Nasty Fragrances..

[ri702bill 8,316]

Yesterday,    @squonk replied to my question regarding your worst teenage job - His words "Not a teen job but probably the worst job I ever had was when I worked evenings at the hospital was doing PM's on the dish machine, (nasty), grease trap (nastier) and morque garbage disposal! (Nastiest)!" about the grease trap got me thinking..

 

Did you ever get into a situation where something in the vacinity reeked soooo bad, but you could do nothing about it? I think we have all been stuck in traffic behind either a garbage truck or a Rendering Company truck in the summer - not pleasant.

I worked 2 jobs for a few years in the 1980's, one was doing front end work and alignments at a local Goodyear store. Two brothers owned the building but each had a seperate business -  left side was the Goodyear store, the right was the Truck Department where they made and installed large truck recap tires. One hot August Saturday, i got to work and next to the alignment bay, there was a 10 wheeled Septic Pumping truck parked outside. It was there for 8 recaps in the rear and 2 new tires in the front, per law. It took the tire guys all day to change all 10 - I got home in the late afternoon and my wife wanted to know what I stepped in outside!!

[pacer 3,169]

5 hours ago, ri702bill said:

Septic Pumping truck parked outside.

 

Heh!! Septic tank/Grease traps .... piece a cake. No, really, I owned and ran by myself a pumping business for some 10 yrs, and I'm serious when I say - you DO get used to the smell.

 

Worked nite shift at Delta Air and ran the pumping business during the day. I actually did very few septics, because I had some 125-130 grease traps that paid more and were all gathered in town - some septics would be MANY miles away and passing the added cost on to the customer .... well, I just preferred the stinky ole grease traps! Actually was a pretty .... ''sweet??" business, I paid my house off, bought several new cars/trucks etc.

 

Guess I shud add that I was pretty much forced out of the business .... For most of those yrs we could dump at no cost, but the EPA got involved and after 1-2 yrs of that I saw the handwriting on the wall and got out.

Edited September 3, 2022 by pacer

[squonk 41,076]

Had to put a clutch in a sheep farmers truck one during the heat in August. 

 

Don't want to gross anyone out but at the hospital they brought in a man who had been dead for several days. They put him in the morgue cooler. The morgue had a dedicated exhaust fan but it was a ridiculously long duct run thru half the hospital basement then up 3 floors to the roof. There was a booster fan in line in the ceiling of the break room for the sterilization crew. Lets just say there was a little bit of duct leakage at that booster fan and the rest is well history! 

[wallfish 16,994]

Back in the early 90s installing satellite dishes on A&P and Walbaum supermarket stores on Long Island NY the "meat truck" would show up to pick up the old meat from the supermarkets. NASTY We could smell it coming when it hit the parking lots. This was during the summer

But the worst was this greenish brownish slime crap that seeped from the dumpsters at these stores. It had a skin over it from drying so you couldn't smell anything until that skin got broken. It was truly BRUTAL for about 50 yards in every direction. The guy that was working with me would puke his guts out if that crap was stinking when we were there.

[stevasaurus 22,723]

I remember driving back from a fishing trip in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan (Big Bay De-noc).  My friend Larry and I were just south of Green Bay, Wisconsin when we happened upon a Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.  It was a very strong Oder.  I looked at Larry and said, "You know, I kind of like that smell."  He started laughing hysterically and said, "Me too, but I never would have told anybody."  We laughed about that for hours.  

 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by stevasaurus

[SylvanLakeWH 25,544]

Knew that skunk was on the Wisconsin side of the line… we don’t tolerate such things here in The Mitten… 

[squonk 41,076]

Back in my motorcycle days I pulled up behind a tractor trailer at a stop light. Garbage hauler from NYC! 

[clueless 2,987]

Cleaning chitlins, we stump flong 'um and then washed 'um in a bucket. Then grandma would cook them in a pot on the stove for three or four hours while she gave my mom and aunt a Tony Perm. Not sure which smelled worse but the combination was the best way to keep youngins outside all day, even in 100 degrees.

[Handy Don 12,214]

When I lived in NE PeeAaa our neighbor got a beagle trained as a hunting dog. Normally it was leashed on a long "run" to give it a lot of room to run. Their son (aged 11) felt sorry for the dog and let him loose one day "to play". Course the dog just took off! A couple hours later the dog proudly showed up at their door with his treasure. Yep, a dead skunk. Even after a lot of washing the scent was there for a couple of months. I'm sure the dog couldn't figure out why no-one wanted to get close for a while.

Skunk and wet dog are pretty potent!

[The Freightliner Guy 1,327]

I love how they just took pics of dead skunks in the road I laughed so hard when I saw that one skunk with its legs in the air

[Ed Kennell 38,153]

I worked on a 100,000 hen egg farm  around 70 years back.    The hens were only kept for 2 years.    So the older hens were constantly being replaced by young pullets.

The new pullets had to be debeaked before they were placed in the laying house.      I burned the beaks off with an electric hot knife.  Sorta smelled like a grilled skunk with the hair on.

[oliver2-44 9,739]

First year of college I worked a 4+ hour evening shift on the cleaning crew of a turkey processing plant You were armed with a yellow rain slicker and a pressure washer hose/wand.  There was wet steam, hot soapy water, rinse water and iodine water piped through out the plant. They processed 1000 to 2000 Turkey a day. Froze them and shipped them mostly to Europe.

The factory had red brick floors, white tile walls and was really a clean operation. There wasn’t guts, feathers, etc on the floor anywhere. It was all sucked away by machines ….except.  The one area they continually tried to automate but couldn’t. The initial cutting Turkeys heads off was done by hand. A little blood doesn’t bother me. But at the end of every day that area was covered with blood and heads wall to wall. No it wasn’t smelly, but it was as gross as gross can get 
 
   If the area you cleaned was written up the next morning by USDA inspectors 3 times you were fired. I never got wrote up!  
I’ve got lots of other Turkey plant stories to share, but I think I’ll save those till Thanksgiving!

Edited September 4, 2022 by oliver2-44

[wallfish 16,994]

1 hour ago, oliver2-44 said:

You were armed with a yellow rain slicker and a pressure washer hose/wand.

[Kenneth R Cluley 515]

Ed, I recall that wonderful odor of culling beaks to this day! Helping my Grandfather on the farm. He and my Dad always took great pleasure in teaching me the School of Hard Knocks lesson of the day.

[ri702bill 8,316]

10 hours ago, Ed Kennell said:

The new pullets had to be debeaked

My wife - her first job for one summer in Highschool she worked at a local Chicken Hatchery. She too had the task of grinding the beaks down on the new hatchlings - but not for long! She is left handed, the machine was set up right handed - she often misses her target....

[Ed Kennell 38,153]

2 hours ago, ri702bill said:

She is left handed,

I'm a south paw too, but my hot knife machine was ambidextrous.