Oops, we forgot to turn it on

[bean]

This came out of the mouth of the driver for one of our major distributors.

What did they forget to turn on?

The fucking trailer. A reefer trailer carrying frozen food from Colorado to Texas. Most of the trailer was filled with stuff for my store, the rest being for another store in the company in the next city.

Tip: Refuse the delivery if they open the trailer and melted ice cream pours out. That's the first delivery we've refused since I've been with the company (15 months). The bottom of the pallets (where it would be coldest) were still well above freezing - about 40F - with the tops around 65F (outside temp at the time).

Ironically, the truck we get from our corporate distribution center isn't even frozen, just refrigerated. But they pack the frozen pallets on that truck with tons of dry ice. If this distributor had done that, everything but the ice cream would have been fine.

What really stinks is most of our frozen products come in from the forgetful distributor, and we REALLY needed that product. Frozen gets to look really empty until Saturday.

[repsac]

I think the very first job I held was one I took when in college. I didn't last there too long though, getting sick after one particular incident and quit. There are a host of stories from there though, and I might get around to them.

One in particular I remember though, had to do with a refer truck. you see, I worked as security for a chicken processing plant. One of my duties was to go out and check these trucks out, seeing what the temperature the refer unit said it was, and then record it.

IF the unit was too hot, let's say 40 degrees F or so, I'd let it sit till the next hour when I checked. Usually it had just been loaded and needed to recool. One however sticks out in my mind. I remember walking up to this truck and seeing that the inside temperature of it was something around 98 or 99 degrees. Really odd. I called up Maintenence about it, and they said just keep an eye on it, give it a couple hours then call them back. The next hour, the temp had gone up to 105, and by the time I called them back (half an hour later. I checked earlier) the temp was up to 112 or so. They sent a truck down, picked it up and checked, only to find that the cooling unit's heat exchanger had gone out. So instead of pumping cool air in to keep the frozen chickens cold, it had begun pumping in hot air. The truck had sat for the better part of a shift doing this, and I was told that by the time they got it where they could open and off load it, the smell was quite nice. Sure, everything was sticky, slimy, and wet...but the smell was quite...ripe.

[Becks]

Bean, sounds wonderful.

Hope you guys aren't having a lot of frozen foods as sale items.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The people who ran my company a few years ago came from Fred Meyer, which is evidently a ginormous retail store/grocery store hybrid. So for a couple years, when stores were being remodeled, one of the additions to the remodeled stores was a bigger grocery section with coolers and freezers for milk, cheese, frozen dinners, ice cream, and so forth,

The store I worked at during college was the first one in the company to be remodeled. One night I noticed the ice cream freezer in the backroom had become unplugged. I told the fresh-out-of-college manager on duty about this, and he said "Oh, that's gross! Huh huh."

He decided to plug the freezer back in so the ice cream inside could refreeze, and then throw out the ice cream. However he didn't put a sign on the freezer warning other employees not to stock any ice cream from the freezer on the salesfloor, or even tell anybody, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of that possibly spoiled ice cream got to the floor.

My current store was remodeled two years later with the expanded grocery section (it has since been removed form all the stores that had it--new regime came in). Our first shipment of grocery items came in this big container that looked like a big plastic shell mounted on a pallet with a thick fabric door you pulled up to get at the stuff inside. After that our frozen stuff was delivered on regular pallets with a big chunk of dry ice next to the frozen items. The dry ice then sometimes was used for funny receiving pranks

[bean]

Tell me about some of these receiving pranks please. *polishes halo*

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Tell me about some of these receiving pranks please. *polishes halo*

Okay, may not have been much of a prank but...a couple guys decided to rub some bubble wrap against the steaming chunk of dry ice, and then see if it would break. The same way the ball broke when dropped in a vat of dry ice.

I don't think it did. I remember thinking "Ahh, I can't believe we're paid to do this."

[Lingering Grin]

Okay, may not have been much of a prank but...a couple guys decided to rub some bubble wrap against the steaming chunk of dry ice, and then see if it would break. The same way the ball broke when dropped in a vat of dry ice.

I don't think it did. I remember thinking "Ahh, I can't believe we're paid to do this."

One of my friends had some fun once at the movie theater. He took a HUGE chunk of dry ice and dropped it into "wash" sink in the back (The one filled with HOT water). in about 15 seconds the entire back of the concession stand was covered in white mist, and a few minutes later it started creeping out to the front.

Got quite a few funny looks from people (co-workers and customers alike).

[digilight]

My MIL has been getting the Omaha Steaks, well they come with a nice big chunk of dry ice to keep 'em cold. Last time I turned her sink onto real hot and just ran it over the dry ice and made her kitchen counter look like a pink floyd concert. Yeah I can be entertained real easily.

You can also drop it in a punch bowel for cool effects. Just don't touch it with bare skin, cause you'll fuck your fingers up real bad.

[K245five]

My MIL has been getting the Omaha Steaks, well they come with a nice big chunk of dry ice to keep 'em cold. Last time I turned her sink onto real hot and just ran it over the dry ice and made her kitchen counter look like a pink floyd concert. Yeah I can be entertained real easily.

You can also drop it in a punch bowel for cool effects. Just don't touch it with bare skin, cause you'll fuck your fingers up real bad.

Oh yeah! I used to get dry ice on Frozen Foods deliveries at my old store, and one of the old-timers told me that the temperature of dry ice is a legit 100 degrees BELOW ZERO!!!

I also remember doing some interesting "science experiments" with dry ice. It was soooooooo much fun!!! LOL

[Pheonixfyre]

You can touch dry ice with your bare hands, just don't do it for more than a few seconds. Longer than that, you need some sort of hand protection.