Soft Drinks and Rat Pee
As I cracked open a Diet Coke this morning, a coworker chided me for not rinsing the top of the can.
"They all have rat pee on them, you know," she whispered.
"Rat pee?" I said, "Really? All of them?"
"Of course," she said, "They're in these filthy warehouses before they came here. Rats pee all over them."
I looked at the can more closely. I'll clean the top if it seems unusually filthy, but I'll usually give it the benefit of the doubt. Now my curiosity was piqued. I had to investigate further.
I've worked briefly in one of these beverage distribution warehouses as an industrial temp for a couple of days. I had to resort an entire semi full of black label beer. The driver took an off ramp too fast, and all the pallets came apart. It was about 100 degrees. Every so often I'd pick up a damaged can and it would explode, like a warm and nasty beer grenade.
In my limited experience, the beverage warehouse was no cleaner or dirtier than any other warehouse.
But now I have questions -
How do they ensure that each can gets peed on?
What about the cans stacked on top of each other? Do they spread them out to allow the rats access?
How many rats are there? Are they union?
Have some warehouses cut back and substituted cheaper mouse pee?
I have the following image of some guy whose job is to be "the rat guy". He'd be the guy who makes sure that they get a nice even coating of rat pee on all the cans. Maybe he has trained rats or something. Or maybe the they outsource the rats and he just uses a sprayer. I dunno.
I'm going to look into this and get back to you.
LM
"They all have rat pee on them, you know," she whispered.
"Rat pee?" I said, "Really? All of them?"
"Of course," she said, "They're in these filthy warehouses before they came here. Rats pee all over them."
I looked at the can more closely. I'll clean the top if it seems unusually filthy, but I'll usually give it the benefit of the doubt. Now my curiosity was piqued. I had to investigate further.
I've worked briefly in one of these beverage distribution warehouses as an industrial temp for a couple of days. I had to resort an entire semi full of black label beer. The driver took an off ramp too fast, and all the pallets came apart. It was about 100 degrees. Every so often I'd pick up a damaged can and it would explode, like a warm and nasty beer grenade.
In my limited experience, the beverage warehouse was no cleaner or dirtier than any other warehouse.
But now I have questions -
How do they ensure that each can gets peed on?
What about the cans stacked on top of each other? Do they spread them out to allow the rats access?
How many rats are there? Are they union?
Have some warehouses cut back and substituted cheaper mouse pee?
I have the following image of some guy whose job is to be "the rat guy". He'd be the guy who makes sure that they get a nice even coating of rat pee on all the cans. Maybe he has trained rats or something. Or maybe the they outsource the rats and he just uses a sprayer. I dunno.
I'm going to look into this and get back to you.
LM
posted by Lance Manion at 2:22 PM
2 Comments:
Does you coworker know what ends up in ketchup (or catsup if you prefer)? Way sicker then some rat peepees.
My father used to tell me that ketchup was made from the blood of baby robins.
The reality can't be much worse.
It was an interesting childhood.
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