Wendy says, "Added to the Archive."

Washing trucks for a living is not a prestigious job but it does have perks, particularly for those who wash trucks for Beer Stores, a Canadian liquor store chain. The discovery of an onboard bottle of liquor can be considered a tipple-tip, can it not? And swigging free booze surely does make a tedious job easier to swallow.

Which brings us to the deceased Darwin Award winner. Behind the driver's seat of a Beer Store truck, he discovered a vodka bottle full of blue liquid! Whether the deceaed would have swallowed the liquid if it had been a suspicious shade of yellow, I do not know, but a suspicous shade of blue was deemed palatable. He immediately swigged from the bottle, which you have already realized contained windshield wiper fluid.

His taste buds and olfactory bulbs must have been on vacation. During the next two days, the man became sicker and sicker as he transferred the contents of the bottle to his circulatory system. He died in the hospital from methanol poisoning.

Subsequent to his death, a lawsuit against the parent company of Beer Stores deserves a Stella Award for stupid lawsuits. The company has been legally chastised and now forbids truck drivers from placing windshield wiper fluid in alcohol bottles.

Trippy Trivia: In Russia and its former states, vodka is colored blue by smugglers.

On April 8, 2012, the man was washing trucks at the Beer Store’s Brampton, Ont., distribution centre when he and another employee discovered a 1.5 litre plastic vodka bottle filled with a light-blue liquid that investigators later determined was Ultra Clear-brand windshield washer fluid.

Found behind the seat of a truck, the still-labeled bottle was there due to a since-discontinued practice of Beer Store truck drivers taking empty liquor bottles and filling them with windshield washer fluid dispensed from a large vat.

The two men each took several swigs of the washer fluid before wrapping up their shift.

“The one who passed away took the remainder of the bottle home and over the next two days drank the remainder of the liquid,” said Matt Blajer, a spokesman with the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

The worker lated died in hospital of methanol poisoning while his coworker underwent dialysis treatment to clear his system after being warned by York Regional Police.

Submitted on 02/16/2013

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: National Post, FEB, 15, 2013

Copyright © 2013 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Darwin Award
The link is here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/15/employer-forced-to-pay-out-218k-after-worker-dies-from-drinking-windshield-washer-fluid-from-a-stolen-vodka-bottle/ This is definitely DA material (and was reported this late because there was litigation involved). The stupidity of the deceased is of particular note, seeing as not only did he fail to smell (much less taste) the "vodka", he took the bottle home and drank the remainder over the next two days! Since his sense of smell and taste apparently did not work, I can only presume whatever other functions his brain might have had were also absent...! Thanks!

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Darwin Award
There is exactly *one* blue liquor I know of, and it's not a vodka brand. It also doesn't look or smell like windshield wiper fluid. And yes, the second guy continued to drink it over the next two days, even as he got sicker and sicker! That this was in Ontario is a deciding factor. (In Russia and its former states, vodka is colored blue by smugglers, so a story from there wouldn't be quite the same.)

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