'They wanted to show off': Food processing CEO tries to show off new safety system to higher ups, cause a spill that takes 48 hours to clean

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    Cheezburger Image 10408316160
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    Test the master E-stop while the machine is running
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    This happened last year but since my plant is coming up on its busy season it reminded me of this blunder.
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    I work at a food processing plant and between August and November is our busy season where we make tomato paste. The process for making paste is you basically repeatedly boil down the fruit until you boil out most of the water from it in a machine called an evaporator.
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    These are aseptic systems meaning they are completely sealed from the outside after being sterilized. One afternoon of making paste the CEO and COO came by giving some suits a tour of the paste production. They wanted to show off their new safety system by making us hit the master E stop for the evaporators. We can't do this. If the system stops the valves open and the stystem is
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    no longer aseptic. If this were to happened we would lose 2 days of production to re sterilize the machines. After explaining this to these monkeys, and having the paste supervisor get into a heated argument about why we can't stop the machine like that the CEO and COO were not having any of it. So we relent and hit the E-stop. Cue all the valves
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    popping and thousands of pounds of boiling hot tomato paste being expunged onto the floor. The look of terror on their faces when we told them that this is a 48 hour cleanup still makes me smile. We haven't seen the CEO or COO in the paste yard since. TLDR: CEO and COO are idiots.
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    CeramicCornflake I'm so confused. Wasn't the end result explained to them in plain English before you even did it? Like... why would they be shocked?
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    KyloRenCadetSti... I guess they had no idea it would take so long to ketchup.
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    iheyjuall It's too bad that the cost of this blunder doesn't come out of the CEO's salary.
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    illogictc I'm confused as to why pouring tons of boiling-hot paste on the floor is "safe."
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    Nottoo God, suits can be so dumb.
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    feraxks TLDR: CEO and COO are idiots. Who make hundreds of times more money than the people that tried to warn them.
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    [deleted] I love all malicious compliance stories dealing. with expensive equipment and/or industrial processes. Cream of the crop!
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    gimpwiz Gotta test the e-stop button in a worst case scenario sometimes. Is it worth losing two days of production? Maybe. Not really unreasonable ... unless one somehow thinks it won't result in a huge cleanup. were they thinking?

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