Our actual paying clientele was mostly elderly and Asian, and it seemed that there was almost no end to the string of accidents -- both of the falling-down and of the bodily-functions variety. One of the latter, however, will forever be etched into my memory as the single most repulsive fecal event I can recall.
Our store had two floors, with escalators connecting them. The restrooms were on the second floor -- a design issue that hopefully some architect reading this will address in the future. I was doing my usual rounds on the first floor, having a pretty average, boring shift, when I decided to go and flirt with the salesgirl up in lingerie. After a little of that, I figured I should have a look-see around the second floor and actually, I dunno, look for shoplifters or something. As I rounded the corner that led to the men's department and the top of the "up" escalator, I spotted an enormously fat lady in a muumuu dress speed-waddling toward the restrooms on the far side of the floor.
"Hmm," I thought. "Another close-call, maybe?" And then the full brunt of a virtual bulldozer of poop-stink slammed into my olfactory apparatus. So powerful was the smell that my eyes began to water as I tried to retreat from the source... but where was it coming from?
Then there was a cacophony from the Filipina salesladies who were near Ground Zero. Not that I could usually understand them, but I caught on that the problem was near the top of the escalator.
"Great," I thought, knowing that we'd have to shut down the escalator for a bit while the mess was cleaned up. I approached the escalator and saw a brown pile of dimensions you might encounter in a horse stall. Mounded and enormous, the rectal bounty sat just over the part of the escalator where the tread re-enters the floor, mere inches from the kill switch that I now had to push to turn the thing off. Reaching over the mound of ass-waste, I very nearly topped it with a festive decorative layer of puke as I managed to stop the escalator.
Looking down the now-motionless stairs, I realized that the problem was a bit bigger. It seems that the depositor of this disgrace only finished the job where the pile lay – her explosion began, in fact, while still on the escalator.
The crap was now spread in a streak stretching nearly the length of the escalator, which had made at least one complete cycle before being shut down, dragging the vile load throughout the mechanism. I marveled in nauseated morbid curiosity just how this massive amount of buttfruit could possibly come out of a person, let alone as an accident. I mean, in your usual "Oops, I pooped myself" scenario, the bulk of the load will be contained in one's clothing, with some unfortunate leakage possible. It dawned in me in increasingly disgusting detail that the waddling fat lady must have shat out this load *sans underwear,* the poop falling to the steps and floor from beneath her dress with the sort of sound I imagine dropping a bag of pudding from several feet up would make. Closer inspection did reveal several spots of aftershit in a path that led to the ladies room -- a place on the condition of which I do not wish to speculate after this episode.
Needless to say, the smell remained overpowering, with the air currents washing the stench right up the escalator and filling the entire second floor with fumes you could almost chew. Customers and employees alike fled to the first floor, leaving the rest of the nightmare to our exceedingly underpaid housekeeping staff.
Even after they had done their best to scrub and disinfect the metal landing where the bulk of the beast lay, we had to call the escalator company to come out and disassemble the whole damn thing, scrubbing each part of the complex mechanism. It still stunk to varying degrees for up to several weeks, eventually lessening to a vague funk, the story of which only we who had been there that day would truly know.