What was the incident at your workplace?

When I was 17, I worked the egg grill at a big university cafeteria.

The grease, oil and residue from cooking thousands of eggs each weekend would fall into a channel

and drain into a removable metal trap about as long as my leg.

Each night we'd remove the trap, dump it and put it back again. Sometimes we'd

rinse it too. Anyway, as a new employee, I was overly eager to please everyone. I cleaned the

trap with scalding hot water and tried to get it as clean as possible. That's when I noticed,

the trap felt heavier than it ought to be. It was only partially filling up because at least

two-thirds of it was filled with some sort of, well, blockage. So I started banging the trap, hard. I kept flushing the top third with hot water and slamming the trap against the inside of a big garbage pail. Nothing was happening. I keep doing this over and over because little tiny pieces of congealed egg, and

God knows what else, were breaking loose. Finally, I slam it once more really hard, this time against

the floor. Whatever was blocking the trap broke free and this horrendous, frickin' grey and black

sludge comes pouring out all over the kitchen. Words cannot possibly freaking describe it.

The smell was like a living breathing thing, a rancid mixture of purified egg, bacon grease,

rotting flesh, and whatever the hell else was in there.

It radiated instantly and irreversibly outward, slamming everyone in the kitchen like a punch to the face.

So I heaved my guts up first. It wasn't even a question. I don't even think my mind fully

realized what had happened. I was just blowing chunks out all over the floor in front of me.

I dropped the grease trap and turned to run, and three other employees were also throwing up.

Two of them into rubber made throwing up, two of them into

rubber-made pails and one of them into the sink where he was washing dishes. People started

running for the exits. That's what I remember most. This was at SUNY-Stony Brook, on Long Island,

and the Kelly cafeteria had about 30-plus people working back there at any given time. We all met outside the parking lot,

...