I worked for a local thrift store in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s been around for a long time. My mom used to shop there when I was a small child. Now I'm thirty-three, and needless to say, this store has not aged very well.
During one of the days last month that I was the closing manager, I heard a Section Four announcement over the intercom twenty minutes before closing. Section Four means to unlock the restroom for a customer. I was the closest person to the restroom, so I headed that way to unlock the door and arrived at the same time as a mother and her two young sons did. She told me that one of her sons needed to use the restroom. I unlocked the door and held it open for them.
While my cashier was working on the register and my other floor person, Robert, was dusting the floor, I headed out front to bring the outdoor merchandise inside. I noticed that Robert had made it over to the corner where the customer restroom was and that he and the mother were having a loud discussion. I was still bringing outside the merchandise in when Robert started heading towards the front of the store and yelled for me to come back. So I did.
It was then that Robert told me that one of woman's kids has destroyed the restroom and that there was diarrhea and puke everywhere.
The smell that came barreling out of the restroom due to the door being propped open may have wafted over nonchalantly enough, but it had evil intentions; I was sure of it. It's bad when you can smell the heat from what used to be in a person’s stomach from fifteen feet away.
I couldn’t bring myself to go any closer due to the fear that I wouldn’t be able to forget what I might see. When I worked at Circle K, I'd already seen the aftermath of other anal assassins and would not be ready for a round two in this lifetime. This being so, I bailed on poor Robert and headed back to the front of the store. Even though I was walking further away – and doing so quickly - I’ll be damned if the smell didn't keep up with me.
By the time I reached the register, so did the smell, and so did my cashier, and so did some customers. We were all engulfed in this horrendous smell of fermented, hot, pukey diarrhea. I could only wait for the customers to notice the smell that had projected itself from the far left corner of the store.
And notice they did. "Oh my God... What is that horrific smell?" All I could do was try to explain that there was a sick child in the store. While this went on, I had looked back to the corner where the restroom was. Robert had forced the mother to clean up after her son. I desperately tried not to laugh but couldn't help it. The woman was very mad and cussing because she was made to clean up after her own child.
After we herded the last of the customers out of the store and I locked the front doors, Robert started venting as to how mad he was. He said, "If she thought she was going to leave this store without cleaning that mess off the walls, the sink and the toilet, she was crazy!" Never in my life had I'd ever been so proud of one of my employees until last Monday.
We are left to clean up after many anonymous shitters and pukers everyday, and it was nice to see one of them have to clean up after themselves for once. I am no longer employed at this thrift store, as of yesterday; I found another job at a warehouse. I’m not worried about losing Poopreport material, though. Wherever a stomach rumbles, a shitty story will be brewing shortly after!
