Our assembly hall in St. Louis, MO USA, had soft serve ice cream machines. I remember working the literature depot ( where congregations picked up their monthly shipments) one Saturday and told my fellow worker I was going to go across the parking lot to get ice cream at the main hall. Back to back SADs were happening that weekend, so there should have been ice cream.
Nope. Some over eager but ignorant brother emptied the machine and "cleaned" it. It APPEARED clean, but it was not sanitized. When the two of us working at the depot looked in the machine, it was empty...but tell tale signs of bacteria had already started growing.
The resident assembly hall overseer was gone that weekend and a comittee guy was filling in. Had no idea how to fix it. My buddy and I had both helped others disassemble and sanitize before, but never had to be in charge. Took the two of us several hours (after working the depot all day) to figure out how to take it apart, clean, sanitize, reassemble and refill with soft serve for Sunday.
If we had not had a hankering for ice cream, the crew the next day would have been different and unaware of the horror that awaited them. How many hundreds of people would have been ill if they just dumped mix in and served it? I shudder to think.
On another assembly, same location, we had some strawberries (for sundae topping) that had been left too long and were fermenting in the fridge. THOSE were delicious on ice cream and made the afternoon session more palatable.
Snakes (Rich)
