The Lobby of Unbearable Stench!

At work yesterday afternoon, the lobby was filled with a foul stench. I work just outside the lobby, so the office was pretty noxious as well. We were wondering what exactly was smelling so bad; it was suggested that the sewage system had backed up because of flooding, but I didn't buy it - it's not like the rainstorm we had a few months ago. Someone thought it was emanating from the chairs that were stacked in the lobby, but I couldn't imagine WHAT would have been spilled on the chairs that would make them smell like THAT.

Later that afternoon, about an hour or so after the smell first started, there was a college-wide e-mail saying that the freezer had broken over the weekend, and $3000 worth of meat had thawed and spoiled, thus flooding the elevator shafts (and the lobby) with rotting meat smell. I don't know why they didn't tell us as soon as they found out, but at least we were informed eventually.

The best thing about the fact that we were breathing in particles of rotten meat for a few hours, though, was the one guy who walked into the lobby, and when the smell registered on his olfactory sensors, he grinned and said, "Oh, hey, sorry about the smell - I had burritos for lunch," to everyone that was in the lobby at the time. You have to admire a guy who will reach that far for a fart joke.