Thursday, July 22, 2010

Bread Crumbs

This week I have quaffed deep of the carafe of crapness. Supped long and hard on the soup-bowl of complete and utter work soddery. It is not an expression I use often on this blog but this week has been a shit sandwich. A shit sandwich of doorstep proportions.

There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.

Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.

There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.

The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.

I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.

In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.

Why? How?

How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?

He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.

We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.

In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.

The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).

*Sigh*

And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.

Like I said.

A shit sandwich.


32 comments:

Suzanne said...

Oh no what a nightmare. Ugh. Gross.
Sorry you had a "crap" day.

Being Me said...

I shouldn't.... but no, I have to. Laugh hard. I mean, oh god it is AWFUL, but you really shouldn't write about it so comically well if you want straight-faced sympathy. Mind you, it's probably the only way to self-soothe. Right? I lost it at the POW reference and never fully regained composure. YOU ARE A FUNNY, FUNNY MAN, bless your cotton (they'd be foul if you didn't have shoes on that day) socks.

Steve said...

Suzanne: days don't come any crapper than that!

Being Me: glad to have entertained! It felt good to get it all out. As I'm sure Mr Bobble-hat said to his nurse when he got home again...

Old Cheeser said...

It's true Steve, you turn the mundane sh*t into , well, literary, witty, comical sh*t!

I hope the week has got better...

Rol said...

OK, you win. Your week has been worse than mine.

So far.

-eve- said...

LOL! awwwwww....... poor you....
Speaking of libraries, though, I'm going to one this week! i've been in my place a year and never thought there was a library, so will make a visit there this weekend. ok, with that start, i can imagine your week....... ;-)

Steve said...

OC: I hardly dare say it but... today has been OK. Shhh!

Rol: thank you for reminding me that there is still Friday to get through.

Eve: the week actually managed to go downhill from that point onwards. The poo was the high point. ;-) Have fun at the library (hope the carpets are clean).

Owen said...

There are too many humans out wandering around loose who need to be kept in kennels.

Sad, but true.... and this is the proof in the pudding... the pudding on the floor...

Steve said...

Owen: thank you. I'll never be able to look a chocolate fudge cake in the face ever again.

Trish said...

Where's Pooper-Scooper Pete when you need him?!

The Crow said...

Okay, I want to know what you've done to piss off the plumbing gods - first the troubles at your house, and now the poor demented tool of the Toilet Gods leaving their revenge on you at work?

Boy, talk about closing (repairing) the barn doors after the horse (Mr. Bobble-hat) gets/goes loose!

If this was the highlight of your week thus far, you have my eternal, heartfelt empathy, Steve.

the fly in the web said...

Probably a banker who lost his job...well, unlikely that any of them would lose their jobs, I know...and has no one to wipe his backside any more...

Steve said...

Trish: gone out to purchase a shovel.

The Crow: I did try and leave a votive offering for the plumbing gods but they were down the pub taking an extended lunchbreak...

The fly in the web: and like all bankers the shit gets dropped where it can inconvenience everyone else rather than the banker himself. I take your point. Mr Bobble-hat left one helluva deposit though...

libby said...

Its funny Steve, but I feel so sorry for the man.....he wasn'nt always that way. He must have been young and fit once upon a time, and no doubt would be mortified to see what he has become.....but how horrible for you and God bless the cleaner...

Wanderlust said...

LOL'in at Trish's comment about Pooper Scooper Pete. Indeed, where oh where is he and his collection of plastic bags?

It's a close call, but I think I might rather go blind that clean up that mess.

Steve said...

Libby: no, I know where you're coming from. We did think about approaching him... but to say what? Just best to clean it up. And you're right about that too: no mattter how wretched the experience was for me, it was infinitely worse for the cleaner.

Steve said...

Wanderlust: blindness wouldn't be an excuse - you still have your sense of smell and sense of touch, right? Now get busy with that scourer!

MOTHER OF MANY said...

Well all I can say as a nurse who has had to shovel shite my entire adult life.....voluntarily,I am truly impressed at the cleaner who actually went in to clean it without dropping her marigolds and running away screaming NOW THAT`S NOT IN MY JOB SPECIFICATION!
Definitely old school.
I hope she gets a gold star for that!

Vicky said...

What a crappy start to the week (no pun intended). Just think that next week can't get any worse.

English Rider said...

I'll never think of bread crumbs in the same light again.

Anonymous said...

Gawd, that is disgusting and the poor cleaner, I doubt that degree of shite is in her job desciption.

Steve said...

Mother of Many: there's aren't many old school cleaners left. Ours is clearly a shite scrubbing veteran of the highest order.

Vicky: it certainly can't. I'm on holiday next week - hurrah!

English Rider: I'm also having trouble with fishfingers because of the same. Or in fact anything coated with bread crumbs.

MissBehaving: no, but I sometimes wonder if it's in mine. I really must read the small print.

The Joined up Cook said...

He may have been Ill!

More likely on drugs or in some alcoholic stupor.

I'd just be thankful you didn't see the guy.

Steve said...

AWB: drugs? It certainly wasn't Immodium!

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of my late father-in-law. Literally.

CJ xx

Steve said...

CJ: now that's a point I hadn't considered. Maybe all the plumbers in Leamington are dead? (Certainly from the neck-up...)

Löst Jimmy said...

You're not eating at the moment are you? No? Good, then I'll begin, I have many a 'shit' tale to tell but I will save you from the worst...except one, a few years ago I was innocently supermarket shopping one Saturday, near happily pushing my shopping trolley around when I became aware of a shopper in front and some stuff falling from their skirt, in my horror I realised that this lady was leaving a trail of excretia as she headed towards the freezer section...as for I, why I diverted the trolley into another aisle to avoid being held to account for the crapping-on-the-move. I still have nightmares of that scene...

Steve said...

LöstJimmy: that sounds an absolute nightmare - the Ben & Jerry's selection totally ringfenced by a wall of effluvia...!

KeyReed said...

This was so brilliantly written from the first sentence to the end. Would that I had your gift of putting life's trials and tribulations into such expressive and pictorial language. I had to laugh but I feel your pain.

Steve said...

Tenon_Saw: I've out it all into perspective now. Yes, it was horrible. But at least I wasn't the poor guy who shat himself. Be thankful for small mercies, eh?

The bike shed said...

Gross; but you told it beautifully, and made me laugh too,

Steve said...

Mark: glad to have done that successfully if nothing else this week!