Brown Sugar

Earlier this week, we were making a product in the far side of my building that smells exactly like pancakes. You may think I’m kidding, or exaggerating, but I’m not. My company has a flavors and fragrances division. We make the artificial fragrance of pancakes and store it in drums.

Still, you may think this is a trivial point. But have you ever read the ingredients list of some of your favorite products? For example, when you buy your favorite pancake mix, do you ever see “Artificial flavors” as the last item in the ingredients list and think to yourself, “Oh! This box probably contains about 40% artificial pancake flavors!” You probably don’t because 40% is WAY too high. Think more along the lines of 0.1%. That’d be closer.

That said, let’s return to what we were making. A drum (55 gallons) of the pure pancake essence. It’s strong. In fact, it’s so strong, that if you were to go back there and pry the bung off the drum with a tool, the very act of having stood there and done that – not touching any of it or pouring any of it out – would make you as a person smell like pancakes for a week. I know this because some of our operators have this problem. The joke is that they do really well hitting on the chubby chicks.

The stuff is very strong and has many uses. For example, you could add some to a muffin and have the muffin taste like syrupy pancakes. Or you could apply some to waffles and have them taste exceptionally rich. Or you could spray some on a filet mignon and have a steak that tastes and smells just like pancakes. It’s a wonderful world.

The point is, half my building smelled like pancakes.

Late last week, in an unrelated story, my company’s packaging building (across from my office) blew up. At least, a wing of the building across the shipping and receiving path blew up. There was an accident where a compound used to make rubber exploded in a recently filled drum.

No one was hurt, but it was still a really big deal. We don’t like buildings exploding. It’s bad for many reasons.

It’s also kind of funny, when no one gets hurt. For example, I just pointed out (above) that the compound that blew up is used to make rubber. It makes rubber when it polymerizes – which, coincidentally, appears to be exactly what was going on in that drum when it exploded. When the drum exploded, the polymerizing liquid splashed all over everything in there. And hardened.

The joke there is that the room (what’s left of it) is wearing the biggest condom ever. Because it is. Chemistry is funny.

Anyway, this chemical does not smell like pancakes. As you might guess, exploded rubber compound smells an awful lot like a gigantic tire fire. My building, on the side that was not making pancakes, had the privilege to dispose of the waste material that did not explode. During that process, someone spilled some, which made the other half of my building smell like a tire yard.

Anyway, recently, we had a chemist from another building come into the admin area (where my office is) and cheerfully announce, “It smells like brown sugar back there!” He had spent a lot of time in the pancake area. The principle scientist for my building (who had been in the tire yard area) replied, “If I were you, I’d change brands.” [Author's note: I have received complaints about this paragraph not being clear or funny. The trouble is, since I'm using the exact quotes of people who were confusing each other, that's the point. The joke here is that the Principle Scientist thought that the Chemist thought that a tire fire smelled like the brown sugar he had in his house.]

I quietly spent the next half hour laughing to myself in my office.

This is why I love that people can’t efficiently communicate. It makes the world a wonderful and interesting place!