I want to sweep with my boss...

So the gf has a dentist appointment on the other side of the earth at small hours in the morning, which means I got dropped off at work early today. Brought along a book so I could get some reading done before I started the day. Currently I'm working on "We" by Zamyatin. It's a spiritual precursor to 1984. Distopian. Anyways, so I'm at work early and the head of the shop is there oddly enough. So I sit down and start reading.

Out of the corner of my eye I see him pick up a broom and start sweeping. Immediately I start feeling guilty because it was pretty dead yesterday and I was reeeeeally stretching on keeping myself busy, I even swept some of the shop. So I figure that maybe I did a piss poor job (not unreasonable) and I start looking around for problem areas.

That's when I notice all this red stuff on the floor of the shop. It's as though somebody has taken a big salt shaker of cayenne pepper and left a big dose every 10 feet or so. I didn't remember seeing that yesterday. So I have to ask what's the deal with the red stuff.

"It's sweeping compound."

I mean... how many jokes could I possibly make about this?

• I thought the goal of sweeping was to get the dust off the floor
• I could keep myself busy cleaning too if I also made the mess first
• It's good that we're doing the important tasks first
• Etc.

At first glance this concept seems totally ridiculous. Upon closer inspection, it's a waxy/oily sawdust that dust (other dust) sticks to. You're only supposed to slap some down in front of your broom before you start and it basically just makes all the other stuff you sweep up stay put instead of billowing up in a cloud. Dropping a bunch of it all over the shop seems a little over eager.

During lunch I'm telling gf about this wacky product and she's like.. oh yeah, sweeping compound, it works really good. It's over in the cardboard box by the band saw.

Wait a minute. That box is full of sweeping compound?

All this time, I've been throwing scraps and offcuts from the bandsaw into this box that looked like it was full of....sawdust. It's right beside the bandsaw! Who knew it was special sawdust. The funnier part is the image of the head of the shop going over for a big dose of sweeping compound this morning and finding a huge pile of bullshit on top. Oops. Later in the day I noticed that the box was moved to a different part of the shop. Probably a good idea.

Best of all, the company that distributes this stuff, no word of a lie "Messner"

http://www.messnerinc.com/webapp/catalog/product/list.asp?line=A0077