I was twenty years old and sort of mingling at the crossroads of my life. I already had a young son at home to care for, and I'd just joined the army in the hopes of having some chance of a decent income. So far, I was regretting my decision and not enjoying life as an army boy very much.
One day, I was at the base doing my usual things, when the Lieutenant Colonel approached me and asked me to completely clean the men's room because it was getting rather disgusting. I obliged with no protests or complaints -- after all, when you're in the army, you have to listen to whatever your superior officers tell you, and you have to do as they say, regardless of what it is. So I spent about an hour mopping the floor, scrubbing out toilets and urinals, cleaning the sinks, and wiping all the streaks and spots and fingerprints off the mirror. When I was satisfied it was spotless, I left the cleaning supplies by the door and went back to my usual work.
Less than ten minutes later, I heard the Lieutenant's powerful booming voice screaming, "PRI-VATE O'CON-NELL!!!!", accompanied by the sound of pounding footsteps coming up the hallway. I could have sworn that the whole base shook at the sheer volume of his voice.
He didn't sound happy.
In fact, he sounded very, very angry.
I was terrified of what I could be in for. Next thing I knew, I was staring upwards at the Lieutenant's face. He towered over me, standing nearly six feet and eight inches tall. His face was red with fury and he was glaring down at me as a teacher might as if gravely disappointed by a star pupil. Suddenly I noticed a very familiar foul smell. I looked down to see that there was a big brown gob of something the Lieutenant's right shoe, and a trail of brown footprints behind him that lead down the hallway towards the bathroom.
After a very intense session of verbal abuse, I hung my head in shame as I followed the poop prints back to the bathroom with the Lieutenant's soiled shoe in my hand. It seemed that as soon as I had left the bathroom after cleaning it, some fuckface had gone in there and literally taken a shit on the floor, thinking it would be funny to get me in trouble or something. And lo, as soon as the Lieutenant had walked in to inspect my work, he'd stepped right in it. And guess what? The Lieutenant was placing the blame on me!
As punishment, I lost an entire week's worth of time off. And I had to clean the washroom again. And I had to scrub the shit off the Lieutenant's shoe, too.
I walked into the bathroom to inspect the damage. And then I saw it: a big pile of reeking greenish-brown poop complete with undigested particles, smeared all over the floor from where the Lieutenant had blundered into it with his army boots. The smell was bad enough to knock the entire Canadian army off its feet. But luckily I was used to it, so I was immune to its effects.
First I went to work on the Lieutenant's shoe. I went over to the sink with a scrub brush and some soap and washed it until there were no traces of poop left on it, and the poop scent was replaced by a soapy scent. What a nasty job that was. I placed the cleaned shoe on the counter where it would be safe and went to work on the floor. That job wasn't so bad -- it was fairly wet and mushy poop, so it mopped up easily; I just had to replace the water in the bucket a couple of times.
I thought I was done when I finished mopping the floor. But I wasn't. Even after using an entire canister of air freshener, the washroom still reeked of shit. I was confused, thinking, "What the fuck is going on here?" That's when I realized: uh oh, Spaghetti O's! There must be more poop somewhere.
So, I looked around and sniffed around, trying to locate the source of that damned smell. Soon enough, I found the culprit in the fourth stall from the door: a great big mess of greenish brown poop, splattered all over the toilet, the floor, the walls, and even a little bit on the ceiling. It had the consistency of thick cake batter, or maybe some kind of weird milkshake. I recognized it as the result of a case of super explosive diarrhea. Clearly one hell of a messy battle had taken place in there.
I looked at it, and my only though was, Oh my God, this is going to be a long day.
Eventually I did get it cleaned up, though it didn't do much to please the angry Lieutenant, or myself for that matter. I'll never forget the disgusted look on Jen's face when I came home reeking of shit that day. To this day I would love to beat the shit out of whoever pulled this on me, assuming any shit is still left in him.
