You know, hanging around with you people leads to deep, deep sickness.
I started reading the Ryans Steak House Story, and even knowing that I was forewarned about its true TMI nature, I still got to the part about macaroni and beef – and realized that I was hungry for lunch, and nearly went and got myself some food to eat while I was finishing reading the story!
Sick, sick, sick. And I have YOU to thank, SDMB.
I mentioned this somewhre else here but it’s worth repeating. I used to work for an Aeropace firm with 35 employees with a ration of 30 men to 5 females. With this many males, you’re probably aware of the orange stain under the urinal phenomenon, from those guys who think they so well endowned that they have to stand three feet from the urinal. Well one afternoon I went to take my afternoon leak stepped up to the urinal which was fouler smelling than usual, and my feet are making a squish, squish noise. i looked down and discovered some moron had decided that this was a good place for a rubber backed carpet mat.
And yet no one blinks at “seat cozies” and absorbent mats for domestic commodes.
God-damn, I hate those. Who thinks these are useful anyway? The seat-covers often prevent the lid from remaining upright without being manually held in place, and the mats make the practically inevitable (but easily wiped up) stray drops a real problem.
That’s what the world needs! A trap for stray curlies that soaks up the errant pee that comes from standing off-balance to hold the seat up, or jumping to catch it when the damn puffy jacket suddenly drops after tricking you into thinking the seat will stay up by itself. That’s just what I want to stand on to make my micturation all that it ought to be.
Suffering Christ.
…Or maybe he’s just weird (in the sense of “lucky”).
<vaguely realted hijack>
TMI ahead…
I know a woman who for almost her entire adult life has only rarely ever needed any menstruation products because she menstruates in the same sort of way that most people pee. No, no, no! It’s not like she voids her uterus all at once (lest you are horrified by the thought of some kind of massive gory mess). It’s just that rather than a constant mild flow, she gets intermitent contractions of sorts every few hours. So several times a day, she goes to the bathroom for a scarlet piddle.
When you need to pee, but rather than feel that special tingle from the bladder area that says “Get thee to a toidy!”, she feels a “womb-flutter” or crampy kind of ooginess and dashes to the loo.
She said she does not get as much advanced notice as when she needs to pee, and can’t wait the way you can when your bladder wants to go. So if she’s travelling or knows she won’t have quick access to a toidy she’ll use panty liners, but in general she doesn’t really need “feminine hygene” products, because she “knows” when she is going to… er… “go.”
All the women in her family are the same.
They are all weird. And yet, I envy it a little.
</hijack>
I work at a large urban public library. The public restrooms therein almost always smell like an armpit or a dirty diaper, and there’s always paper all over the floor. People have taken a dump in the urinal in the men’s room on several occasions. Homeless people try to bathe in the restroom. One guy was found in the smaller men’s room upstairs shaving his head.
We’ve had women wash out bloody underwear in the sinks, people of both genders stuff whole rolls of paper down the toilets (that’s why there are no seat covers available, because too many people like to stuff the whole box of seat covers down the loo, and they’re more easily acquired than the toilet paper, which is shoved onto flat metal bars in a vain effort to keep people from using great wads of it). The mirrors (metal) have been scratched to smithereens and replaced on several occasions.
Not too long after I started working there, the administration got the hot idea to lock the doors. They explained that if people had to ask for admission to the restroom, they might then assume we know they’re in there and not trash the place. Thus, the staff in my department, whose daily work apparently is of little consequence, were all turned into bathroom monitors and had to press a button hundreds of times a day to let people in. The whole “Make eye contact” business soon went out the window and we were told to open the door whenever anyone approached it. So here we have doors that are locked that nobody is supposed to notice are locked–hello? But it’s death to anyone on the staff who doesn’t jump to push that button.
Anyway, the REAL irony is this–what prompted the lock-the-door idiocy in the first place was when a poor decrepit old geezer who could barely walk, barely got through the (unlocked) door before leaving a big load on the floor. And he then walked through it, with his walker, several times trying to figure out where to go next. The custodian (a dead ringer for Timothy McVeigh, by the way) threw a hissy fit at having to clean this up. So the doors were locked to “keep the restrooms cleaner.”
It sure woulda helped with the old geezer, because if the door had been locked, he’d have dumped his load right there in the lobby.
There was a guy who would come into the coffee shop where I worked and ask for a 20 oz. paper cup, then go into the bathroom for at least 15 minutes. Sometimes the cup would be in the trash, sometimes not. I’ll never know what he was doing, but it was really strange.
And he would always help himself to the free ice water when he came out of the bathroom, so he wasn’t simply using the cup to drink from the sink. I’ve exhausted every yucky possibility in my mind.
ZJ
Cleaning the bathrooms isn’t the most popular chore where I work, so invariably you have the brave (or resigned to the task type) people who always get to clean the bathrooms. There was one girl who never volunteered because she was the gaggy type. For the most part, we allowed her to avoid this nasty job. One night, however, another girl and I decided that since we’d had more than our fair share cleaning the potties, we begged Gaggy Girl to do it just this once.
She reluctantly agreed and, I believe, it was also the last time she ever cleaned them. Now I’ve seen worse, but this was too much for her. It’s not that it was particularly gross, but it was some sort of evil. More than anything, though, it was fucking hilarious!
She’d been in there awhile when we started to wonder what was taking her so long. Just before one of us decided to go in and see what was the problem, she came out with a look of extreme horror and disgust. She said, “I don’t know what to do, but there’s a poop standing up in the ladies’ restroom.”
“Um, what?”
“Really. I flushed about 20 times and it’s still there. I can’t do this! I think I’m gonna hurl.”
My first reaction was, “Yeah right. Of course it will flush. And what do you mean it’s standing up?”
“You have to see this. I’m done.”
So, she follows me apprehensively, but clearly wanting to prove she’s not crazy, into the bathroom. As I open the stall door, I see a little brown head peeking over the rim of the toilet. Getting closer, I see that the 4" inch poo somehow landed in the front of the toilet bowl on the slope directly in front of the hole on its end. It is now clearly standing at attention with more than half of its body above the water line.
Somehow, I can’t believe she flushed, so I try. The water in the bowl drains and the new water flows around the vertical poo. And it never budges. So I flush again. Same thing. Again. No change. Again. Slowly learning. Again. Almost convinced. Again.
“Well, you were right. It’s not going down.”
“You didn’t believe me?”
“Well, um, it’s my first.”
“So what do we do?”
Quick thinking. Grabbing a sizeable wad of toilet paper, I drop it into the toilet directly in front of the poo. Flush. MOVEMENT! The poo, straining against the force of the wet toilet paper trying desperately to slide down the hole, leans a little. Then the toilet fills up again and poo straightens back up as the paper goes afloat. Is it alive? Why is it taunting us?
More toilet paper strategically dropped in place. Fearing we are about to overflow the toilet, we both take a step back as I flush. Water drains. Toilet paper strains. Poo resists…then suddenly in the blink of an eye the damn breaks. Poo topples and TP wins. But the Poo was quicker than we thought. As it fell, it decided to go sideways and by this time the top half had dried a bit making it a slightly less breakable. As it head for the hole, it did this little twist and landed horizontally across the hole.
As the water and paper swirled and sank around it, the little poo that could held on for dear life by its head and feet. In a mad frenzy of partial success, I flushed again three times in succession. I will not be beat some lowlife piece of shit! More toilet paper on top and the poo began to resemble a drunk, passed-out frat coming from a toga party.
On the last flush, the poo gave in to its fate, broke in half and drowned. As it went down, I could swear it gurgled obscenties at me. Like some kind of heroic tragedy, the legend of the Brown Soldier is passed down from those of us who were there when it happened to the new hatchlings and so on. Stoically, he lives on in our hearts and minds.
They pay me good money for this, ya know. Not just any monkey has the fortitude to take on a stubborn piece of crap and live to tell about it.
Dear god, Cinnamon Girl, that’s a tale and a half.
I larfed until I wheezed. It’s like I was there.
Thank you so much for relating that.
It kind of pales in comparison, but I just came back from a Masonic Hall out in the 'burbs.
The Mens’ in that venerable establishment was a very claustrophobic one commode/one urinal/one sink jobby, and really felt like generations of old men lifted their aprons in there. The basin of the sink was parallel with the urinal, and about half a foot away from it. That’s cool, of course. I was a little alarmed to see that the cold water tap (on the urinal side of the sink, mind) had a drinking fountain attachment frankensteined onto it. Yes, bend down and drink from the fountain six inches from the urinal. Never mind the yellow splashes on the porcelain. 
Hmm, I hope they didn’t get their pipes crossed…
A while ago everybody at my school received the following email:
Over the last few days, feces have repeatedly been found
on the floor of the fourth floor men's bathroom in the
Engineering Building. This may be a sign of some kind of
distress, and if anyone has any information about these messes
which are being left, please see me urgently and privately. The
end of the semester causes a great deal of stress and anxiety and
may be related to these instances in some way. However if this
continues to happen we shall be left with no alternative but to
close and the lock the bathrooms, permitting access only by key,
until the cause is found.
While the faculty and administration fully appreciate the
tremendous academic and personal strains which arise at this time
of year, this kind of behavior jeopardizes the health of everyone.
If anyone has any information about these incidents please
contact me so that proper action can be taken.
The Phantom Shitter strikes again!
In my Navy Days I often went to sea with my equipment. On one particular trip, while there is little else to amuse us we devised a way to entertain ourselves in the stall.
Someone had devised (for the sake of equipment tracking) a Movement log. Since nobody ever used it, and we had it with us, we decided to record our movements.
This became more and more interesting as the ships crew got involved. Various descriptions were brought up, and some were created on that trip.
The “Sea Pickle” and “Baby Chief” (Khaki in color) were new ones I hadn’t heard before that trip. “Mysterious Crap Circles” were often reported, although there is no proof that this phenomenon was of supernatural origin. However it usually was accompanied by a superhuman olfactory sensation. (The Crap Circles described the spiral swirl left on the inside of the bowl)
I don’t know whatever happened to that book, others tried to follow suit, but just didn’t measure up to the original.
Not related to the Movement log is another story related to a submarine that had just come into port. The story came to me second hand so I will recall it as best I can and still get the point across.
Part of the submarines waste disposal involves pressurizing the san-tanks and routing the waste through the “Overboard Discharge” There are VERY strict guidelines as to how this is to be done. One of which is that it should NEVER under any circumstances be done in port. Well, in this story someone overlooked that one detail. After the ship had been on a long cruise and was pulling into port someone got the bright idea that since the majority of the crew was manning the docking procedure, then they could secure the head with the least amount of complaint. So they proceeded to clear the san tanks (while the boat was being moored) Oh, there was one other detail, apparently the Brilliant Scientist who usually blows the sanitary tanks while the boat is under water neglected to realize that **on the surface ** it would require a great deal less air pressure to clear the Sanitary tanks. When The overboard discharge was open the resultant effect was a 300ft submarine with explosive diarrhea.
This was at the ships Home port so many wives and Children had congregated on the pier to greet their long awaited Husbands and/or Daddies. When the smell hit the crowd many decided that Their loved ones would be home soon enough and they could wait for them there.