Archived Biggest spill disaster of your retail career?

[theissueoftissue]

Someone threw a full box/bag of food ave soda syrup in the baler once. The wall behind it is still stained, years later.

 

[RhettB]

Pallet of bleach cracked and split down the center of the pallet. Cases of bleach fell to the ground. Good thing we were overnight at the time, the cleaning crew sucked it right up with the scrubber.

Another one is when the cleaning crew took a turn too sharply and fast in grocery.... goodbye wine endcap.

 

[IWishIKnew]

Do stores/OSHA have rules about not putting the really nasty chemicals (bleach, ammonia, Drano, etc.) up high? Unless stores have a chemical shower nearby (do they?) having a case of bleach or something crash or rain down on TMs could be a very, VERY bad scene.

 

[Ringwraith917]

Do stores/OSHA have rules about not putting the really nasty chemicals (bleach, ammonia, Drano, etc.) up high? Unless stores have a chemical shower nearby (do they?) having a case of bleach or something crash or rain down on TMs could be a very, VERY bad scene.

Never heard of such a rule, and I've worked in/through the backroom for a few years.

 

[PM2NO]

Never heard of such a rule, and I've worked in/through the backroom for a few years.

Never heard that either but often we would have bags with fill group CHEM and we had to separate those. Other than that I didn’t know of any restrictions

 

[Dog]

At my old job I managed to dump like 6 gallons of iced coffee on the floor at once right when we were closing and had to mop it all up RIP

 

[isthatathing]

Wave + Snowglobe endcap...

Also, my fav was a roof leak right over the panty bins. Had to defect 2 whole tables. It was great. Back when they were obsessed with having them flat stacked. Nice to have a break for a while.

 

[masterofalltrades]

Do stores/OSHA have rules about not putting the really nasty chemicals (bleach, ammonia, Drano, etc.) up high? Unless stores have a chemical shower nearby (do they?) having a case of bleach or something crash or rain down on TMs could be a very, VERY bad scene.

The only hard rule I know is a DOT rule that bleach and ammonia should not be transported in the same truck.

 

[IWishIKnew]

That is a very good rule.

 

[PackAndCry]

A guest puked on our flat of repacks for a pog fill today.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

Can't be too specific as it would give away the store I was at, but let's just say it was a big enough spill that it required outside involvement and lots of paperwork.

 

[HLN13]

Wow, I must be lucky. The worst thing I’ve ever had was one of our market tm’s knocked down three of the big bottles of oil.. it was actually a pretty big mess since it was so slippery though

 

[FlowTeamChick]

So many misadventures! I too have been fortunate in that my worst spills have been relatively minor. The first was my fault when I dropped a bottle of bright orange nail polish on the floor in the back room - that concrete floor is so unforgiving. Splattered a TM's pants and shoes with it; fortunately for me, she and I were friends and she also worked truck (where we're less picky about having pristine work clothes). And this was before I'd been trained on cleaning up hazardous spills so I had to basically announce my error and call a TL for assistance.
The second was when a toddler thought a bottle of nail polish made for a good toy and threw it on the floor. Lovely lilac nail polish went everywhere. Used a lot of cotton balls and polish remover to get that cleaned up.
You'd think that those spills would be among the worst smell-wise, but a smashed case of jars of pickles is worse. I like pickles, but that smell lingers forever.

 

[Bosch]

Can't be too specific as it would give away the store I was at, but let's just say it was a big enough spill that it required outside involvement and lots of paperwork.

Damn that is impressive. Never seen outside involvement. Actually I take that back. During a remodel years ago, someone hit one of the sprinkler heads and yeah the mess was epic.. I spent eight hours with a PDA, printer and 50gal trash cans defecting domestics. Defect toss in trash can until full, repeat. We had to have fire and plumbers come in to fix it..

 

[brizzy93]

During a pfresh shift a while back, I was given the wonderful task of pushing milk. I was pulling the back stock back and I guess the crates weren’t stacked even and I caught the edge of a vendor display. Knocked a few crates off and broke like 4-5 gallons. Not that bad. TL helped me clean it up. Took like 20 min. Broke a bottle of hot sauce once. That smell doesn’t leave your nose. A few others but nothing too bad

 

[PM2NO]

I told my boss I'm done. I can only imagine what shitshow will happen when I'm gone. Last 3 PMTs before me were duds so I can only imagine this will be the same. But if cheap labor is his thing, you get what you pay for.

 

[Dog]

From reddit:

 

[Ringwraith917]

Almost epic spill here. They had freshly laid and waxed the brand new store floor. A pallet full of wax stripper very near the door to the backroom got punctured by a new TM pushing a flat full of shelves. Leak was slow and only one container thankfully, and in the stockroom, and we got right on the clean up. I imagine a dozen TMs tracking it all over the store stripping wax in shoe-print tracks would be a pain to fix.