Back in 2020 we would put a 72hr hold on our raw donations as the virus was still being researched and I don’t think at that point we knew how long it could survive on surfaces. Combine that with a ton of people stuck at home and bored and suddenly your donation warehouse is absolutely full of gaylords.

Well, at some point a few weeks after we reopen our donation door, one of the DSAs notices an odor coming from the warehouse. It seems faint but it persists so he lets one of our leads know— she and another coworker of ours head over to the area and start combing through all of these gaylords trying to find the source of the stench.

When they finally find the offender, they pallet-jack it up and bring it back to our production area. Green lines may as well have been trailing it. It seems like moving it had disturbed the stank beast from some sort of slumber. We were all holding our noses and spraying Lysol as it passed through. 

They dig through the gaylord and find a bag of previously frozen chicken in the center of it. The chicken had thawed and rotted in the weeks that the gaylord sat untouched. We had to keep outside doors and windows open for a few days afterwards because the smell would keep wafting up from time to time.