An entrepreneur in France has invented a pill that will give flatulence the smell of roses.
I could just end this blog post with that statement, and let your wicked imagination take you for a ride, but no, that is not my style. You gots to get my opinion on the matter. Or in this case matterless.
Basically, a Frenchman has developed a range of pills designed to make people's flatulence smell sweeter – of chocolate or of roses. He believes these pills will make the perfect Christmas present, apparently for the man who not only has everything, but who also refuses to keep it inside. According to the 65-year-old inventor, his pills “are aimed at easing indigestion and are made of 100 percent natural ingredients such as fennel, seaweed and blueberries.”
This smarter farter came up with the idea for the pills after an evening enjoying a “hearty” meal with friends. He says, “Our farts were so smelly we were nearly suffocated. Something had to be done.”
It would seem to me that the “something” should be move out of France. I mean, who wants to live where people are rude enough to self fumigate in public? This doesn't sound like a hearty meal. It was more of a farty meal.
As crazy as it may sound, these fart pills may end up being useful for a vastly underserved segment in the workers' compensation / employment risk realm. Believe it or not, the word “flatulence” appears in 3 articles within our CompNewsNetwork archives. Two of them are articles from my blog, so no surprise there. What is surprising, however, is the word flatulence appears in two of the roughly 32,000 court opinions in our WorkCompResearch Compliance Library. So clearly we have an established need.
Flatulence is a problem in the workplace. Just last year the Social Security Administration Office of Disability Operations officially reprimanded an employee for “continuously passing gas and releasing an unpleasant odor”. The SSA did this because the continued release of malodorous effluvium apparently created a “hostile work environment.” After the story went viral and created an even bigger stink, the agency backtracked and rescinded the reprimand. They just decided to let the gas pass. Literally, I suppose.
These stupid pills could have helped the agency clear the air in a less controversial manner.
As for workers' comp, certainly some medical conditions stemming from occupational illness may cause flatulence as an additional side effect. These pills could be added to prescription formularies to enable these patients, as well as all those around them, some relief. The 60 pill jars sell today for around $8.00 US, so it is a relative bargain.
Until, of course physicians start dispensing them, for which they will be billed at $18,000 per pill. That will really stink.
I hate to break it to you, but I suspect these idiotic pills probably wouldn't make a huge improvement in the quality of life within our industry. After all, at the end of the day, a fart by any other scent is still a fart.
Even if everything is coming up roses.