By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 30, 2013
Something was cooking in the campus pub, and it wasn’t food.
“Deb came to me at about 12 o’clock in the afternoon and said, ‘I can smell something that’s not food in the kitchen,’” AfterMath manager Brad Ross says.
He tried to track the suspicious smell, but neither he nor the chef could figure out where it was coming from.
“I couldn’t trace it, but I could smell it,” he continues. “It was almost an electrical smell, a very minute electrical smell – it wasn’t quite a burning.”
What Ross and kitchen staff were smelling was the melting plastic plug of the deep-fryer tucked on a shelf. Forty minutes later, the smell became strong enough that they could finally pinpoint where it was coming from.
“I went back in the kitchen and it took about two seconds that time,” Ross says. “I knew it was the plug-in, so I threw the breakers, went to unplug it, and burned my fingertips because the socket was so hot. So I grabbed one of the rags we use to take stuff out of the oven … took the plug out, and the plastic piece was melting.”
Ross says he ran over to facilities immediately to get someone to look at the problem. By the time he got back to the restaurant, someone met him there to look at the situation and replace the part.
In the end, the repair took a little over an hour – even with a quick run over to a hardware store to get the right pieces.
Ross says he’s indescribably grateful for the help he received from facilities – that the department went above and beyond in terms of speed and price. In the end, the fix cost a little under $200, which Ross describes as more than reasonable for an emergency electrical call-out.
Two pieces ended up being replaced – the plug and, as a precaution, the socket itself.
“It’s a good thing we caught it, that’s the only thing,” Ross concludes. “It’s scary, because right above it is hot oil, and wood … and because of openness of the kitchen on that side – lots of oxygen.”
“It wasn’t a huge issue, but it could have been.”
