Weird things you randomly discover about your co-workers:
1. Jingle Jumble
Mike, one of the audio guys I work directly for, co-wrote the “We are Flintstones kids…” vitamin jingle (remember? Ten million strong and growing?).
Him and his partner co-wrote it in 1985 (I would have been four), and those are Mike’s kids singing on it. The one who gets the solo “and grooowing” at the end is now in college.
I found this terribly exciting. It was like finding out you know someone who was a rock star once or something.
2. Flamethrower
Marc, the boss of all the interns where I work almost burned the damn place down yesterday, with the help of a “self-cleaning” oven.
Kids, if you have a self cleaning oven, make sure you check for grease at the bottom that might burst into flames before you turn on the self-cleaning mechanism. Which essentially melts all the crap off the sides with high heat.
Marc also hadn’t realized that the oven hasn’t been working for the last 2 weeks, since he’s been off on paternity leave, since his wife just had a kid. So he turned on the self-cleaning mechanism, and left.
About 20 minutes later, the people in Scheduling, which is next to the kitchen, noticed a smell, and noticed that, whoops, the oven was on fire. They got a fire extinguisher and Don The Tech Guy to put it out.
Except the oven latches closed and won’t open until the self-clean cycle is done, presumably to keep some idiot from sticking their hand in there and getting singed.
I don’t know how they eventually got the fire out, but they did. This all happened after I left yesterday, and I found out about it when I came in and smelled an odd smell and saw half the kitchen covered in this white crap from the fire extinguisher.
Apparently, the owner of the place found out in a very similar manner, because nobody called him and told him about it, he just sort of wandered in in the morning and went, “Hey, what’s that smell?”
Which is probably good, because he would have had an aneurysm if he had found out the night before that his place had almost burned down.