Top Ten Messes; Mess #8
Chicken Fat
Like many other companies looking to enhance the flavor of their products, (at least back in those days) we would add fat. Chicken fat, that is. Fat is where the flavor is. If it were not, we would all be thinner.
Chicken fat is extremely slippery, rivaling the friction reducing properties of about any grease or oil. I can't imagine the mess they have extracting the fat from the chicken carcasses. Rather nasty, I would think.
Our chicken fat came to us in 5 gallon plastic buckets with lids on them. The buckets were stacked up on a pallet with a narrow band of reinforced tape around the top.
One day a guy on a forklift truck was moving the chicken fat into the raw materials cooler for use in the frozen foods department. They bumped into something. Most of the time, these stupid messes are avoidable. It happens when they do not look, or they force something without being able to see what they are doing, hoping that it will be okay. (I learned those lessons the hard way myself.)
It wouldn't be a big deal if a few buckets fell and popped open. This time, several stacks of the buckets fell over and popped open. To make matters worse, because of the cool air and floor in the cooler, the chicken fat was setting up like lard.
It was interesting to watch the cleanup crew trying to take care of this. They tried using hot water and flushing it down the drain. This really wasn't working. Fat floats on water, of course, and the volume of the mess kept getting bigger. Chicken fatty water was drifting under everything in the cooler. The entire cooler would need emptied and cleaned up real well. If they would have shoveled up the semi-solidified slush it would have worked out a lot better for them.
It was so incredibly slippery. No matter how careful they were, they could NOT keep their footing. They were slipping and falling into the slimy gunk. Certainly chickens would be laughing at them if it were possible.
I decided I would let them do their job and sit that one out. I knew I would be on the floor if I got involved. I just shook my head and went the other way.
Ladies Man: A crew leader working for me called me at home. He was desperate for advice. He had gotten two women pregnant at the same time. He was contemplating suicide. All I could think of was telling him he had to stay alive to support the babies. I don't know how it turned out.