Archived Biggest spill disaster of your retail career?

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can't touch this

can't touch this

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What spilled and how? How long did it take you to clean it up?

My biggest spill disaster by far was at one of my old jobs, I was pulling a very tall beverage pallet with an electric jack. I was going too fast (oops) and had to swerve to avoid a customer who was coming around the corner and the entire pallet collapsed into a Pepsi endcap with a deafening crash. The pallet had about 15 casepacks of Crush soda in glass bottles on top, some LaCroix water in the middle and Gatorade casepacks on the bottom...only the Gatorade survived intact. The Crush, LaCroix and Pepsi were obliterated and sent a foot-high reddish-brown tsunami rushing down the aisle in all directions. Fuck.

So yeah that was a huge bitch. I had already worked for 8 hours and had to spend 2 more cleaning up the aftermath. Thankfully it was near the deli and on a sloping floor with a drain nearby so I could push most of the liquid down the drain with a floor squeegee, but still. I was told to clock out and leave before I could deal with the Gatorade (the bottles inside were fine but the cardboard cases were soggy) and when I came back the next day, I found that the next shift had "taken care of" the Gatorade by throwing the whole mess on a pallet and leaving it...so I had to spend another hour and a half digging the bottles out of a sticky mass of damp cardboard and rinsing them off in the sink. Just fuck my shit up fam!
 
it was not a liquid spill, but dropping an entire pallet of shelves from the top of the steel, sliding over the other side and crashing onto the floor because the pallet tipped was the worst. my ETL and I had to take two hours to rebuild it. thankfully no one was in the area
 
PM2NO said:
Women’s restroom flooded. Turns out it was all because someone flushed a spider wrap which caused toilets to overflow
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WAIT SHIT THAT REMINDS ME OF THE TIME WE HAD THE DRAINS FLOODING BOTH THE MEN'S AND WOMEN'S RESTROOMS

YEAH

FOS was flooding and the water was leaking almost near the checklanes but they wouldn't fucking close the store we had requisitioned towels and it was ghetto af

Some dumbass let people use the backroom bathroom but AP shut that down real quick.

Alternatively, we have consistent issues with pfresh coolers leaking water everywhere
 
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mammoth said:
it was not a liquid spill, but dropping an entire pallet of shelves from the top of the steel, sliding over the other side and crashing onto the floor because the pallet tipped was the worst. my ETL and I had to take two hours to rebuild it. thankfully no one was in the area
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My worst drop was either when I dropped a piece of CSE and I went to catch it but I missed and got a paper cut for my trouble, *or* the time that I was on the wave hanging up the iPhone sign in electronics. I held it in one hand because it wasn't heavy. I was on the wave, went all the way up and when you go all the way up, there's a weird little bounce it does when you hit the top of the wave. Anyways that was enough to cause my hand to flinch or twitch or whatever and I dropped this giant-ass sign down on the cell phone displays. Nothing on the ground broke but the sign was ruined.
 
Luckily I haven't encountered many terrible spills.

Mine is, an entire bottle of liquid detergent leaked on the carpet in guest service. The cart was full, and someone threw something heavy in the go back cart, cracking the bottle at the bottom. The entire bottle emptied. Detergent is already difficult to clean, and it was on carpet. But the worst part was having the smell stuck in your sinuses for hours and hours, even once home.
 
Looks like I'm relatively lucky, the worst thing I've spilled on the job is probably either dropping a sour cream container or a carton of eggs.

The worst one I've had to clean up was a baby's vomit, the mom's vomit, and then another woman's vomit who vomited because of the smell in the bathroom.

I already knew the baby puked all over the floor at a check lane, so I was busy cleaning that up and the mom and the baby went into the women's restroom. A lady walked in shortly after and came right back out and just puked a little on the floor in front of the door and told me "The mom is puking now on the floor... and I just did there." and the woman kind of stuck around and offered to clean up her own vomit and she was all "I haven't thrown up in years but just the smell was enough!" and I told her "it's all good I've cleaned worse things up than a bunch of stomach acid and digested foods." and sent her on her way home.

That was a nice 45 minute clean up section.
 
My second worst spill, another employee (same place the above story happened at) dropped a couple cases of those huge institutional sized jars of Vlasic pickles which had cracked during transit and were full of fuzzy black mold...picture a huge murky pond of rotten pickles in the aisle...fucking god awful stench that killed my appetite for days

That happened in 2011 but to this day smelling pickles gives me flashbacks to that evening and I haven't been able to eat them since
 
I’ve dealt with nasty sewage, but as far as worst to clean up...

A bulk stack of olive oil in glass jars. Had to put a pallet drop over it because it was so slick even after cleanup. Ended up getting commercial degreaser.
 
TTGOz said:
Looks like I'm relatively lucky, the worst thing I've spilled on the job is probably either dropping a sour cream container or a carton of eggs.

The worst one I've had to clean up was a baby's vomit, the mom's vomit, and then another woman's vomit who vomited because of the smell in the bathroom.

I already knew the baby puked all over the floor at a check lane, so I was busy cleaning that up and the mom and the baby went into the women's restroom. A lady walked in shortly after and came right back out and just puked a little on the floor in front of the door and told me "The mom is puking now on the floor... and I just did there." and the woman kind of stuck around and offered to clean up her own vomit and she was all "I haven't thrown up in years but just the smell was enough!" and I told her "it's all good I've cleaned worse things up than a bunch of stomach acid and digested foods." and sent her on her way home.

That was a nice 45 minute clean up section.
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LMFAO, why is this one so funny?! It's like from a TV show.
 
Something burst in our water fountain the whole front area from the bathrooms to the front door was flooded.
 
My second one was when the ceiling was flooding real good more than a couple drips. Turns out someone tried to break in from the roof.
 
Not a spill..... but certainly a BIG DISASTER: (can't give too many deets, due to it's epic-ne$$) So.... I was working for a different company and my co-worker and I were setting up a lead crystal display ( glasses, vases, jewelry trays, etc ). We placed the very last vase on the top shelf; and the entire, ENTIRE display came crashing down into itty-bitty pebbles of lead crystal at our feet. Ready for it???? Over $20,000 in damages. Whoopsie. :oops:
 
It wasn't mine but a guest spilled a can of chili. Dont ask me how...It smelled gross but it was everywhere. The mop couldn't clean it up and it stained the floors for weeks.
 
TTGOz said:
Looks like I'm relatively lucky, the worst thing I've spilled on the job is probably either dropping a sour cream container or a carton of eggs.

The worst one I've had to clean up was a baby's vomit, the mom's vomit, and then another woman's vomit who vomited because of the smell in the bathroom.

I already knew the baby puked all over the floor at a check lane, so I was busy cleaning that up and the mom and the baby went into the women's restroom. A lady walked in shortly after and came right back out and just puked a little on the floor in front of the door and told me "The mom is puking now on the floor... and I just did there." and the woman kind of stuck around and offered to clean up her own vomit and she was all "I haven't thrown up in years but just the smell was enough!" and I told her "it's all good I've cleaned worse things up than a bunch of stomach acid and digested foods." and sent her on her way home.

That was a nice 45 minute clean up section.
Click to expand...


This I will not do. You vomit I will get you the things you need to clean your own mess.
 
I broke a few bottles of pancake syrup. It was one of the biggest and stickiest messes I ever had to clean. We used the absorb powder and mixed it into the syrup and then tried to brush it into a bag. It was awful.
 
Can’t forget I broke the coffee pot once. Or soda spraying in my face because I didn’t turn off the CO2.
 
So far the biggest spill I've cleaned up was 30 pounds of kitty litter from one of the big tubs that upended (I'm pretty sure) because someone tried to fit two of them on the shelf where there was really only space for one because of the shelf bracket at the back. That wasn't gross or anything, but man does it take a long time to get cleaned up all the way.

Fortunately I noticed the tub in the next to it, that had cracks in it, so I was able to get that defected out without having to clean up a second tub of kitty litter.
 
Training new TM how to use a pallet jack, TM tries pushing it into an empty pallet, Tm has trouble, tell them stop, don’t force it, just our luck they shove it in a pallet that wasn’t sound or stable, and had cases of sodas make it rain in receiving.
 
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