A collection of unusual and quirky stories from across Canada and around the world
Danish brewer puts the ‘P’ in pilsner
COPENHAGEN — Here’s one job we’re really glad we didn’t get: Urine collector. A Danish brewery drained 50,000 litres of urine from a massive music festival and is planning on producing a novelty beer aimed at the more adventurous drinker. The beer is named — wait for it — “Pisner.” It contains no human waste but is produced from fields of malting barley fertilized with human urine, rather than traditional animal manure or factory-made plant nutrients. The urine produced enough barley to brew about 60,000 bottles of pilsner beer. And we’re not done with the puns. Denmark’s Agriculture and Food Council, which came up with the idea, has already named the concept. It calls it “beercycling.”
One burger, plus a side of benefits
TORONTO — Emma’s Country Kitchen is adding an optional three-per-cent surcharge to all bills in an effort to cover the costs of a new employee benefits program. Heather Mee, co-owner of the Toronto restaurant, said they decided on a levy rather than raising menu prices in order to be “very transparent and accountable,” according to the CBC. The business will add about 43 cents to the average bill, which customers can refuse to pay. The surcharge won’t cover the costs of the program, which Mee vows will proceed as of June 1, regardless of how many people pay the surcharge. Staff seemed thrilled about the news, citing how rare it is to have benefits coverage in the service industry. But not everyone is raising a toast: Some experts expect tips will now go down, and they argue higher prices would have been a better move to help the restaurant’s workers.
Frequent ‘pie-er’ miles
PERTH, Australia — The CEO of Qantas Airways, Alan Joyce, proved he was no cream puff earlier this month, keeping his cool after a man smeared a cream pie in his face during a business breakfast. Joyce was speaking at the event in Perth when a man in a business suit walked onto the stage, reached around to rub the pie in his face and calmly walked away, according to Reuters. Joyce later told reporters he had been unable to identify what flavour of pie he had been hit with. “My issue is I need a good dry cleaner before I leave Perth, so if you have one, please recommend it to me,” he said.
Watching paint not catch fire
BERLIN — In the history of boondoggles, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport holds a hallowed spot. It was supposed to open in 2012, at a cost of two billion euros (C$3 billion). Five years past due, it has yet to open, costs have exceeded 8.5 billion euros (C$12.7 billion) and only 82 per cent of “milestones (to opening) have been achieved.” But none of that is why it made the cut for Weird Workplace. No, that honour goes to this revelation — courtesy of News.Com.Au. The departure hall has a futuristic fire safety system that has been a massive headache. After a disastrous test that saw alarms fail to go off and pipes designed to suck the smoke out nearly implode, an innovative solution was proposed: Forego the system and hire 800 low-paid staff to be stationed throughout the terminal. Their one and only job: Spot fires. Not surprisingly, the idea was quickly snuffed out.
Spellcheck doesn’t solve everything
SYDNEY, Australia — Most of us run our documents through spellcheck before handing them to the bosses, but it is not a panacea. Airbus found this out when it reported, in its 2016 financial accounts, that it was being investigated by authorities in Australia for offences such as bribery and fraud. In fact, Austrian authorities were the ones leading the charge, according to Reuters. The typo is the latest in a series of mix-ups between the two similarly named but culturally distinct and geographically distinct countries. CNN was mocked by Twitter users last year for reporting Australia was building a fence on its Slovenian border. And in 2014, the United Nations secretary general offered his gratitude to hosts in Australia when he spoke at a conference in Vienna. A spokesperson for Airbus was unable to say whether his company planned to file a new set of accounts with regulators, without the geographical gaffe.
