15 Comments

  1. In a different time in my life I was a field service technician for a printing company. We serviced office equipment and large format print equipment for architects, engineers, contractors, etc.

    One of my clients was an asbestos abatement company that had a very old large format printer in an office space that used to be some type of diesel mechanic garage. This specific printer was on the second floor of the space, and offices were accessed by a balcony that overlooked the garage area. In order to access this lovely balcony one had to climb around and through the many unmarked 50 gallon drums strewn about the garage floor. I always wondered what was in them. I suspect it was alien afterbirth.

    I’m being generous by calling it a balcony. It was more of a redneck deck made out of creosote encrusted railroad ties someone found laying in a swamp somewhere. This, of course, was zhuzhed up with what might have been recognized as shag carpet in the time before it was stomped on by 2 decades worth of diesel mechanics. It squished underfoot in an unsettling way as the creosote logs threatened to give way as you climbed.

    Once inside the “print room” one was immediately punched in the face with a cloud of 2nd hand 3rd hand, and probably fourth hand cigarette smoke. The printer, was accessed by shoveling away the mounds of construction detritus and cigarette butts that were probably there to deter thieves.

    The printer they had used an electrostatic process to produce the image on the page. It functions very much like the electric smoke eaters they used to put in bars. So a couple times a month I would have to go down there and clean all the tar out of a machine that was not designed to smoke tobacco at an asbestos abatement company that was the filthiest place I have ever had the displeasure to visit.

    That place would be my entry.

    • You shouldn’t be alive. Although it was job security for you and the company you worked for, did this asbestos abatement company ever consider the irony that, as they made other locations safer to work for, they made their own more unsafe?

      • One might think it takes a good amount of noble courage to risk one’s own life in service to humanity.

        At that place, noble courage was clearly not the motivating factor.

        And something can be said for clearing the lands of harmful waste. But I’m pretty sure these guys were unwittingly assembling a biohazard Voltron.

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