As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I spent many a high school and college summer toiling behind the counter at Dairy Queen. But my particular DQ was a walk-up stand which meant no public restroom. And for this, so many years later, I am now very, very glad.
See, over at Reddit, what started as one person’s story of the horrors of working in the game room at Chuck E. Cheese’s has quickly turned into a collection of readers’ tales about… god help me for writing this… poop-smeared bathrooms.
Writes one commenter:
This is really common actually. I worked at Barnes and Noble and someone smeared shit all over the handicapped stall. Walls, ceiling, behind the toilet in places you could only get shit if you were actively smearing it with your hands. It is bizarre what some people do. What could possibly prompt people to smear their own shit all over the place at a business like Chuck-e-cheese or Barnes and noble?
Followed by:
“Yup, this happened when I worked at Target back around 1999.”
“I can confirm this happened when I worked at Starbucks in 2008 as well.”
“Happened at the Starbucks I worked at in 06, they wrote Dunkin on the wall with it.”
And our personal favorite:
“I was just at Buffalo Wild Wings last weekend. Happened there too, but they included footprints. The footprints weren’t in the shit though. It was like someone smeared shit on their shoe for the sole purpose of creating footprints.”
Since we know that many of you work or have worked in retailers and restaurants, we wanted to know just how common this is. Tell us in the comments — though, please, try to be as tactful as possible, which might be difficult given the nature of the topic.
And if you’ve ever worked in a store or restaurant with a public restroom, here’s a poll for you:
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Unfortunately I’ve had to deal with this working at a library as well. Someone put a book in the toilet and then.. well… Really crazy things happen in libraries. In retail places I haven’t had to deal with things this bad. Mostly just people putting gross things in food and leaving it for someone else to clean up.
I had to post this to my FB wall, I need everyone to know that this really goes on. I’ve been the victim (cleaner upper) of these instances several times over and have even had the random “how the hell is there poo in the middle of the aisle?!?!” I’d always assumed that it was the demographic I was working around, nice to know shit knows no bounds.
Also reminds me of the energy sheets commercial…”where do you take a sheet?” I take a sheet in the street!”
200+ comments and NO ONE has copped to doing this? I want an explanation from someone who’s dropped a dook in a store aisle or crapped all over a restroom stall or smeared crap everywhere!
Oh man… I just read a few of the above quotes to my wife, and she said that happened at a Wachovia Bank when she worked there about five years ago! So it’s not only restaurants apparently.
Jim
McDonalds (over 25 years ago). A woman would come in, eat, go to the toilet, empty a load of odd trash into the loo (empty drink bottles etc) then take a dump on the floor. Took us a couple of times to figure out who it was an ban her.
I’ve worked at a movie theater for 4 1/2 years. I’ve seen a penis drawn in shit on a stall door, shit smeared all over the walls of a stall, and a big ol’ piece of crap on the back of the toilet. I can’t even fathom what would possibly possess a person to do that… Mindbogglingly disgusting
This happens all the time in China. They have signs in the bathrooms “DO NOT POO HERE” pointing to the sink, and urinals!
My friend in Louis Vuitton had to clean up poop from the store change room! WTF man!
I worked in a fabric store with a ‘for customers’ bathroom in the back corner. We REGULARLY had to go clean the walls and floor. We also had one particular customer we had to ask to not come in any more. She regularly let her 2 year old daughter squat in the calico aisles because she was ‘busy picking out fabric’..
It’s VERY common and you HAVE NO IDEA….
Working at Culvers the summer after high school… about a half hour before close, someone came to us and told us the woman’s bathroom needed a bit of cleaning… went to go check it, and there was feces on the floor, coating the toilet, and on the walls of one of the stalls, up past waist height. Left the bathroom and told the manager that I wasn’t going back in there without gloves and a hose.
He laughed, went to check it himself. Came back out, closed the bathroom until close… after close, he got the hose, sat there in the doorway of the bathroom spraying at it until most of it was at least on the floor. It took so long we ended up getting off work about an hour later then normal.
I walked into a bathroom at my university a few months ago and found that someone had crapped in the toilet and flushed like normal, but then had wiped their ass and dumped the shit-covered toilet paper in a pile in the corner of the stall. Some of these stories make sense from a perspective of vandalism, Crohn’s, or just dickishness, but why would you flush the turd and then leave the toilet paper on the floor?
I am literally sobbing with laughter reading all the comments in this article. Bravo for making me stay up 2 hours later than I wanted to tonight.
To add to the stories, the one big one I had when I was young and working in fast food was when people would wipe their ass and toss it directly into the waste basket next to the toilet. This happened every single day.
I know this will be waaaay down the list, but I just have to share it. In 2001 I was unfortunate enough to be working as a busser and host at Red Robin. Yes the shit smearing/explosions would happen (my method of cleaning involved using the mop on the walls, but that’s another story). The absolute worst, strangest bathroom nastiness was the time I walked into the bathroom to find that not only was there smeared shit all over, but there was a catheter on the floor, and it looked like the guy bought a cup of chili in a takeout container for the sole purpose of flinging it all over the stall. So weird.
I worked in restaurants and bars for years. I’ve shopped my fair share too, and I’ve never ever encountered this. Hat tip to my neighbors.
Yep. Five years at Kohls, seen it in the men’s fitting room, juniors fitting room, men’s bathroom. And if we’re expanding this to include just people leaving tampons/diapers/used underwear… well I cant name a department I haven’t seen or heard about it in.
Humans are animals.
Twice I have encountered explosive diarrhea covered bathroom stalls at the BK I manage. The last time It was a stream that started on the wall opposite the toilet that continued all the way along the wall in a 270 degree arc that ended on the seat and floor.
We had to use a hose to wash it all off, chunks and all.
When I was low man on the dishwashing totem pole at a national diner chain I was on restroom duty quite often for a few months. One time, in the “ladies” room, I found a used sanitary napkin stuck adhesive-side-down to the wall of the stall. *gag*
I posted my experience on Reddit already, but at Barnes and Noble someone made a swastika with feces on the bathroom wall. Not the wall of the stall, but the wall by the sink. That’s hardcore.
Amateurs. We had 2-3 such incidents occur **OUTSIDE** the restrooms at the K-mart I worked in high school.
Yes, they were clearly intentional.
No, I’m not going to explain further.
People are just freaking disgusting. I don’t think people have ever done that to the place I’ve worked at for almost 4 years now. But I’ve seen public bathrooms at restaurants, it’s terrifying and sick
Try someone smearing menstrual blood all over the toilet, stall, and floor in the ladies’ room at the McDonald’s I worked at when I was 16. It seriously looked like a suicide bomber had offed themselves in there but the stall somehow stayed intact. It had to have been one of the sickest sights I’d ever seen in my time in retail.
Aside from an employee at work and those afflicted by a real disease (like Crohn’s), who are the people who are poo-ing in public restrooms to begin with? I can’t even remember the last time I had to make contact with the seat of a toilet in a public restroom. I either go before I leave the house, can wait until I get back to the house, or use the toilet at the private residence of a friend I happen to be visiting. If you’re having explosive diarrhea, nausea, etc., why are you out shopping and eating at restaurants?
I do think that a substantial portion of these incidents are probably the work of teenagers or kids who think it’s funny for one reason or another. The adult perpetrators baffle me to no end. I’m in my late twenties and male; I’ve seen this kind of thing personally maybe one time. I’m also shocked to find out that the lady’s (or in this case, “female’s room”) is so much nastier than the men’s. I can’t help but think that hormones may be a factor, though I have no idea of the magnitude. I’ve never dated anyone or lived with a gf who was even remotely gross in the bathroom–most of them were much more interested in cleanliness than I am–frequent use of lysol, frequent cleaning of the tub and toilet, organization of toiletries, etc.
Excluding the kids/teens, the inescapable question is WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE?!?! Same goes for the swastikas and the other bathroom graffiti. I wish some Psy PhDs would write a paper on this, sourced by confidential interviews with the adult perps.
I worked in retail hell not that long ago. The cheapos at the top decided to pad their pockets just a little bit more by getting rid of the day time on-duty maintenance person. We, the underpaid store “staff” were instructed that it was now part of our duties to provide that “awesome” customer experience by keeping the bathrooms clean. This, after several years with no raises and steady erroding away of our benefits, you understand.
We were supposed to check the bathroom each hour on our assigned “rotations”. I just made sure I never “discovered” the mess when it was my rotation. Just went in, looked at the overflowed poo or whatever, signed off on the sheet the all was well, came out, and went whisteling back down the hallway. That left the next staff member to make the “discovery”, which they always did, while I made myself invisible doing “stocking” for a while. No one ever caught on. I would have quit rather than clean the nasty filth.
I’m a woman myself, but my God, what do these women Do in there!!
In the 90′s my band played a large club in Atlanta. We were in the green room and one of the club employees came in and informed us that they had just had all of the walls and floors cleaned, because The Prodigy (remember them?) had played there a few days ago and smeared shit all over the walls.
We didn’t touch anything in that room for the remainder of the night.
I worked at a mom & pop gas station in college with an auto shop where the non-public bathroom was. Owner did not allow us to let customers bathroom when the auto shop was closed due to the expensive tools, peoples cars and what not in there.
One day this guy pulled up to the pump saying he really had to use the bathroom and I’d seen him before so I let him in the building. The next time I showed up to work, the owner was pissed. Dude had smeared shit all over the unfinished plywood walls, the floor around the toilet and in some sort of twisted finale slammed his shit filled underwear in the center of the floor. No shit actually in the toilet I might add. Since it was a small town, I assumed at the time the guy may had a vendetta with the owner car repairs or something, but after reading all of this…clearly there does not have to be any reason at all.
Either way, no non-employee will ever use that bathroom again no matter what the emergency.
I’ve worked retail on and off for years. I’ve never seen it firsthand, thankfully, but a coworker told me a horrifying story from when she worked at another location (same company, clothing retail): An unknown customer pooped in a fitting room. The employees didn’t see it until after another customer had stepped in it, barefoot. SO DISGUSTING.
My coworkers have also reported finding dirty diapers in the store – this is not an uncommon occurrence. I once cleaned up what my coworker really thought was urine, but I’m pretty sure was just water. My store’s bathrooms used to be open to the customers, but thankfully they no longer are. We have had some customers barge past the “Employees Only, No Public Restroom” sign on a few occasions, which is annoying and potentially unsafe given that we store fixtures and hardware in the same hallway. For reference, there is a public restroom right next door in our mall.
I worked at a bank and this was a problem. One day someone’s daughter came up to us and said that her dad had an accident in the bathroom. Peaked inside, there was crap 4 feet up on the walls. To this day I don’t know how someone that is 5 feet tall was able to accidentally get it up that high, or how the cleaning crew was able to clean it off the wallpaper without having to replace it.
When I worked at Lowe’s, ppl would go #2 in the display toilets fairly regularly.
I worked for Academy Sports for 9 years. I’ve seen a lot of poop, not just smeared in the bathrooms, but all over the store. My favorite was when for a few days the skate aisle smelled really terrible. No one could figure out what the smell was.
We looked behind all the boxes on the shelves and found nothing. One day one of my employees was bringing down topstock to refill the shelves when lo and behold, he found a turd on top of a box of roller blades! That box was on a top shelf that was about ten feet up. It was a people turd and it was not smashed or wiped on the box. Someone had to have shat onto the box of skates and put it back into topstock.
Worst I’ve seen: whitish worms swiming about in an almost overflowing pit toilet at a campground on Angel Island. It had its own nasty ecosystem.
I was at a 7-11 once, and standing outside near my car, and I overheard this13 yr old tell his friends he did that in their bathroom JUST now.
Being a teacher, I marched right in there and told the 7-11 man behind the counter what I heard, and he said that Yes, he just let some kid use the bathroom. He told his son (mid 20s) who went outside and threatened to call the police unless the kid went back there and cleaned it up…the kid did, and the guy stood there and made sure. I mean, I suppose the kid could have just ran away, but he looked terrified beyond belief, and his friends just took one giant step away when the 7-11 guy got him. HA.
From my experience working in bars, ladies REALLY don’t like to sit on a public toilet. I theorize they go to the restroom in pairs not to talk, but to cross arms in a gymnastics maneuver for hover purposes. It’s unfortunate that women can’t aim as well as men. Of course, no one can aim #2 at all. And that’s worse.
I currently work at Target and you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. People have pooped NEXT TO the toilet (and I’m talkin’ a mountain). Some pissed off mom smeared her kid’s shit with a diaper all over a dressing room stall (and left the diaper stuck to the wall). Someone else left a trail of shit throughout the store, dripping through the makeup isles, electronics, and clothing departments. And someone with what I presume to be a grenade in their ass, exploded all over the uni-sex bathroom. And our cart attendants have to clean it all up.
Only one incident that stands out: Shit-smeared swastika on the wall.
I can’t even bear to touch my feces (or anyone else’s) so I cannot comprehend the desire to smear it across the walls of a semi-public location. Seriously, I get a minifreakout whenever I have a little bit on my fingers.
The coincidences in my life are far too common. Yesterday I sat peacefully in my kitchen, checking Facebook when a friend posted this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9XXmvixxek
Then I came to Consumerist, where I read this article and it’s subsequent, sometimes quite hilarious, comments.
Tonight, took my 14 year old to Target for a new bathing suit for our upcoming vacation. She stepped in pee in the dressing room! Not kidding. Target was less than sympathetic about the situation.
I worked at a McDonald’s that shared a bathroom with an attached gas station. One day we had what would later be referred to as the Menstrual Explosion. Blood and crap on the toilet, sink, walls, ceiling, door… Thank [insert deity here] that I didn’t have to clean it. Not the only bathroom mess that happened in my 4 months there, but by far the worst. I was lucky enough to dodge the bullet each time.