Many of the stories on PoopReport deal with heinous anal difficulties. Terms like "rancid butt paste," "screaming anal demons," and "oh the humanity" are common. However, this tale has nothing to do with a single butt. The fact remains that no single intestinal tract, no matter how evil its output, can ever compare with an entire lake of shit.

When I got out of college in 2002, I had a beautiful history degree from a good school, good grades, great experience, and an economy that stank like, well, a lake of shit. As probably did many readers who emerged from the ivied halls around then, I ended up temping for a number of outfits. One of these was a major Boston-area university. Now, many universities will put their name, seal, motto, etc., on shirts, ties, glasses, and mirrors so that alums, moms, and dads -- and occasionally students -- will buy them. However, this Boston-area university, which to protect the innocent I'll call Newton Catholic University, was, simply put, a product whore. They put their seal on everything -- books, folders, stationary, golf-tees, golf-balls, footballs, basketballs, wastebaskets, sweaters, sweatshirts, tee-shirts, tank-tops, thongs, boxer shorts, and so forth and so forth, ad infinitum; to the extent that one could entirely outfit one's home in Newton Catholic University stuff.

The bookstore through which all the merchandise passed was in McDougal Hall. I worked on the backside of the bookstore, out by the loading dock. Day in and day out, as Christmas approached and eager members of the extended Newton Catholic University community purchased bits of Newton Catholic University stuff and wanted it shipped places, I would stand at a computer, receiving packages to which I would affix UPS mailing labels and then drop into bins to go out to the dock. Working theoretically in concert -- but most often against each other -- were my twin bosses: Shamus O'Malley, a genial Irish Korean War veteran who ran the book and tchotchke division; and Tashban, the Arab lord of the clothing department. Shamus was everything a genial Irish Korean War veteran should be -- on the first day he liberated me from having to wear a tie on the job.

Arabs have been unfairly portrayed by American media as either marvelously good and wise or deeply wicked and crafty; but Tashban was neither of these things. In short, he was an annoying, nasty weasel who could best be summed up with a comparison to a sleazy cruise director. Technically Shamus was lord of all of us, including Tashban; but Tashban had plenty of room to maneuver under Shamus' lax directorship. I was supposed to ship packages for Shamus first and Tashban second, but Tashban (Tashie for short) often liked to come over to the loading dock with a bin full of wrapped sweaters and other clothing items and bully/cajole/annoy me into doing his stuff first. Shamus would catch wind of this, go over and give Tashie a ration of shit, and make him quit for a while.

Shamus was also lord over Tucker Boy. Tucker Boy was one of several mentally challenged individuals who worked alongside me. For the most part these were good people who attempted to tackle their chores with limited intellect but honesty and diligence; but Tucker Boy was the SPED from hell. His job was to keep the bookstore and loading dock area clean using a backpack vacuum cleaner -- a job he generally began around 8:30 every morning but seldom finished. He seldom finished because fairly shortly he would become disgruntled and fed up. Shamus would try to keep him in line by asking, "How are you, Tucker Boy?" To which Tucker Boy would reply, "I'M HAVING A SHITTY DAY SHAMUS!!" This was the beginning of the end because within an hour of the first "shitty day" reply, Tucker Boy would be in the loading dock men's room, pants around his ankles, a turd somewhere on the floor, Vienna Sausage erect, with Tucker Boy giving said Vienna Sausage a good rubdown, all the time accompanying it with "I'M HAVING A SHITTY DAY SHAMUS!" Shamus would go running off to the dock, shouting, "I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT, TUCKERBOY!!!"

Soon, however, it became clear that Tucker Boy was not the only one having a shitty day. On about my third day of work the loading dock began to smell distinctly odd and like shit. Not just an idle mouse pellet in a corner -- no, full-blown shit. We complained, but because the students and parents in the front couldn't smell it, nothing was done. By day two the pong was much stronger, and industrial air fresheners were brought in and placed around the bookstore. (Imagine a vaporizer spraying out a cinnamon-scented cloud. The overall effect was that front of the store smelled great and the loading dock -- you guessed it -- smelled like cinnamon-flavored shit.)

A questing lad with a college degree, I went to Shamus who, like any good commanding officer, spelled it out for me. "McDougal Hall was built with two connected sewage systems," he said. "One for kitchen slops and dish water and the other for piss and shit. The kitchen one broke last week, so the college shut it off and routed everything into the piss and shit drain. Well, the piss and shit drain couldn't handle the extra load, and now every time you flush it's going directly into the sub-basement. The college figured the dirt floor in the sub-basement would just absorb everything, but it hasn't. We're sitting on a shit lake."

He leaned in conspiratorially with this last: "Curtis, if it gets any worse, I'm taking a sick day until it's fixed."

Shamus was a war veteran. He had earned the right not to labor feet above a great shit lagoon. But what about me? If Shamus left, I was stuck with Tucker Boy on the one side and Tashie on the other. What would that be like?

I didn't have long to wait because the smell had redoubled itself by day four; and Shamus indeed took a powder. Day five dawned. Outside it was around twenty degrees, inside it was about eighty, the bookstore's muzak system played the same fifteen 1950's Christmas hits over and over, and we labored in a cloud of cinnamon-tinged shit stink. By noon Tucker Boy had taken two shits, dropped his vacuum cleaner, and gone home with tightie-whities full of turd and spooge. I was the only thing moving on the loading dock, and I was knee deep in Tashie's motherf*&%ing sweatshirts.

Amazingly, I didn't leave -- I needed cash for Christmas presents. So I stuck it out. And so did the college. Faced with a staff now composed of temps and Tashie, they cranked up the air fresheners, cranked up the Bing Crosby, and denied a problem existed. I worked for a week like this, during which time I would run out into the freezing New England day to gulp big lungfuls of clean air.

The end came on my last day. Outside, it poured. A truck arrived. Workmen in HAZMAT suits drilled four eight-inch diameter holes into the loading dock floor. The stench was now an eye-burning, nose-searing reek. Mother Theresa herself would have tossed her curry. Hoses went into the holes, and for six hours a Clean Harbors truck slurped up a thick sewage fribble; on the seventh hour -- this was a Catholic school, after all -- gallons of chlorine went into the former shit lake. The smell of swimming pool replaced the evil stench, and I went home happy for a well deserved Christmas gorging.

-- Nate Curtis