WTE? (*)

(*)The initials stand for "What the Eff," naturally.

Anyway, I'm putting together a proposal for commissary service at a hospital. We've done tons of these, and are used to pricing special menus for medical conditions. This one has the usual stuff like "bland diet," "diabetic diet," hiperproteic diet," and so on, along with "low salt," "low fat," etc. But there's a new one, at least new to me.

It's "low bacteria."

WTE??

I wonder, is it heated to a very high temperature during cooking? Are the cooking utensils sterilized first? Seriously, WTF?

No it means low bacteriagenic... will not contain bacteria such as youghurts or kefirs and will not contain substances known to kickstart existing bacteria into overdrive such as most dough conditioners or artificial sweeteners such as aspartame.
Query as to fermented foods such as cheeses, cole slaw, kim chi, or the like.

This is funny.

Late Monday afternoon we had to send some documents out of state. By then the courier company had ended its pickup service, so we carried the envelope physically to a nearby office, less than a mile away.

Next day at noon, we got our envelope delivered to our office!

How come? Well, someone, and I'm not saying who, filled our address as destination rather than sender, and vice versa with the out of state address.

The funny thing is this envelope travelled quite a ways inside the city before being delivered less than a mile from where it was received.

Yes, I know how courier companies use the hub and spoke model. But it's still funny.

Within thirty minutes we had it delivered back to the nearby office, this time with the right fields filled out. It was delivered about 600 miles away today.

Now, granted we made a mistake. But didn't anyone at the courier company office effing notice we were paying to send an envelope less than a mile?

Its the tyranny of habits and sloppy procedures. No one reads the label they just read the destination box and go on to the next of umpteen zillion packages. One woman used to use FedEx to deliver mail to the other side of a Manhattan street and avoid the attentions of construction workers.

Elon Musk strikes again.

This time he's proposing launching two passengers, no pilot/astronaut, into a long-loop, 8-day or so orbit that would take them past the Moon and back to Earth.

He did not say why.

As space tourism goes, that's a better deal than a week at the ISS, or mindlessly orbiting the Earth scores of times. Assuming, that is, you pass by near to where the Moon is and not just go past its orbit. It might also be a good publicity stunt, should everyone survive.

As wild Elon Musk ideas go, this is a mild one.

This beats it all:

A customer asked for "low-sodium table salt."

Not salt substitute, which would be logical, but salt.

Salt.

They want low-sodium effing sodium chloride!

Quote: Nareed

They want low-sodium effing sodium chloride!

Give them half their order.

Quote: rxwine

Give them half their order.

You know, that would be much more expensive than salt.

I'm reminded of something that happened a few months ago. Someone asked me whether the beef we sold was "gluten-free." I honestly was rendered speechless. But I told this person that "of course it is."

They still asked how do I know it. I said something like "Because our beef is cow, not wheat."

Quote: Nareed

They want low-sodium effing sodium chloride!

Whoa there. It exists. Yeppers. All salt contains various impurities. The more impurities in a gram of a particular type of salt, the less actual salt there is. Get more minerals, eat less sodium. Doubt it matters all that much but I'm sure it will make your customers feel better.

Is one of your customers about to ask for dehydrated water some day?