Justice Can Smell - A Not Nice Story

I believe it was around 1958. I was involved in the formulation of laundry detergents. Some one had the brilliant idea that what the world needed was a detergent with a special deodorizing ingredient. This brainstorm ignored the fact that the simple act of washing soiled fabrics would usually improve their odor. No, we had to have an ingredient that made this product better than any other. To test the product we needed some really stinky something to wash. So each morning a bunch of employees with young babies had to wake the poor baby, change its diaper and take the soiled diaper to work with them where it became a tool of performance evalution.

So I left for the job at 6:30 in the morning with briefcase in one hand and a securely wrapped diaper in the other. On the commuter train the package went into the overhead rack. When the train got to Hoboken, I was half way through the station when I realized I had left the package on the rack. I hurried back to the train, but there was no sign of the diaper. Asking the conductor yielded nothing. Lost and found had no package turned in that morning.

I continued on to the office wishing I could see the thief's face when he found out what he had swiped.