One of my duties entails serving the customers who walk through our door.

It was a normal day, and I was in the process of photographing rings to upload to our website. Around 11:30, a lady walks through the door, and almost instinctively, I smile and say “hello there”. As I get up from my station where my photography white box is, I notice a hand full of gold. This lady loved her jewelry, and loved to show it off as well.

Whenever someone walks through our door, we like to offer to clean their rings in our ultrasonic cleaner. Not only does it give them an excuse to walk around our cases, it gives them a sense of getting something nice even if they didn’t buy it. Like getting your car washed for free.

My brother-in-law Mike asked her if she would like her rings cleaned while she looked around, and she accepted. Now me, being zealous to see the look on peoples’ faces when they receive something nice, I gladly offered to take the rings to clean them while he helped her.

I should have stayed in bed that morning.

After taking the rings, I notice that, where there should be clean space under the ring, it is a vat of sludge. My stomach turned. What seemed to be years of lotion, oil, dead skin, raw chicken, all held together by knuckle hair, was compacted into every crevice under all 7 rings I was about to clean. So trying not to look, I hung them on the hooks, placed then in the ultrasonic cleaner, and turned it on.

45 minutes later, I checked on the cleaning progress.

First let me explain a little about our ultrasonic cleaner. It is filled with an industrial de-greaser solvent, and the mechanics of it are similar to a microwave. It sends little tiny pulses of electricity back and forth penetrating every little crevice. It cleans very well.

Now as I was saying, 45 minutes later, I checked on the cleaning progress, and it was like telling a child to go and clean up their room. No noticeable difference. Whatsoever. My worst nightmares have come true. I will have to manually scrape the scum from out of the rings, and then put them back in the cleaner.

I take a deep breath and begin.

I grab a small bur from the jewelers bench, and start digging away. For some reason, the sludge was transferring from the ring to my fingers. Remember the old movie “The Blob”? yea, kind of like that.

Ok. Almost done, one last cleanout hole, pffttt- fwap! It explodes onto my upper lip. In shock, I take a whiff of what landed on my face. And without hesitation I calmly wipe off whatever had landed onto my face. I am scarred for life, and will henceforth be passing off any jewelry that needs to be cleaned to our jeweler, who I am sure is more qualified than I am to handle such situations.

Whoever reads this, I am on my knees begging you to take your jewelry to your local jeweler to get it cleaned at least once a month. Lunches could be at stake if you don’t.