This Probably Isn't Covered

For the last month or so, we’ve noticed the most peculiar smell at Nifong in the back by the three vat sink, dishwasher, and grease trap. And by peculiar, I’m really just searching for a polite way to say that the smell was positively awful. But it also was a smell with no consistency…it never smelled awful all day every day, leaving us perplexed at the source. Mostly, I would notice it early in the morning or late in the afternoon. And I couldn’t even describe to you what it smelled like or why it was so awful…it was just weird.

A few weeks ago, our grease trap was serviced and while that generally is the absolute worst smell you can imagine, it was no worse than any other cleaning date. It was working perfectly and trapping grease on schedule, so we ruled that out. And then we had a plumber stop by to ensure that the sink was draining just as it should be and that also checked out. (I guess…working to discover if the pipes were flowing properly created a mess that required literally scooping water into buckets just to be able to mop and I still haven’t really recovered from the trauma of the experience.)

Then we moved all equipment away from the walls to sweep under it all and make sure a rogue peach slice hadn’t escaped and taken up residence under the double door refrigerator. All clear. Though I did find about 400 marbles that we use for baking beads, so I guess that’s a positive…except I threw them away because I don’t even know for sure if marbles can go in a commercial dishwasher without disaster results.

By Friday afternoon, I was over suffering under a mystery smell. So we identified it came closest to the single door refrigerator near the back of PJP Nifong. Jason got out his toolkit and opened the panel on the back of the unit. There we found that the drainage tube had come undone and the water was leaking into a pan that shouldn’t have water…and from there, the water was just collecting and molding. Good times. We actually used a wet/dry vac and I sucked up the water, we poured bleach in, sucked that up, water in, sucked that up, bleach in, sucked that up, and a final round of water. Also, for posterity’s sake, I gagged for most of this endeavor. Please read this aloud if I’m ever featured on 60 Minutes as a businesswoman of note.

And if all this isn’t charming enough, I also climbed up on a ladder and looked at the top of all of our equipment and was basically alarmed to find a fine layer of dust and some stray pie dough. So while we were in the thick of it, Jason held up the vacuum for me and I cleaned off the tops of our freezers, refrigerators, and ovens. I don’t recommend eating pie off the top of a double door commercial freezer, but you could after we were finished.

So in short, this is a story of how I’ve completely morphed into Jeanne. This is the sort of thing she lives for, but now I don’t let her work late afternoons or climb ladders for the safety of us all. She hung on my every word when I recounted our afternoon. She was disappointed we didn’t remove the cover on the fan on top of the freezer and clean that too, but I guess I have goals for next time.

As we finished up, I remembered that one of our afternoon crew is working toward his degree in business. He’s only worked for us for about a week, so I’m sure we left quite an impression as we sucked moldy water out of a cooling unit while gagging and then hung off ladders to vacuum. I feel like that part of entrepreneurship probably isn’t covered in business school…