Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress Farting at work is a bigger taboo than discussing pay. The polite, who usually have crippling gas anxiety, will excuse themselves and let rip, but not before ensuring the toilet is empty and unlikely to have any additional guests while the deed is done. The brave will go through a series of anal acrobatics to stealthily slip …
"Unsurprisingly he was single, and most likely a virgin."
Not necessarily. Those of us who have been married a fair bit of time, we tend to lose the social...habits...of self control. It's to do with being particularly comfortable with those around you for long periods of time, and this can translate to the workplace.
For example, when at home my wife will quite happily burp in front of me after a particularly enjoyable meal. However, she would turn an interesting shade of red if this were to happen in public.
Queen Victoria at a meeting of European leaders
Queen farts. Disraeli leaps to his feet and says "Excuse me ma'am, I humbly beg your pardon"
"Quite alright, Sir" comes the reply. Disraeli sits and smirks smugly at the other two.
Queen farts again. Determined not to be out-gentlemanned by Disraeli, Louis Napoleon III jumps up almost before the fart trails off, kicks Disraeli's chair from under him causing the latter to sprawls indignantly on the floor. The Frenchman makes a sweeping bow, an extravagant apology, and the Q not only says "Quite alright" but actually cracks a smile.
Well, this isn't going down at all well with Otto von Bismarck who feels thoroughly outdone and increasingly embarrassed. The moment the Queen farts again, he leaps to his feet, waving his sword and shouts "Diesen - und die nächsten drei - übernimmt die deutsche Reichsregierung!"
I think someone involved in this case is full of gas.
Too much sugar and not enough fibre there. Although, depending on the fibre involved, that could be reversed.
One of my earlier colleagues was branded as a terrible cube mate due to his excessive gas. Horrible things were said about him by several members of the team. That was until he had to take several weeks off after having a large stretch of his colon removed due to illietis.
Wait... I don't think I've *ever* heard of someone bullying a co-worker by 'farting in their general direction'. Are Aussies really really weird that way or is this something someone .... burped out their ass?
Can you prove it's actually wrong to fart in front of other folk? It's a socially-established taboo. Apes (from which we're descended from, as far as evolution knows) have no qualms doing this.
There's no actual damage done, apart from the damage caused by breaking this taboo.
If you want to tell me that others are disgusted by the smell, I'd reply that the fact that this smell is "disgusting" is a product of the taboo.
(Icon: Where's the IT angle? It's an engineer raising the lawsuit)
(As I started to write this, I chose the "Joke Alert" icon, but by the time I went to "Submit", I became serious about this).
In point of fact we are not only descended from apes, we are apes. Obviously we are not descended from any of the other modern apes. But the closest common ancestor would have been an ape. Humans belong to the family Hominidae (aka the Great Apes), together with the other modern apes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
I once had chili for lunch at work, a big can of it, and sneaked a 'silent but deadly' one out an hour or two later, and a lady nearby [about 10 to 15 years older than me] smelled it and wondered what was cooking, "smells kinda good". I carefully avoided laughing...
(yes, this really happened)
normally my ass-gas clears the room. But, rarely, it will smell like what I ate.
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As a buddy once said, smell is unlike other non-proximity senses like sight and hearing. It works by your nose nerves coming into direct contact with microparticles of whatever you’re smelling.
So if you’re smelling someone’s poo it’s literally because that’s what just wafted up your nose.
Still keen on tolerance?
"If you want to tell me that others are disgusted by the smell, I'd reply that the fact that this smell is "disgusting" is a product of the taboo."
That depends on the person doing the farting. Any number of reasons, from what they ate to their internal flora and fauna or illness can make some farts almost be classed as chemical weapons.
If you've ever had to take the bowel cleaning concoction given out before have an endoscope shoved up your arse for an inspection, you will likely find that your internal flora and fauna can change composition quite drastically as it repopulates afterwards and can cause quite a change in your gas production and smell coefficient.
Similar thing at a former company. They would run into each others office, let it rip and then run out closing the door behind them to keep the goodness from escaping. At same company several of us were in an office when an unpopular engineer came in for a minute and then left. Just as he was leaving I let an SBD go which was promptly blamed by the others on the departed engineer, I kept quiet.
Server rooms that smell like something died in there smell that way because something died in there. Usually rats or mice under the raised floor, or occasionally in the HVAC ducting.
I've run across bats in the space above the hanging ceiling a couple times, and a dead, rotting beehive in the space between walls. Once it was raccoons shitting in the valley between roof and dormer. Garbage fed raccoons[0] shit the most vile smelling shit I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Especially when fermenting nicely in the morning sun. It permeated about 1200 square feet of a modern, energy tight, air tight building. My solution was to staple anti-bird netting over that section of roof after hosing it off ... Took almost a week to figure out where it was coming from, and four or five days for the smell to go away after I relocated the 'coon latrine.
[0] That's pretty much every raccoon living close to humans. We are a filthy, wasteful bunch as a whole ...
I've had the pleasure of doing work for a customer at a data center near Melbourne.
It was pretty much squeezed in between a landfill and a huge cow hide processing (not sure, tanning, or leather producing) factory.
In the nights, when the air calmed down, the A/C would suck in all these lovely smells. Enough to make you gag all the while there. It did make for more speedy installation and testing jobs.
Brings back memories of the "Burnhouse" animal waste plant outside Lisburn in N Ireland. There were days when you daren't drive past that place with the car window open if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. I was in their yard once, on business, when a lorry came in. It was the same sort of lorry that you see delivering sand or gravel to building sites, but this one backed into a corner of the yard, tipped up, and unloaded tons of animal carcasses & other waste from abattoirs. I have no idea how the people who worked there every day coped with that smell. Long since closed, thank goodness.
I once returned to our work site (an enclosed space) first after lunch. I let rip and immediately realized my error. The enclosed space quickly became saturated with a thick gag-inducing stench (I'd been drinking the night before). Not wanting to be blamed for such a foul odor I quickly left the site and hid around the corner. My four workmates returned from lunch and walked right into our workspace, only to come running out moments later exclaiming about the stench and blaming each other. A few minutes later I joined them to innocently ask what the problem was. I still chuckle to myself whenever I remember this.
And on a similar note, I offer this :-
Many moons ago, I found myself in an ascending lift with a colleague on the way to 'officer country' on the top floor...and needed to expel some (shall we say 'well matured') arse gas. Always looking for the opportunity to provide a little levity and remembering the 'Revenge Of The Pink Panther' scene, I did the (well known?) thing of extending my index finger, ready to be pulled.
The colleague was completely perplexed by my offer and had to be prompted to pull the finger. Thanks to the degree of trust present combined with ignorance, he did so - at which point I let rip, with a truly evil (So I was told) smile on my face.
The effect in the confined space can best be described as concentrated and pungent, leading to not altogether unwarranted coughing by both of us. A few deep breaths later ("To clear the air faster"), the hilarity set in.... right up to the point where the door opened and we were faced with the lady head of division, obviously waiting to descend in 'our' lift.
A quick sidelong glance at each other, plus knowing the lady in question, convinced us that the fastest 'exit' possible was the way to go, so we said our hellos and *very* quickly set off, with the intention of putting as many sets of double fire-doors between us and the still reeking steel-box-on-cables as possible. We had only managed one set of doors before the sound of a female in 'nasal distress' started.. unfortunately at diminishing volume - meaning she was in the closed, descending lift cabin.
With typical restraint, the lady concerned said nothing immediately or directly, but enquiries were obviously made as I found myself doing a lot more of the the onerous engineering jobs about the place for a month or so. Still worth it though! (Wasn't a tall building - Bex calculated the punishment tariff was 1 week/floor).
[Just in case anyone from the old salt mine still remembers this, the 3 actors in this particular tragedy were me, Bex and Linda].
Some of the behaviours in the article are bad enough but the crown for fart-based psychological warfare must surely go to the "Cuckoo Fart", defined by the medical journal "Viz Profanisaurus" as follows:
"n. The act of dropping one's hat in the presence of another person in such a manner that they believe the resulting miasma to be their own dirty work."
On a personal note, since having my entire colon unceremoniously yanked out through a hole in my abdomen this time last year (March 28th), my own nether emissions have increased two-fold in terms of quantity but, mercifully, have reduced in robustness to almost zero. Something about the lack of a playground for those gut bacteria to thrive in.
(As an aside, the comments and articles in el Reg were one of the few things that made me chuckle while confined to a hospital bed, so thanks, folks.)
http://mentalfloss.com/article/66345/amazing-images-classic-japanese-fart-battles
"From Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868), there’s He-Gassen, or, “the fart war.” This centuries-old scroll, dated to approximately the 1840s, depicts an epic battle of gas between booty-baring men and women on horseback and on foot. Even a cat gets caught up in the fray at one point. The powerful gusts of human wind depicted can break through boards and traverse wide battlefields."
I used to share an office with a bloke who would really kick off whenever I tried to I sneak one out.
He really did not get it when I pointed out that because he lived next to a diary farm he was probably inhaling much more cow gas on a weekly basis than I could ever hope to expel in a lifetime. Maybe there is a psychological aspect to this in that human farts are somehow deemed to be worse that animal farts.
Futurama.
Dwight Conrad:
[after the Professor activates the crystal's 'high frequency stink'] Dude, who ripped an egger?
Cubert Farnsworth:
[accusingly] He who smelt it, dealt it.
Dwight Conrad:
Yeah? Well, he who denied it, supplied it!
Cubert Farnsworth:
He who articulated it, particulated it!
Dwight Conrad:
He who refuted it, tooted it!
Cubert Farnsworth:
[after a slight pause] Stalemate.
We had horses years ago. One would always lift his tail before emission, thus warning all, but the other would simply emit with no visible warning (and his were much worse).
At the office, there was a chap, who would emit vast clouds of stench at seemingly random intervals. When this happened in cubicle meetings, all would scatter save the poor cubicle occupant.
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