Painting Contractor Crushed by Thousands of Partially-Used Tape Rolls

DES MOINES, IA — Emer­gency crews were sum­moned to the scene of a trag­ic acci­dent last Sat­ur­day, when Frank Van­Dosten opened a sup­ply clos­et in his paint­ing com­pa­ny head­quar­ters. An avalanche of par­tial­ly-used rolls of painters tape cas­cad­ed upon him, trap­ping the unwit­ting com­pa­ny own­er under its crush­ing mass. Exca­va­tion equip­ment was used to dig through the decades worth of part­ly-con­sumed adhe­sives, but by the time they found Mr. Van­Dosten, it was too late. Lore­ta Van­Dosten, the griev­ing wid­ow, refused to speak to the press for sev­er­al days, but yes­ter­day she final­ly went pub­lic with her sor­row. ​“We knew this was pos­si­ble… in fact, it was Frank’s recur­ring night­mare. All those par­tial­ly-used rolls were pil­ing up some­where. It was just a mat­ter of time.” Sev­er­al of Van­Dosten’s painters seemed dumb­found­ed by the event. ​“It’s such a sense­less tragedy,” one bemused employ­ee said. ​“If only there was some way to pre­vent this.” Anoth­er painter pulled him­self togeth­er long enough to rea­son through the sit­u­a­tion: ​“We have to paint, so we need tape. No paint­ing project ever uses up a roll of tape exact­ly, so there will always be left­over rolls. And those rolls have to end up some­where… If only there was some oth­er way!” At Van­Dosten’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice, one fore­man fond­ly recalled the late own­er’s endear­ing qual­i­ties. ​“Remem­ber the time he sug­gest­ed we bring the par­tial­ly-used rolls to the next job and use them up there?” The gath­ered mourn­ers erupt­ed into tear­ful laugh­ter at the rec­ol­lec­tion. ​“He was always such a joker!”