It’s like a festival of neuroses.
I agree that it’s a fine rant. I take exception to the OP’s lengthy holier-than-thou attitude, with examples of how courteous she is, folowed by excoriating a stranger who has done exactly what the OP advocates. That just seems meanspirited, not clever.
Among other jobs I’ve held:
Cook in a summer camp where the B-rooms were dug trenches and I found myself scandalizing the Dear Little Ladies by pointing out that Changing the Roll of Toilet Paper is required of anybody who gets it close to ending and that Our Lady would have been enormously grateful to have the pleasure of toilet paper, rather than having to wipe her ass with her right hand (the priest backed me up on this; so did the camp director; we established a penalty on any girl who didn’t get a new roll when one was needed). The boys didn’t have a problem being seen with a brand-new roll of toilet paper in their hand, the girls did. The girls also had a problem with covering their own poop and monthlies with dirt as required.
Cleaner in an office. If anybody can explain to me the behaviour of that woman who would leave her monthlies on the floor instead of putting them in the proper bin like everybody else… heck, please refrain. Just give the bitch a kick to the ass, hard enough to get her buttcheeks on backwards.
My mother’s list of digestive problems is longer than my arm. I can see why anybody who had to use the bathroom after her would have a problem!
[nitpick]
She’d have done so with her left hand, not her right. This is still true in much of the world. I am, in fact, a left-handed person training myself to use chopsticks right-handed in preparation for a business trip where I would still give offense by using my left hand for eating, even in these glory days of toilet paper and Purell.
[/nitpick]
Hey…I’m with the OP. And I, too, will seek out an empty restroom. I’ve conditioned myself to go before work, so it is the rare emergency that would bring me to the point of performing the deed at work.
And I’m a courteous restroom-user, as well. If I detect a fellow potty person has been in the stall for longer than it takes to take a quick wizz, I’ll vacate quickly so they can have their privacy. That’s just how it’s done!
And I agree with the other poster who said Lieu has serious competition here. This was one helluva poop post. Bravo!
What’s with the pile-on? Some of lieu’s threads are SDMB classics, and nobody tells him to grow up or lambasts him for posting about it. The OP was caught in an unpleasant situation and vented about it in the Pit. Not everything in the Pit has to be of earth-shaking import; threads about life’s little annoyances are a daily occurrence here.
FWIW, jay-c, I can relate totally to your wish to poop in private. I hate pooping in public restrooms and will avoid it if at all possible, but if I absolutely have to, I will scout the building until I find an unoccupied one and hope that I can finish before anyone comes in. What if someone recognizes my shoes and realizes it’s me making that stench, not to mention those awful noises?
Of course, if she were complaining about workmen using the bathroom in her house, that would be different. 
The OP was hysterical.
Still. Shit happens. Deal.
Fuckin’ A.
Some of you folks need to just get the fuck over yourselves. Someone posted a well-written and very funny OP about stinky shit. I wish I could write so well. And we’ve all been in the situation where we walked into a public restroom and said (or wanted to) “Holy fuck! Did you swallow a mad scientist or what?!? See a fuckin’ doctor, dude!”
Honestly, if you have nothing better to do than lambast and nitpick someone for an innocent yet humorous OP, perhaps you should get a fuckin’ hobby. I hear there are some openings in macrame.
Thank you for taking it in the spirit in which it was intended. Poop humor is pretty commonplace in my family, as as both my sister and I have been blessed with ulceritive colitis (which, like Crohn’s, is an inflammatory bowel disease). As children, we referred to our digestive systems as “the rocket sled”, as that’s roughly equivalent to the speed at which most foods exit our asses.
Diarrhea is a common symptom of this. Well, not just your normal, everyday garden-variety diarrhea. We’re talking loud, explosive wet splatters and sounds that aren’t usually heard in nature, often punctuated with groans or whimpers. Sometimes with a stench so foul you’d think my poo had been summoned from the sulfurous depths of hell by Lucifer himself. And oh yeah - there’s usually quite a bit of blood, too. It’s embarrassing as hell for me, but it has to be downright torturous for anyone who ends up in a stall beside me.
That’s more than likely from where my aversion to public defecation stems. I pity whomever is unlucky enough to be seated in an adjacent stall when I’m truly, seriously ill, and go out of my way as much as possible to avoid that happening. Perhaps that’s a neurosis, perhaps that’s courtesy for my coworkers. Call it what you will.
I wasn’t annoyed that my coworker dropped a deuce in my presence. I wasn’t even that annoyed that her funk was so odiferous that it took funk to a whole new level. Shit happens, as it were. However, were the situations reversed, I’d either get the fuck out as fast as possible, or let the person behind me wash their hands first, in order to expedite their escape from the situation. The last thing I would do is happily whistle to myself, while blocking both the sink and the door.
That being said, I certainly see the humor in being trapped in the exact situation I try not to put others in, it’s a shame most others don’t.
A word about the handwashing thing- I notice this occasionally in public restrooms, people scrubbing their hands (and sometimes even their arms up to their elbows) with vast amounts of soap and gallons of scalding hot water. At my workplace the toilets have automatic flushers on them, meaning you don’t even have to touch the toilet at all. And yet, you’ll see these people regularly with the mirror all steamed up and bubbles overflowing the damn sink. I’ve walked into the bathroom with one of these freaks washing their hands, pissed, washed my hands, and left with the guy still washing!
What I don’t understand, and the question I want to ask the person is, if the only thing you touched is your dick, and you feel the need to wash your hands like that, shouldn’t you be washing your dick?
Unca Cecil has the answer
It’s a situation we’ve all been in: trapped olfactory witness to the public poo. But I have at my office a situation that spreads the stinky far beyond the restroom. It assaults me in my very office!
I work in a part of the building that has been converted from what was once a large public space into private offices. The one-seater bathrooms are just closets, with plumbing. No stalls. No exhaust fans. The toilets are mere steps from offices.
In other parts of the building, not far away, are traditional bathrooms with stalls, exhaust fans and some distance between the toilets and where people have to sit and work.
Not so here! Compound that with the fact that, due to the remodeling, there are air circulation and cooling issues. So, there are several fans parked about to facilitate cooling and air movement. (hee. I said ‘movement.’)
And so, we come to the weekly occurance where someone (I know not who) has to take a Large Stinky Dump – and chooses to do so here, in close snuggly proximity with his/her co-workers – instead of downstairs and away! Far far away!
Give us all a chance, O stinky pooper. Pee freely and often upstairs, but I implore you: please take your solid business elsewhere!
So…
How you doin’ ?
She was probably in a good mood! Aren’t you in a good mood when you take a really good dump? Lose ten pounds, feel free as a bird? Leave with a smile on your face?
A few days ago we lost my boyfriend to the restroom in a restaurant. We went through the line, sat down, started eating, where was he? Finally he appears and says “Man, I can’t believe they let you do that for free here!” Now, I think it was the kind with just one toilet in a room, but you know somebody was waiting and had to go in there after him. I wouldn’t have gone with a machete and a whole pack of Sherpas, myself. Not even with supplemental oxygen.
OP- have you considered getting Professional help with this? As in Counseling or Therapy?
Seriously…this is a treatable disease, and if left alone, can greatly increase the chance for colon cancer. I’d advise treatment, as the symptoms you describe are only likely to get worse, and worse is not good.
A very well-written rant. I give it a 9.5 (there’s always room for for improvement).
Please allow me to piggyback on your thread in a way that will perhaps redirect your ire to a more deserving target.
I work for a technology company. It bugs me that our facilities people struggle with the cutting-edge technological innovations such a plumbing and HVAC. Doesn’t anybody understand that you have to get the stinky air out of the damned bathroom. It’s a simple concept: fresh air in, stinky air out. Some innovative person (or group) has invented this magical device called an exhaust fan. Buy them, install them, use them.
Instead, we have these perfume spurting time bombs mounted on the wall. Heaven help you if you walk under it when it ejaculates. Then you smell like someone shit a pine tree.
Giraffe, whiterabbit, Vevila, Annie-Xmas, Excalibre, shamrock227, AwSnappity, DrDeth, you all seriously need to exercise your senses of humor. That was a terrific, funny, rant, worthy of the New Yorker Toilet Issue.