tampon or fungus?

March 25, 2015 11:17 AM

the girls on shit duty
posted by and they trembled before her fury (34 comments total)

I never figure out why it’s called cake

Texture and color. Composted shit looks just like cake.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:54 AM on March 25, 2015

It is always amazing what people are capable of in regards to restrooms in public places. It makes me question what they do in the privacy of their own homes, I mean what would make you think that it's a good idea to crap in a sink on a weekend of a shared bathroom when it's only cleaned once a day and only on weekdays? Entitlement comes to mind, but there is no logic or reason aside from being a jerk.
posted by reedcourtneyj at 12:23 PM on March 25, 2015

cake that you wish was a lie ..
posted by k5.user at 12:23 PM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Dip Flash: Texture and color. Composted shit looks just like cake.

But it doesn't taste like cake. One of life's mysteries, I suppose.
posted by dr_dank at 12:29 PM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

It is always amazing what people are capable of in regards to restrooms in public places

Or even semi-public: after all, these people are sharing this toilet with people they are seeing all week, or however long their fishing trip is. What makes it possible for them to do it is their knowledge that Someone Else is cleaning it up.

People suck.
posted by suelac at 12:55 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

That was richly disgusting. Well done.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:58 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I worked in a small town pizza joint with a public available restroom. You really don't want to know.
posted by jgaiser at 1:04 PM on March 25, 2015

Well-written article, but I couldn't finish it. The descriptions were too vivid.
posted by tickingclock at 1:04 PM on March 25, 2015

Ontario - my people. We write essays about shit.

But enough about Margaret Atwood, this was also a good essay.
posted by GuyZero at 1:05 PM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I worked in a small town pizza joint with a public available restroom. You really don't want to know.

The worst stories I heard were from my friend who worked at Barnes & Noble. It was frightening what people would do to those bathrooms. I have no idea why.
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:20 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whenever I fantasize about opening a restaurant or bar I'm brought up short by the thought of having to maintain a public restroom. Nope.
posted by amanda at 1:31 PM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

My 'favourite' are the people who manage to poop vertically up the wall. How.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:31 PM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Strong abs and a tight anal sphincter are a powerful combination.
posted by idiopath at 1:33 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

The couples I saw going into the bathroom together at a party weren't having sex or using drugs, they were actually just using it together, one in the toilet and the other one in the sink. I hate everyone.
posted by 1adam12 at 1:36 PM on March 25, 2015

What makes it possible for them to do it is their knowledge that Someone Else is cleaning it up.

Yep. Used to be part of a clean-up crew that handled a Target store, and all I can say is that some people must have suffered unspeakable trauma during their toilet training that they feel the need to rebel against in the most direct and unmistakeable of ways.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:37 PM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Meg tries to clean the porcelain using Vim and a handful of paper towel, knowing that the task is insurmountable but trying anyway.

Suck it, emacs.
posted by oceanjesse at 1:46 PM on March 25, 2015 [43 favorites]

The couples I saw going into the bathroom together at a party weren't having sex or using drugs, they were actually just using it together, one in the toilet and the other one in the sink.

Kind of depends on their plumbing and who's needing to do what, but I can't see just peeing in a sink as that egregious as long as one is careful not to splash, rinse out well after.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:48 PM on March 25, 2015

Texture and color. Composted shit looks just like cake.

Also, isn't "caked" a term to describe something that's been in a pile that's been left to sort of compress and congeal into a lump sometimes?

ew
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:01 PM on March 25, 2015

Also, isn't "caked" a term to describe something that's been in a pile that's been left to sort of compress and congeal into a lump sometimes?

I'm, like, so caked right now, man.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:06 PM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

My 'favourite' are the people who manage to poop vertically up the wall. How.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:31 PM on March 25 [+] [!]

Your post just broke my eponysterical meter, FFFM. Thanks :-/
posted by mosk at 2:13 PM on March 25, 2015 [22 favorites]

The worst stories I heard were from my friend who worked at Barnes & Noble.

I have soft spot for Barnes and Noble bookstores as they were a refuge during graduate school and the place where I first met my wife. That being said, their bathrooms are consistently icky no matter which location I visit. Very weird.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:56 PM on March 25, 2015

Part of an old job of mine was keeping the restrooms clean during a four day rodeo. A lot of people are evidently deficient in the toilet training department. At least I hope that's what the problem was. The alternative is too scary to think about.
posted by metagnathous at 3:00 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Entitlement comes to mind, but there is no logic or reason aside from being a jerk.

Mental illness? Drunkenness? Physical illness + embarrassment? I don't think it's hard to understand why public restrooms get disgusting, it's kind of amazing that we keep hoping otherwise.
posted by psoas at 3:27 PM on March 25, 2015

One of my jobs is shit at the minute and I had a shitty day on Monday and came home feeling like shit. It was good to read this and remember to be grateful that while my job is shit, it's not actually, literally shit.
posted by billiebee at 3:58 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm interested in just how gendered her experience working this job, and dealing with the dirtier side of things, really seems to have been. Like, the male dockhands who cleaned out the cake, they get cheered on for it and... at the same time, yell at the women for flushing tampons and keep a running tally of how many they find? But dealing with fresh shit and having to handle fecal matter by hand to clean it (which is partly what I'm assuming the gloves are for), that's just a part of the job not to be commented on. And you don't even get to swear about your job where the guests might hear, unless you're a dude.

I guess being female means you don't just have to sort out your share of the shit, but also you have to deal with the extra crap of expectations of femininity that people load on top of that. Or... something. Bleh. And I mean, that was the impression I got reading what seems to be a very warm (and vivid!) take on a job the writer otherwise felt fondly about, even!
posted by sciatrix at 4:05 PM on March 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

I’m always amazed at the mess. Why does getting away from home become synonymous with guests losing their sense of propriety? It’s as if the bad, angry part of the wilderness—the part that reminds people of their feral origins—leaches into every male psyche, turns every guest into some basic and primeval version of himself. Too lazy to throw the toilet paper directly into the toilet? No problem—chuck it on the floor for a girl to pick up. Too drunk to aim properly into the urinal? Piss on the floor and wait for the housekeepers to come and clean it. Left your pubic hairs all over the bed sheets? The girls will wash it. The girls will. The girls will. The girls always will, on hands and knees, eyes to the floor.

I remember a bit of father-to-son advice I thought I had read here. I paraphrase, but roughly: A man's character can be measured by the way he treats a public bathroom.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:31 PM on March 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

The gendered part of this piece was (shit jokes aside) very much the most interesting aspect. I do wonder, though, if she would have seen any differences if instead of almost all the guests being male, there had been alternating groups, either all male or all female (or for that matter, a group of gender-non-conforming people). My guess is that when people pay a bunch of money to stay at a fishing lodge, they pretty much feel entitled to make whatever kinds of messes they want, secure in the knowledge (as she so eloquently describes) that a woman is going to clean it all up.

In other words, my guess is that the key gendered component is in the cleaning expectations, not in the gender of the person making the mess.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:58 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

You could be right, Dip Flash. The cleaning crew at the Target store was almost always all-male (probably for the best, as we were locked in there all night and some of the other guys on the crew were, well, not very nice people), but the general public wouldn't know that. FWIW, the women's restroom was on the average just as filthy as the men's, and often quite a bit worse.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:20 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to work in a bar where the only way to clean the back-of-the-bar floor mats was to drag them outside, pour 151 rum on them, and set them on fire. You don't want to know how we maintained the lavatories.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:33 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

They should cash in.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:50 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to have a cleaning job, including several high schools. The toilets (bathrooms for Americans, I guess?) at the all-girls school were much worse than either of the genders at any of the mixed-gender schools. Sadly, I did not have an all-boys school on my roster in order to make a fully-researched comparison.
posted by harriet vane at 2:27 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

FWIW, the women's restroom was on the average just as filthy as the men's, and often quite a bit worse.

When I am running Hell the lowest circle will be exclusively for gladiatorial battles between women who hover and men who piss on the toilet seat. I suspect the latter will have a slight edge given their more overt hostility to the rest of mankind but they might lose slightly based on numbers.
posted by phearlez at 12:31 PM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

...ain't that some shit?
posted by ostranenie at 10:28 PM on March 26, 2015

I had literally no idea how much shit I would come in contact with as a nurse before I signed up. If I had, I might have been scared off, but I'm glad I didn't have the chance--it's amazing what you can get used to. I have absolutely no fear of shit any more. Bring it!
posted by eggkeeper at 6:58 PM on March 29, 2015