Gas Crisis in the Garden State

This is the kind of story that practically writes itself.  Considering my lack of energy and creativity, I’m all over this gem like stink on poop.

A lawsuit filed against the largest pork roll maker in the state of New Jersey alleges that an employee was fired for farting too much.

For those of you who’d rather not click on the link, here’s the gist of it: A woman named Louann Clem has filed suit against the Case Pork Roll Company of Trenton, NJ.  She alleges that her husband Rich Clem was fired for farting too often in the office.  Mr. Clem reportedly had some serious flatulence issues along with explosive diarrhea since having gastric bypass surgery.

Mr. Clem was given the option of working from home.  The article, which was likely eliminated from Pulitzer Prize eligibility based on content alone, stated that Mrs. Clem worked there too.  The author did not clarify whether this referred to the Clem home or the pork roll manufacturer’s stinky office.

Like many poorly written articles, this one left more questions than answers.  Allow me to clarify a few things for you, my gentle readers.

Okay, I have enough for me, what are you guys having? Image from cynicbytrade At Blogspot dot com.

Pork roll is a delicious meat product which is beloved by many carnivores in the exotic land of New Jersey*.  It is typically enjoyed as a breakfast meat, but has been known to make appearances at lunch and even dinner.  Like it’s less glamorous cousin scrapple, it is made of indeterminate pieces of piggies and would likely cause illness in lab animals, partly because it may also contain lab animals.  It’s salty and it’s just a little tangy, and unlike putty-colored scrapple, it’s actually pink.

New Jersey is a small, but densely populated state sandwiched between New York, Pennsylvania and the Atlantic Ocean.  The northern residents tend to consider themselves New Yorkers, while those in the southern half of the state identify more with Philadelphia.  The coastal residents identify more with Bruce Springsteen and will tell you how they know someone who knows someone who knows him.  The current governor of the Garden State is running for the republican presidential nomination and hasn’t actually been in the state in months, with the possible exception of making the occasional pork roll stop between debates.

This is Chris Christie eating a donut on Letterman. I like to imagine that he’d prefer those to my beloved pork roll. Image from freedomoutpost dot com

Gastric bypass surgery has been around for a while.  My understanding is that it involves shrinking the stomach to help the morbidly obese lose weight.  The dietary intake is reduced considerably to somewhere between a 1/4 and a 1/2 cup of food per meal.  Even if you crush them up, that will only equal 3 decent sized cookies.  I would think that 1/2 cup of pork roll would be far more satisfying.

One can feel some degree of compassion for Mr. Clem who underwent surgery with the assumption that he would eventually avoid being fat shamed only to become a target of fart shaming.  As for his wife, we can only guess she filed the suit partly because she had believed her husband’s statements that the malodorous air quality in Casa Clem was due to the couple’s dog, an aging Schnauzer named Yahtzee.

Yahtzee! Image from pinterest dot com.

As someone who doesn’t work in the processed meat field, I have no idea how one could do that sort of work from home.  I can only presume that Mr. C worked in the accounting end of the business and was neither a grinder mechanic nor a squeegee operator.  It stands to reason that while the professionals on the production floor are not likely strangers to pungent aromas, those in the accounting and sales cubicles may be a little more sensitive to being crop dusted by Big Rich** during his many trips to the men’s room.

This photo has been around forever, and is inserted in this post for cubicle humor only. Image from sodahead dot com.

As for the trips to the bathroom, I can’t help but wonder how Mr. Clem’s flatulence could have been prolific enough to warrant his losing his job.  Anyone who has experienced the diagnosis of explosive diarrhea will  tell you that farting can be quite a roll of the dice.  From a semantics standpoint, I find the use of the adjective “explosive” to be somewhat redundant – I can’t recall ever suffering from any kind of the runs other than the explosive variety.  That being said, people may be trying to eat, so I’ll just wrap this up.

 

*New Jersey has Atlantic City casinos and legal online poker.  As such, I am adding my own special betting line for this post, which I will eventually reveal in the comments section.  I cannot disclose the bet I have with myself, but I will tell you that I’m betting that it will happen by the 11th comment.

**I have literally no idea if anyone ever referred to Mr. Rich Clem by this nickname, but it was certainly a possibility.