hot buckets of tar through the warehouse to the second floor window where they can get out onto the roof. My biggest concern is not that they are going to get burnt, thats a given in my mind already, but that they are going to spill this tar on the floor of the warehouse and make it even harder to push these heavy carts back and forth. Well this goes on for a while until finally the fire alarm is going off and I see these two Einstein's running down the stairs yelling at everyone to get out and my bosses shoes are covered in tar which he is now tracking through the warehouse. The fire department shows up within minutes and puts the fire out and that is when we get the full details of the story. Turns out that the manager decides to light up a cigarette while he is spreading the hot tar on the roof. Of course some ashes or the cigarette fell into the tar and it lights up instantly. So then this guy gets the bright idea to stamp out the fire. He starts stomping on the tar which then gets all over his shoe and lights it on fire as well. That is when they realized it was time to bail. I still think about what he must have looked like running across the roof with his shoe on fire and then climbing through the window into his office.

[razi]

I worked at a warehouse when I was in high school for a really small, privately-owned company. It was run by a couple of guys who seemed to know next to nothing about running a business, let alone managing a warehouse. They used these large wooden hand carts for moving stuff from the freezers to the loading docks but the floor was all broken up so the carts would get stuck and with 400-500lbs of food on top of them it would take 3 or 4 guys to get them moving again. But it was a good job for a high school kid to make a few bucks.

The fun all started when the aforementioned manager who had a college degree in business but no common sense decides that he can resurface the tar on the roof to fix some leaks and save a few bucks on building maintenance. Some friend of his who claims to be a handyman has a pot for heating the tar and has offered to help him out. So they set up this heating pot in the parking lot and are carrying hot buckets of tar through the warehouse to the second floor window where they can get out onto the roof. My biggest concern is not that they are going to get burnt, thats a given in my mind already, but that they are going to spill this tar on the floor of the warehouse and make it even harder to push these heavy carts back and forth. Well this goes on for a while until finally the fire alarm is going off and I see these two Einstein's running down the stairs yelling at everyone to get out and my bosses shoes are covered in tar which he is now tracking through the warehouse. The fire department shows up within minutes and puts the fire out and that is when we get the full details of the story. Turns out that the manager decides to light up a cigarette while he is spreading the hot tar on the roof. Of course some ashes or the cigarette fell into the tar and it lights up instantly. So then this guy gets the bright idea to stamp out the fire. He starts stomping on the tar which then gets all over his shoe and lights it on fire as well. That is when they realized it was time to bail. I still think about what he must have looked like running across the roof with his shoe on fire and then climbing through the window into his office.

ha!

[skarface]

This is pretty much how the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome burned down in the early 1800's. They were repairing the roof and it caught fire, and then the whole thing came tumbling down. It had been standing since Constantine was Emperor, and it burned down after one stupid fire. I don't think it was from cigarettes, though.

[TheLastRifleMan]

Ok, you folks asked for it.

I call this one "Close Encounters of the Ugly Naked Kind".

There are certain things you can never forget, some events with great fondness while others dwell within those places in our mind reserved for the unfathomable. Those are the places we store those evil, horrible thoughts, feelings and remembrances, to be locked away, never to be opened but not completely forgotten. We always know the latter carefully secured images and feelings are there but basic primal fear keeps them in those safe, windowless rooms within our minds. But sometimes we find all it takes is one small mention of something by a friend or family member, a comment made off hand, a smell in an unfamiliar place, a scene on TV and suddenly we find ourselves creating psychic finger trying to hold back a tidal flood of horrors thought tucked safely away, coming to the forefront of our conscious mind and infecting our dreams as well as our waking hours.

This is one such memory. I have you people to blame in my bringing out of it's slime filled hold. In that I forgive you, since I can safely tuck it away once again after writing this essay of insanity and that can sometimes give comfort. They also say the in acknowledging that fact you have a problem is the first step in solving it, so in fact I must confront this scene, once locked in a small dark place in my head, and deal with it once and for all. Call this article therapy, a catharsis, whatever you make like, but if it becomes part of you, your dreams or psyche, do not blame me.

It was a cold, late fall day when the Slacker once again sent me on a fruitless mission. A bed was down and needed to be looked at and repaired. I had other calls already arranged by me and had told him to keep the morning open in order for me to complete "return" calls, i.e. repairs that were unfinished due to having parts ordered, etc. This was always a matter of contention with him and I never was able to truly get it through his head that time had to be afforded for such endeavors. So we agree for him to call the customer that I would be there in the early afternoon and not in the morning. Not really the best way to start out the day. It was a Friday and I was looking forward to a weekend without having to repair something that was broken and abused. I packed everything I needed and off I went into a cold, non stop rain.

The morning goes well enough. No major problems or fouls although the worn windshield wipers on the company owned van are limiting my vision in the icy rain. In this area of town,the streets are narrow and the residents have no regard at all for traffic signals or stop signs. I stop at every intersection, before making every turn and finally find the house.

It does not look too bad from the outside. This neighborhood is in better shape then most in the surrounding district and this house shows it. They even have a ramp going up the front steps, always a plus. I grab my tool kit and get out and start to approach the ramp. My first step sends great tremors through the whole structure of the aluminum, causing it to shake violently to and fro. I look closer and find it is not a wheel chair ramp at all, but several pieces of boat docking that has been hastily bolted together! The uprights are not even in the ground, but are simply sitting on the lawn. Some supports are not even touching the ground at all and the rain has made the ramp slippery so I grip the hand rails with one hand and hope I don't slide off into the wet grass. I make it to the door and fell the same triumph Hillary felt when he made it to the top of Everest and give a knock. A female voice bids me enter over what sounds like a television turned up to near "blow eardrum" volume, as is common to almost every house I go into. I then open the door and enter, shedding rain like a fresh waxed car.

The living room, the first room I enter, is fairly clean and the furniture looks to be in good condition. A young woman dressed in a nurse' uniform is sitting on the couch talking on the phone. How she was able to do this over the TV's horrendous volume was simple: she screamed. I could hear ever word she was saying. It was all non sequitor chatter about this and that and I had to wait for about two minutes for her to acknowledge the fact I had entered. At least it allowed to to warm up, since the temperature in this house was set to "Hawaii in Summer" level. In front of the the young woman on the coffee table are several bottles of nail polish, polish remover, scissors and other nail care paraphenalia. From this, my eyes go right to her finger nails, which I can see even at this distance since they are painted a garish neon florescent yellow with glowing orange stripes. It must take at least two bottles of polish per hand because these safety warning painted nails are at least four inches in length! Each one, including her thumb! If she got into a confrontation with me a) she outweighed me by at least 70 pounds and b) she could scoop my eyes out with those day glow claws with a flick of her wrist. I then wonder how she is able to use her hands at all to accomplish anything since she has useless extensions that must hamper her in everything she must do.

She finally pauses in her conversation long enough to point me in the direction of the bedroom, which is to my left and down a short hall. I turn and go where she has indicated, hoping she won't decided to make me a living organ doner from behind with her human claws as I go into an open doorway that seems to lead into a lighted room. I go through the door way and view biggest, most horrifying traumas my eyes had yet witnessed.

The room is indeed well lighted, which makes the unfolding image all the more shocking. Sitting on a bed, facing dead in front of me, is a woman that easily outweighs me by 4 times or more. The bed, probably the one I am supposedly here to repair, is sagging from her bulk. There is a smell, unpleasant but not overpowering, of human decay and unwashed age and I just know she is the source. And to top it all of, she is completely naked. Not a stitch of clothing anywhere on her body, legs spread wide open, arms at her side, giving me the "full frontal" shot that gives movies an "R" rating. Gravity and age have not been kind to this poor woman, everything rolling down from her shoulders in huge, doughy rolls of fat, skin and atrophied muscle. She is, however, wearing a pair of 1950's vintage horn rimmed glasses and her hair has been carefully been pinned up into a tight but on the top of her head.

It is not pretty. John Wayne himself would have fled in terror, tossing his Colt Revolver and Winchester carbine away as he ran because bullets could not kill such a monster. Lesser men would have been left blinded for life, having pulled their own eyeballs directly from their sockets. She is mouthing something incoherent to me and begins to stand up and reach for me. I can honestly tell you good folks I know what I would do if confronted with a zombie in real life because of this experience: My legs, reacting to commands from the lizard part of my brain, start to move my body quickly backwards. My empty left hands goes up to my eyes but my frontal lobes, the part of the brain that controls intelligence and reason, already knows it's too late and the damage to my fragile sanity has been done. I find myself in the living room, somehow having backed out, heart beating like a coyote chased rabbit.

I must have called out in terror because Ms. Color Claws is telling who ever she had been talking to that she will call back while giving me the Look-That-Kills, but does not hang up the phone. I quickly take a deep breath and tell her that the lady has no clothes on. Instead of going in to take care of her naked charge right away, she screams into the phone that "the old bitch forget to get dressed" and she would call the other party back soon. She pulls a pencil from her shirt pocket and uses it to push the "end" button on the portable house phone she was on, since her nails prevented her from doing so normally. She charges past me and goes into the bedroom and slams the door.

I wait several minutes until Mistress Tigra and Mrs. Free and Natural exit the room, the latter in a wheel chair. The poor old lady is wrapped in a bathrobe that could double as a twenty refugee sized tent and is still babbling something I can't understand. I tell myself that it would now be worth my while to get in there and get the bed fixed or find myself under those neon tinted claws, having interrupted what surely must have been a very important phone call (HA). I race into the room and quickly find that the frame of the bed is broken or bent in several places. Then, while doing the once over, I find a decal, stating who originally provided the bed and who was probably the owner.

It was not my employer, but my company's biggest rival across town. Miss Claws did not even bother to see where the bed was from, just called the first person she could find in the phone book (which was my company). Worst of all, the Slacker had not even bothered to check to see if this person even had equipment from my company! He simply took the call and schedules me to go out!

Infuriated for some many reasons and on so many levels, I told Tigra the Neglagent Nurse taht she needed to call Blank & Blank, who would fix it. I turned and fled out the door and flimsy ramp, wondering if my health insurance covered psychiatric care.

[shrapnel]

Did the fat at least, uh, cover up the most potentially horrifying bits?

[TheLastRifleMan]

Did the fat at least, uh, cover up the most potentially horrifying bits?

no

[Subdiver]

[quote="Istvan56"]I know about saving lives is not about prick waving but unfortunately not everyone has learned that lesson. [quote]

Just for the record, I wasn't pointing a finger at you, who strike me as a very professional individual, but at those who use their position to get high handed with others. No disrespect, sir.

[shrapnel]

Did the fat at least, uh, cover up the most potentially horrifying bits?

no

*vomits*

[Oneswunk]

My eyes just exploded and I didn't even see her.

[JCgoose]

Did the fat at least, uh, cover up the most potentially horrifying bits?

no

you read it you cant UNREAD IT!!!

stay tuned for more tales of awesome

[Vicarious_Lee]

I've seen her. I've seen 100 of her. It's not the sight. The sight is easy (no offense, Rifleman). In fact, I can pretend that I'm Han Solo, arguing loudly, right before he gets frozen in carbonite when talking to them, and It's actually kind of fun sometimes.

It's the smell.

I know that smell. It's a lot of half-assed bed-baths that leave a salty, sticky, filmy, earthy smell on places where it's dried to the surface skin, but it's still wet and festering in the folds. Most of the time it's accompanied by extremely heavy cigarette smoke saturation, and a lot of times there's also a smell of greasy, starchy food that, more often than not, I find old bits of still stuck to the skin. Sometimes there's a whiff of weed. Always is there a faint undertone of very poor toilet hygiene. See, the thing is, Rifleman, that smell; the not-quite-overpowering smell, is just what is escaping across the room to you. That's just the tip of a feculent iceberg that, for however hellish your job is, you get to have someone else just push out of your way before you do anything.

I, on the other hand, am that iceberg's Jacques Motherfucking Cousteau.

Imagine that woman. Imagine rolling her to the side, and opening her buttcheeks (the molten core of that "smell" you get) and getting your face close enough to put your finger in that person's ass to do a rectal exam. Imagine cleaning out the bed sores that extend all the way down to bone. I defy anyone to say we're overpaid now.

When I get time, I'll sit down and tel the tale of "My Mothafuckin' CLOTHES!!!!!"

[Istvan56]

Subdiver, I know you weren't talking about me. I was agreeing with you and pointing out another instance of stupidity by those who think that a crisis means they can grab power instead of caring for the victims.

TheLastRifleman, ack, yeah, I've seen what should not be seen as well. The only worse thing than seeing naked decayed living flesh is seeing naked decaying dead flesh on someone met their end needlessly and violently. Both offend the senses and burn themselves into the mind's eye forever.

Ah, V.L., my respect for you grows. I've been there and done that once, helping a fellow church member care for her aged and dying father. I had to do the whole spounge bath, change the diaper and clean the ass out treatment. I was only spared further calls to assist there due to her father's passing.

Alright folks, let's keep this thread going.

[brer]

It's been a while, but I said I'd post it.

The Machinist mates and the tampon of death.

Subdiver and a few of the other Submariners have alluded to the horrors that are the sanitary systems on the older fast attack submarines.

My yustafish was an old permit class boat that had to have the sanitary tanks blown by pressure instead of being pumped out to sea. As we have already covered some of the more colorful aspects of these tanks I'll move onto one aspect not covered.

What happens when the tank gets clogged?

This is a somewhat common occurrence. It usually happens when the boat just comes back into port, or after ladies have been onboard for some reason or another. Usually the culprit is a fairly common female hygiene product and is not noticed until the tank is full of other stuff.

The horror of the story is how they have to get it out,,,

The machinist mates will draw straws, or the submarine equivalent of coffee stirrer sticks. All of them draw, no one gets out because of rank or qualification.

The shower is cordoned off, the corpsman is alerted, and equipment is made ready.

The unlucky MM then dives the tank using an emergency air breathing apparatus for air and whatever tools he needs to remove the blockage.

Once the blockage is removed, the poor guy is then taken to the shower and cleaned up with the corpsman liberally dousing him with weskodyne(sp), an iodine based disinfectant.

Things like that made me glad I was control room party.

[skarface]

Oh, man!

You all tell horrible and amazing stories.


*shudder*

[The Highwayman]

A few of the restaurant stories made me remember one from my youth, so here goes....


About two years after high school, I got a job as a maintenance guy at a large shopping center. There was several "anchor" stores (read-big box) and dozens of smaller venues, all laid out in a sort of strip mall style. Well, when Hurricane Andrew hit, even though the area was about 35 miles away, we had some extensive damage to the roof in several areas. We got a contractor out to reroof it, and then went from store to store, replacing drop ceiling tiles that had stains on them from the leak. One of the businesses was a Chinese restaurant, and unfortunately some of the tiles that needed to be replaced were in the kitchen.

So we told the owners to contact us the next day as soon as they arrived in the morning, so we could get in there and replace them before they started cooking. Well, the next day comes and we get the call. We were already waiting for them, and we already had the tiles ready and everything. We arrived minutes later and went in. To our dismay, they were already at work, preparing and cooking food. They told us it was okay, to go ahead and change them out. One panel in particular happened to be directly above where this little old fellow was stirring this huge vat of rice. So, I informed him that it was going to be a dirty job, and that he might want to move for a few minutes. He just smiled and said "it okay, it okay"....

So, I went up the ladder, and did my best. Anyone that's ever done this, knows that you can't just pull them straight down. Due to the way they kind of hang in place, you have to push them up, and then tilt them at an angle to pull them through the ceiling grid. Since this was a 15-year or so old buliding, there was no way to be clean about it. As I removed the tile, all kinds of shit was sliding off it-roach and rat feces, dust, dirt, bits of insulation, God knows what else- right into the huge vat of rice!!!! The little old man stirring the rice just reached his hand in, and pulled out the larger bits of detrius, flinged them on the floor, and kept right on stirring and smiling up at me.....


Needless to say, it was quite a while before I could bring myself to eat Chinese food again, and even then it was in a different county far away from that pit.