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Klaus Baudelaire: If this place is so miserable, why don't you leave?
Workers: Lucky Smells is our life! Lucky Smells is our home!
 
— - The Miserable Mill: Part One

Lucky Smells Lumbermill is a sawmill located in Paltryville and is the site of most of the misfortune that the Baudelaire orphans endured in The Miserable Mill. True to its name, the mill is an unpleasant work environment.

Description[]

It is an extremely unsanitary and rundown facility that is surrounded by a long wooden wall with one gate that has the sign labeled, "Lucky Smells Lumbermill." stuck on it with gum.

As the book's title implies, it contains numerous safety and human rights violations:

  • The workers are forced to live in a windowless room (with windows drawn on the walls) and to sleep in uncomfortable bunk beds.
  • They wake up daily to the sound of banging pots by their foreman.
  • Their only meals are chewing gum for lunch, and disgusting casseroles for dinner.
  • Their lunch breaks are only five minutes long.
  • They work non-stop for hours. Furthermore, the work is laborious, exhausting and at most, dangerous.
  • The mill is extremely noisy because of the constant sounds of machinery and saws.
  • All workers are paid in coupons that they cannot use. This is actually illegal according to The Paltryville Constitution (as read by Phil near the end of The Miserable Mill). In the Netflix series, it is revealed that the workers were subjected to hypnotism by Dr. Georgina Orwell.
  • In the Netflix series, the rest of Paltryville had been burned down and no efforts were made to rebuild it, which left the workers nowhere to go.

There is a library inside the mill, but it only consists of three books, The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill, by Sir, The Paltryville Constitution, and Advanced Ocular Science. The latter was donated by Dr. Orwell. (In the TV series, the library only contains multiple copies of The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill.)

The lumbermill gets its lumber supply from the surrounding Finite Forest ("finite" means "limited", so it may be a commentary on deforestation). According to an excerpt from The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the mill supplied the special "emerald lumber" used to build the Baudelaire, Snicket, and Quagmire mansions.[1] In The Penultimate Peril, Sir mentions that the mill also provided the lumber used in the construction of the Opportune Odors Horseradish Factory and the Hotel Denouement.[2]

Employees[]

Trivia[]

  • In the Netflix series, the mill's workers are freed of their hypnotism and revolt against Sir in large numbers, forcing him to flee and resign from his post as the lumbermill's owner. In "The Penultimate Peril: Part One", it is implied that Charles, Jerome Squalor's new love interest, is now running the facility, and has probably passed new policies that caused the worksite to be more ethical and humane.
  • Some of the signs seen in the TV series:
    • SAFETY GOGGLES ARE UNNECESSARY IF THEY SLOW YOU DOWN
    • DANGEROUS EQUIPMENT: IMPROPER USE CAN RESULT IN BROKEN MACHINES AND COSTLY DELAYS
    • NO OUTSIDE GUM PERMITTED
    • SAFETY SECOND
    • THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE TO WORKING FAST
    • THINK FAST: SPEED IS VALUED ABOVE ALL ELSE
    • WORK FAST: A SPEEDY WORKER IS THE BEST WORKER OF ALL
    • SHORTCUTS SAVE TIME: TAKE SOME
    • VISITATIONS ARE UNNECESSARY AND INTERRUPT WORK
    • THIS MILL HAS WORKED 15 DAYS WITHOUT MACHINERY BREAKDOWNS: THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 7 DAYS
    • KEEP YOUR WORKPLACE CLEAN: ACCIDENTS ARE EXPENSIVE
    • BE SAFE AND BE QUICK WHEN CLEANING OR REPAIRING MACHINES: LOST TIME IS COSTLY FOR ALL
    • ACCIDENTS COST TIME AND MONEY

Sources[]

Gallery[]

Books[]

TV series[]

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