Sensing Old Factories
Posted on | September 25, 2007 at 10:38 pm | 5 Comments
This is a slight continuation of the whole office building bathroom thread from yesterday. There was something I forgot to mention. The men’s restroom has an automatic air freshener/odor neutralizer dispenser mounted high up on the wall. Every once in awhile, it emits an audible sound and a sweet puff of scented air, covering up a multiple of sins. At first, I thought it was automatically detecting a surfeit of odors and was acting appropriately to neutralize them. This always seemed to happen whenever I was… ahem… contributing to the problem. But then I realized that’s crazy talk. It’s probably on a timer, and if I’m in there long enough, it’s bound to go off. They don’t have machines that can detect bad odors, do they? Once again, I’m too lazy to do the research, so I’ll assume “no”. But wouldn’t it be cool if they did? I’d buy one of those puppies for home! Maybe they can just make them with methane gas detectors built-in or something. Hey, is this a new marketing idea? If so, and someone here acts on it, I want credit! Well, money, actually.
Pet Peeve Of The Day: One more thing I was going to mention about the new building but forgot: The maintenance people empty out the breakroom refrigerator every weekend. According to the note on the front of the fridge, they throw everything away, unless you’ve got a note on it with the expiration date. Not “this belongs to so-and-so” or “please don’t throw away”, but the date that you want them to throw it away on. Isn’t that bizarre? They’ve thrown out several of my food items that were perfectly good, because I failed to mark them. Hasn’t happened in awhile though – I’ve been pretty careful lately. Someday I will have my revenge and will leave something in there that spoils fast with a “1/1/2009″ expiration date on it. That will show them!
Unless they install automatic odor neutralizers in the refrigerator.
Latre.
Comments
5 Responses to “Sensing Old Factories”
September 26th, 2007 @ 8:54 am
You clever wordsmith you, it took me a moment to decode “Old Factories”.
At my last employer (The Q Continuum) we also had those scent misting devices. They certainly aren’t automatic, consisting of not much more than a phial of concentrated scent and a little fan. Their mission is simply to be the winning smell, but considering the alternative…
My first though on expiration dates was to just label everything far in the future. In fact, I could just print a sheet of labels “Bill tGH 1 Jan 2012″. In the case of a Twinkie, it might even be a lowball estimate.
September 26th, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
Is that what that little ‘beep’ I hear every so often is? I thought it was a not-so-subtle reminder that you’ve been in the bathroom too long (something I sure wouldn’t put past the taskmasters here at Sweatshop.com).
September 26th, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
In my experience those ersatz-air-fresheners are actually time capsules, preserving their contents enshrouded in a layer of dust for generations to come. I don’t recall ever coming across one in an office that was less than 75 years old – I took a look inside one and the battery actually had a picture of Thomas Edison on it!
(thanks, I’m here all week, try the Citrus Meadow)
September 27th, 2007 @ 5:51 am
OMG that’s what the pfft! machines are supposed to do. Thank you.
September 27th, 2007 @ 9:04 pm
At least they tell you what you need to do to not get your stuff thrown out. At Rose’s office, they just toss things at random, seemingly. They have the odd idea that anything in its original container will last forever, but anything not so packaged will rot instantly. So: six-month-old yogurt in its package: okay. Two-day-old beef jerky in a sealed, Tupperware container: OMG it will ROT – toss it!