The Saddest Thing

Producing a safe product is one of the highest priorities at the ice-cream factory where I work. But in order to do this, there seems to be a lot of waste as a result.

As you should already be aware, I am in the sanitation department. This means that I clean the ice-cream mixers and machines. Of course, the cleaning process is done with chemicals. And eve though we completely rinse away all of the chemicals we use, we take extra precautions to make sure that no residue makes it into our ice-cream product. We, 1) have an inspector inspect the equipment we have just cleaned to make sure we have cleaned it properly, and 2) we throw away the entire first batch of ice-cream after a machine has been cleaned, thus guaranteeing that any residue is long gone if it had, by some freak accident, been missed.

This first run of ice-cream is simply thrown into big waste baskets and then disposed of. The disposal, however, is not always done in the most timely of manners. A lot of the time, several of these large trash cans are collected in a certain area where they wait to be taken care of.

I pass this area often and can't help but look at all of that wasted ice-cream and/or ice-cream treats. It's heart-breaking. One day, there was a large number of barrels waiting to be thrown out. I took a moment to count them and there were twenty-three! Can you imagine all of that ice-cream, just melting into worthless puddles of formerly delicious goo? It's a travesty.

Now, I hate wasting food, but I especially hate wasting ice-cream. Sometimes, when I see the ice-cream waiting to be thrown out, I have these . . . urges. They vary, the urges, but they tend to play along the lines of thrusting my arms shoulder-deep into the melting ice-cream and then raising my gooey hands over my head and screaming "YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN ME!" into the heavens. With equal frequency, these urges prod me to begin frantically grabbing handful after handful of ice-cream and shoving as much of it as I can into my mouth before I am pulled me away and forcibly restrained, possibly sedated. Or, if I am feeling noble, I could sneak the barrels out a side door and then dispense the ice-cream to orphans, potentially red-headed ones that frequently sing about the sun coming out tomorrow. What fun executing any of those scenarios would be. If only.

Daily Ice-Cream Intake:
2/5 gallon Rocky Road ice-cream, 1 orange sherbet square, 3 fudge bars, 1/8 gallon of neapolitan ice-cream

(see also The Summer of Free Ice-Cream (A Running Tally))