Unsavoury cleaning practices and the like

A butchers I worked in one of the owners, a really old guy used to piss in a bucket, then empty that down the sink, because the toilet was in the close next door and he didnt want to walk to it.

It was one of the buckets you'd fill with water when making the sausages.

I never ate a sausage or pie from there ever again.

OK, I'm not going to open this thread again, ta.

One of my dads favourite stories is how when he was a student, he had a job in the local frozen food store.

One of the semi regular jobs every stocktake or so, was to find all the grim grey and dull looking chickens that had been lost into the ice build up in the corners or down the back of the metal racks . Then run them under a warm tap for a few minutes in the sink and give them a good scrub with a nail brush to make them look all nice and pink again, before re-freezing them and selling.

Oh man, manky meat products eh?! Hee heeee. One of the barmen at a rock pub/dive I used to frequent had been a steel fabricator, and he told us about a job where he’d seen maggot infested meat processing machines at a well known pork scratchings factory - and yep, I’ve never eaten pork scratchings since (used to be my favourite bar snack😆).

There used to be an egg farm outside Kirkcudbright, my mate worked there in the holidays (I had the fish Factory, too many horror stories for here). Anyway, all the eggs that got broken or cracked in the cages were scooped up and popped in a large plastic drum that sat outside in the sun, with rats around. It gradually filled up over a few weeks, then the truck from a food processing plant would collect it. To make Heinz salad cream with. 

Similar to the OP, few years back i worked in an old H block style location, so the kitchen bays were open and just up from the toilets, cleaner would go into the toilet, then clean the kitchen with the same dirty cloth and mop, then later when she reached our spur on the blocks, would then try and clean the desks with that same cloth, using the mop bucket!

You basically had to make sure you were at your desk when she came along so you could say you didn't need to have your desk cleaned, you have to wonder if it was a cunning trick in the long run 🤣

Work bathroom was pretty fancy and the cleaner did intermediate wipe downs of it to keep it shiny in between proper cleans.

He was wiping everything with one cloth - outside of the toilets, door handles, sinks, taps, mirrors. Left it all shiny and clean looking but massively unhygienic.

@gallowayboy. I worked in that egg factory as a lad. £1 an hour. Worst job I had.

I started work in a bar, late 80s.  Found out not long after starting that people sometimes pissed in the dishwashers "for a laugh"! Didn't stay working there for long! 🤮

@onehundredthidiot you should've gone to the fishy, piece work rates !

then the truck from a food processing plant would collect it. To make Heinz salad cream with.

I'll take "things that didn't happen so hard that it unhappened things that did" for $200 please, Alex.

A couple of my daughters have had temp house keeping jobs at the local chain hotel. They'd regularly tell us about the state the rooms would get left in. One of the oddest was someone had drawn smiley faces on every shiny surface in probably snot. People mistaking the shower for a toilet was a regular. People are very strange. 

Sometimes they were told to just wipe the cups with a used pillow case rather than washing.

Back as a youth I had a job delivering chemicals, amongst other places to abattoirs and a place called UCP - Universal Cattle Products. My boss used to ask me to ask them for a 'mixed bag'. It was a clear plastic bag containing tripe, lungs and other god knows what all in a liquid of some sort. Back at the yard he'd boil it all up (because the wife won't let me do it at home).

That and seeing skips full of cow's heads and the sight of a wagon full of pigs parked up (who clearly knew what was coming and reacted accordingly) probably contributed to me being vegetarian for 35 years (and still am).

If anyone ever has comment about me not easting meat, I always suggest an abattoir  visit before they get too far down that road...

probably snot

Hopefully...

🙁

I’ll take “things that didn’t happen so hard that it unhappened things that did” for $200 please, Alex.

Aye 😄 granted the heinz salad cream bit was a likely embellishment, but i don't doubt it was processed into the human food chain somewhere..

This thread is either going to get banned, or STW creates a 'most unsavoury post of 2023' competition. Hopefully photos will not be allowed if that does happen...

I do have a photo from a rope access course I used to run to illustrate the importance of a well adjusted harness and avoiding high fall factors entitled 'degloving incident' - so I do have an entry ready just in case... Every time I showed it all the big hairy riggers used to cross their legs and wince 😀

At my current place of work some of my colleagues need toilet training. We occasionally have show and tell sessions on various topics and I have suggested that the next one could be titled "How to use a toilet brush"...

I worked in a restaurant in Ayr and I was complimented on how clean I got the dishes.
I noticed the dishwasher was knackered and wasn't rinsing the dishes. After the wash cycle I rinsed the dishes under the tap. Turns out the girl on the D/S never bothered so just stacked soapy dishes to be served.
She also filled the sink in the morning and used the same water all day. It was minging.

I asked the 'chef' for a pizza. Turned out they used the same knife to cut it that was used for something with coleslaw and my pizza was streaked with coleslaw.

I lasted until my first pay check and management were puzzled as to why I left.

illustrate the importance of a well adjusted harness and avoiding high fall factors entitled ‘degloving incident’

I thought that was from a car harness that picture. My leg loops have always been looser than some of my colleagues morals with no impromptu vasectomies to date.

Heh, funnily enough we were doing a bit of work in a harness at work yesterday and talking about that picture. Well, describing it in great detail to try and revolt the undergraduate at least. 😁

We also used to have a cleaner at work that mopped every surface, inc. the urinals with the same mop. It was because she was so obese she couldn't bend or stretch to clean anything that was outside waist to shoulder height. It was a blessed relief when she buggered off for her extended summer holidays every year and the temporary cleaner could bring standards back up again.

I was in a pub where the landlady appeared behind the bar clutching a very young baby. Baby hoiked up a bit of vomit and the landlady dabbed it clean with one of the bar's teatowels.

I had A D&A test for the railway. I came back into the room with my urine sample (obviously supervised) and handed it over. The D&A person took it from me, promptly spilt it over their desk and keyboard. A few paper towels to dry the worst and they carried on.

I did a stint in a soap factory which made soap for most of the big brands. As a result I won’t use soap. It is just animal fat and caustic soda with a bit of perfume. Whatever fell on the floor got put back in the mixers. Place was a death trap too. Caustic soda leaking out of pipes, fire damaged part of the building (with part of roof missing) still in use. My favourite being when the animal fat solidified in the pipes. You’d get sent outside with some old rags, petrol a lighter and a torch. All for 1990’s minimum wage!

Having worked many food service jobs in the past I can advise everyone to be always courteous yet suspicious when eating out.

^^ we had that warning from Orwell when down and out, not much has changed

I did a stint in a soap factory which made soap for most of the big brands. As a result I won’t use soap. It is just animal fat and caustic soda with a bit of perfume.

And? It does what it’s supposed to do, kill germs and many viruses. I use bar soap, Body Shop, mostly, and also pump bottles of clear soap in the kitchen.

I was chatting to a cleaner in one place, just after he’d cleaned one of the bogs.

He’d used rubber gloves and a brush and had got stuck right in - not my chocolate hostage I hasten to add.

He stood up as we were starting to chat, looked in the mirror and proceeded to smooth down his hair and give his face a bit of rub, still with the rubber gloves on.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head!

I started work in a bar, late 80s.  Found out not long after starting that people sometimes pissed in the dishwashers “for a laugh”! Didn’t stay working there for long

You were the dishwasher weren't you.

To make Heinz salad cream with.

Yeah, never happened.

A previous gf worked at a chicken processing plant and I got shown around the place once by one of the engineers. They had a process that collected all the bits and pieces from chickens from the production line that couldn't be sold and compressed it all into frozen bricks, it went to a company that made it into stock cubes; bones, skin, all that shit  While it was cleaned thoroughly and properly, on first opening, both the smell and vision of compressed chicken hell was pretty overpowering. 

I don't think its a good idea to poke into factory food processing to closely just for the sake of your sanity. 

Having worked many food service jobs in the past I can advise everyone to be always courteous yet suspicious when eating out.

New NHS sexual health mantra right there

I do have a photo from a rope access course I used to run to illustrate the importance of a well adjusted harness and avoiding high fall factors entitled ‘degloving incident’ – so I do have an entry ready just in case… Every time I showed it all the big hairy riggers used to cross their legs and wince 😀

This is a common cautionary tale in climbing, about why you shouldn't wear rings for risk of severe damage to fingers.

You're not talking about fingers, are you. 🤢

As a result I won’t use soap. It is just animal fat and caustic soda with a bit of perfume.

Depends what soap you use I guess...

Try some of this.. not cheap but goes a long way...I love it...

Doesn't foam as much as cheap soap, but then the foam is just for show to make it look like it's doing something.
https://www.lush.com/uk/en/p/karma-soap

hahahaha No pun intended...TBF the amount of bonking that goes on in these places is off the chart aswell. We had a sous chef from Finland who got through all the single male staff and most of the punters. Absolute man-eater.

And? It does what it’s supposed to do, kill germs and many viruses. I use bar soap, Body Shop, mostly, and also pump bottles of clear soap in the kitchen.

Go do a shift in a decrepit soap factory on a night shift for minimum wage in the nineties. Then come back and tell me you don’t ****ing hate soap. Also cleaning oneself with animal fat is the very definition of unsavoury cleaning in the vegan age!

But your not clean yourself with animal fat. The triglycerides are broken to long chain fatty acid salts and propane-1,2,3-triol. That's the surfactant.
Picky I know but it's stw.

I repeat my previous post. Work in a knackered soap factory for a few months. Will put you right off using the stuff!

As per my previous post,

You don't need to use that sort of soap, there are more eco friendly 'soaps' available, and after using some of them, I'd argue they are actually better.

I'll never forget this.

At uni, my girlfriend's shared student house suffered a blocked sewer and all of the effluent flooded the back yard. The place was ankle deep in foulage.

The landlord sent round his tame handyman who turned up in civvies and proceeded to unblock the system with his bare hands. As he left he proudly announced that he also did catering and if anyone wanted food for a party to give him a call. <br /><br />

we did  not give him a call.