This is not a story about one poop, or one of my poops, but about a series of events that occurred during the fifteen years I spent at a parts depot during my thirty-year sentence-- err, career.

The place was built in the '60s on the Thames floodplain, so it was therefore at or around sea level. Drainage was an issue. Heavy rain meant the drain covers in the warehouse would pop and up to a foot of water would flood parts of the large building. Similarly, the sewers were sluggish and the toilets would regularly block -- a situation not helped by the deliberate flushing of paper hand towels by disgruntled oiks. Regular users recognized by the screaming diesel outside the toilet windows when the sludge-gulper truck was on-site to learn a lesson (and the uninformed learned the first time they "got their own back" in the form of a high-pressure bidet): don't use the toilet when the shitbusters were in town.

One morning, when I entered the open-plan office we shared with several other departments, there were wide grins and much activity amongst the site engineering staff -- something that never happened, especially at eight AM. It turned out (hmm, pun for later) that this activity was due to the fact that the department was the keeper of the depot's only camera (a Polaroid -- it was the '80s) and had been given an early-morning task by the manager. At some point in time between when the outdoor forklift driver parked his machine in the yard the last evening and collected it that morning, someone had straddled the forks and laid an enormous log between them. This had been discovered by a security guard on his rounds (they were not usually that thorough) and had been reported up the chain of command to the site manager. The entire engineering staff was now congregated around a whole magazine load of Polaroids of the dump, taken from every conceivable angle, that the manager had commissioned in order to apprehend the perp.

The turd was truly gigantic, as evidenced by the cigarette packet laid next to it for scale; it was thick and it was very long, giving the forks a run for their money -- although, as one critic pointed out, they weren't the extended forks. The next observation was that turdus maximus was comprehensively studded with gravel. All over. This proved, according to one pundit, that it had either writhed in its death agony, or it had been given an exploratory prod with a boot or some such, for whatever reason -- perhaps to center it between the forks. How artistic.

The investigation turned to identifying the culprit. Names were bandied about, usually with comments such as "His arse is rank" or "I'm sure he's blocked the bogs on more than one occasion". It even included someone present at the exhibition, who vehemently denied guilt and who had the strong alibi of not being in the office the day before.

They never found the phantom pooper, although I'm convinced that had DNA profiling been around then, the two hundred employees on site would have been swabbed, probably rectally. The photos were pinned to the notice board in the office until one day, years later, when a visiting Mafiosi (sorry, Direttore) from Italy peered short-sightedly at the collection and then queried the site manager who was showing him around; horrible for management, hilarious for everyone else!

That was the end of this event. But there was more poop.

Two of the guys who worked on my section were inveterate pranksters. They ranged from the mild to the bizarre. The mild: any farting, splashing, or grunting heard from a stall whilst they were using the urinals or washbasins would cause the cry of "Anyone hurt in there?" or "Nurse, the screens!"

The bizarre: Our office was the last before the toilets, and anyone wishing to use the facilities had to pass us. One of the pranksters grew adept at identifying the walk of any guy intent on #2 rather than #1. Don't ask how. Once he spotted one, he'd wait a while, then grab the teabags and tissue that had been used to mop up spillages in the tea-making area, and head off for the loo. If indeed the target was in a stall, he'd theatrically dive into the next stall, make desperate fumbling noises with his belt and fly and then hurl the teabags with great force into the pan, with sounds of relief. He would then make rapid buttoning-up sounds, pause to utter, "Oh God, she'll kill me!" and then flush and quickly exit.

We'd then wait, looking out of the corner of one eye for the poor sod to come back through the office. Some would grin, others went red (why?), but most would scan the faces in the big office to try and identify the unfortunate who'd had an accident in the laundry department. According to the joker, every time he did it, there was absolutely no reaction from the other side of the stall wall; surprising, as I think I'd have cracked up.