Crystal's toner mess

Back to stories about Crystal.  This is a longer story but worth the read. 

It was a long time ago when I worked in the data center. On a normal night there were two Operators working. On this particular night it was Crystal, who was an experienced Operator, and Dave, the new guy who had started 2 weeks earlier.  The managers all liked Crystal since she was a good looking bubbly blond.  On the other hand, we did not like being paired with Crystal since she did less than her share of the work and wasn't always on top of things. It made the nights much more difficult. Keeping everything on schedule through the night was hectic and critical to get the different divisions open for business on time.   

    About midnight, one of the two large laser printers popped up a message on the console that it needed toner.  

    I will add a couple of important notes here….. If you have never had the pleasure of working with toner it is an extremely fine black powder. Much finer than dust.  For these specific laser printers the toner was in a large plastic bucket that had a paper top. To load it into the machine, the bucket was put in the printer upside down and then the paper top was pulled off the bottom.  Back to the story. 

    Printer 2 needed toner but by mistake Crystal went to printer 1 and pulled out the toner bucket. The toner in this laser printer was full. A large pile of toner dumped on the floor.  I don't think Crystal grasped the gravity of the situation.  I say this because the first thing she did was to use the toner to make a 4 foot by 4 foot A&M symbol on the floor and take a picture. Dave, on the other hand, was getting further and further behind. 

    There were a few options to clean up the toner.  She could have used a small broom and dustpan to get a large portion of it. Or, she could have used the toner vacuum but the toner vacuum had a very small collection bucket and she would have had to empty it many times.  She didn't choose either of these. Instead, she chose to use the normal vacuum we used around the data center.  She had been vacuuming for a little bit when Dave, from across the room, noticed that the super fine toner was blowing out the back end of the vacuum. The wall behind Crystal was covered in black toner.  What a mess!  For a quick solution Crystal went and got the large plastic trash bin where we threw scrap pieces of paper into. It was about 4 foot tall large plastic bin on wheels and could hold quite a bit of paper.  She put the vacuum in and tried again but the toner was still coming out.  She decided to bury it under some of the trash paper…… This was not a good choice. 

    I am not sure if your familiar with a dust explosion. Occasionally I have heard of them in grain elevators or places with flour. They can happen when high concentrations of particles are in the air and there is a spark. As it turns out they can happen with toner dust and a spark from a vacuum motor. Dave, from across the room, heard the first explosion and started running toward Crystal.  He could see that the paper in the bin was on fire. Crystal had heard something but wasn't sure what it was and was still vacuuming. Before Dave could reach Crystal the second, and much larger, explosion happened.  Small burning pieces of paper went all the way to the ceiling and were falling in a large radius around the bin.  Note: A fire in the datacenter is a very bad thing.  

    Dave was thinking quickly and yanked the vacuum plug from the outlet and pushed the cart across the data center floor through the first double doors and then through the second set of double doors out into the parking lot.  He ran back into the data center to find Crystal stomping out small pieces of paper.  Dave ran for the fire extinguisher and put out the remaining fires. Good job by the new guy. 

    By this time processing was waaaay behind. They called the manager to tell him about the fire and immediately got back to work. 

    I arrived at 6am. I drove past a small black melted pile of plastic and metal in the parking lot but I couldn't determine what it was.  I knew there was trouble when I saw my boss's car, my boss's bosses car and his boss's car in the parking lot.  I walked in the door near the laser printer. The data center was a mess. There was still toner and pieces of burnt paper all over the floor.  They hadn't cleaned up a thing.  My bosses were so frustrated with Crystal that when they saw me they ushered Crystal and Dave out the door. My boss and I finished processing and I was left to clean up Crystal's mess.  It was a long day.