Today we have another post from a random server who did not even tell me their name, but they had me at the title. Anyone who feels confident writing a story about poop, gets an A+ in my book. It’s a little short but really, how many words does one need when discussing poop? We have all had our experiences with poopy diners but this story seems especially odorous. -BW
I’m a fresh face to the food service industry. Needless to say, the inner workings of a restaurant and the customer interactions have caught me off guard. Being a newbie, I often wonder in amazement, “does this happen at other restaurants?” I encountered a customer last week who finally broke me into my bitchy waiter mentality.
Our restaurant is a small, locally owned establishment in rural Illinois. Its not amongst the highest rankings of fine dining establishments. However, we are probably the nicest joint around in Nowhere, Illinois. So, amidst the classical music gently humming in the background and the bow-tie sporting servers, a man comes hustling in during our lunch hour. He zips past the host station and into our restroom. A busser (sorry, “host assistant”) makes the comment,”dude, something smells like straight up shit.” At the time, everyone was too busy to take too much notice but one by one we all hopped on the shitty band wagon of nose pinching delight.
Several minutes later, the smelly man comes out of the restroom and casually heads over to join his party. Now the stench has flooded our restroom area, located directly next to our server station. Another customer emerges from the badlands and promptly announces to us that she thought “a child may have had an accident” in our restroom.
The walls, toilet and floor were covered in poop as if a shit bomb terrorist was on the loose. It doesn’t end there- we began to notice that there was fecal matter on the dining room floor. A trail leading straight to the culprit. In fact, the culprit himself was also covered in his own feces. It was on his back. To make matters worse, he notices another party who he knows personally, moves to their table and plops down in another chair. Now our bathroom, two chairs and our dining room floor are all tainted. Literally- HOLY SHIT!? The man never acknowledged his butthole vandalism, nor did his party or the other tables near by. Everyone just continued digging into their sundaes and chocolate crepes. His party even told our host that they were all considering returning that evening for desserts.
As I mentioned previously, I haven’t been serving very long. Theoretically, I can’t make the assumption that this incident is unique. Perhaps customers come along to other restaurants and shamelessly smear poop everywhere. Before you ponder the question, only because it seems to generally be everyone’s first question; no, the man was not a senior citizen and nothing about him suggested any mental condition (well, that’s up for debate). So tell me, have you ever had a shitty day serving tables?
-Just another bitchy waitress
Cathy D. Spilis
When I originally commented I clicked the
“Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox
and now each time a comment is added I get four e-mails with the
same comment. Is there any way you can remove people
from that service? Thanks!
Lovetta F. Underdue
Remarkable! Its genuinely awesome piece of writing,
I have got much clear idea about from this paragraph.
Rebecca
Now, I have to admit, I am a server at Olive Garden. I know, I know. But every Sunday, a gentlemen comes into the restaurant at noon. He (lets name him Steve) is a rather large guy and the hosts are required to keep “his table” open for him, no matter how busy we are. This guy is always covered in stains, and it is questionable what many of them are from. Steve also always has the worst body odor surrounding him. The air in the path he takes as he walks from the front of the restaurant to his seat is permeated by the stench for what seems like hours. Steve’s table also remains un-sat for at least an hour after he leaves. I have been his server on multiple occasions and I am always forced to breathe in the clean air at the side station before making my way to his table. This seems like a rant. Well, my point is that the entire restaurant and our guests are effected by this guy. There should be a policy in all restaurants (chain or otherwise) where the managers can ask people to leave if they are disrupting others by their appearance; smells, sights, or otherwise.
alecia
That’s bad.. but this weekend we had a woman (who was not eating at the restaurant just needed to use the restroom) shit in my section, another girls section and all the way to the bathroom. She clearly couldn’t hold it. Parents were sniffing diapers until all at once all of us looked at the floor. It was horrible. The lady who left the parting gift, walked right out of the restaurant like nothing happened and never told a soul… Not that we could miss it with that smell.
vivalapiggy
Oh BW, I love you. I was a server before I got my job in a grocery store (same shit, except I get rid of the customers quicker). I can relate to a lot of these posts.
My friend and I work in the same store. She came to me with this horrible look on her face and said “DO NOT USE THE DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM” Apparently she had to pee and there was a short wait. Two stalls were occupied, so she walked into the third stall. She said she took one step in the stall and turned right back around because it was covered in poo. She said it looked like someone bent straight over and fired poop out of their butt, all over the toilet, the wall, and the floor. At this point, the other stall became available so she went in and did her business. The lady in the stall next to her was making some horrible bathroom sounds and she wanted to get out of there fast to avoid the wave of stink that was coming next.
Then, as she was washing her hands, she saw the lady in the next stall (the one making the horrible sounds) quickly exit the stall and slip into the stall that my friend had just come out of. She found that a little odd and as she was leaving the bathroom, she happened to glance at the stall that the lady had just come out of because the door was open. It was covered in shit, just like the other stall in the bathroom. This lady was currently in the only non-poopy stall. Presumably doing the same damage that she had done to the other two stalls.
cathat52
An almost identical story happened in our locally owned restaurant here not too long ago: The worst smell ever was floating around and I told my boss about it and he said they must be cleaning the grease traps next door. “Well it smells like shit.” “Yea, they do smell pretty bad.” Another ten minutes later I notice it– a trail of it coming from the front door. There is dribbles of poop leading to the mens room. I go back and tell him again and he thinks i’m half kidding and half getting a reaction out of him and gets irritated. “NO, REALLY. IT’S SHIT.” All over the dining room, all over the bathroom– You could smell it in ever corner of the place. The guy was actually a political candidate! I can’t say who and just so you can’t figure it out all I’m going to say is he ran against Nixon in ’72.
Nicole
This happens! Or at least it happened to me too. One day a guy came in who appeared to be mentally disadvantaged. He went into the restroom and was in there for several minutes, like more than 10. Our restroom entrances are in a tiny alcove right off the dining room so not much of a buffer. There began to be… a smell. I asked my (male) manager to maybe go take a look, make sure the guy was okay. He peeked in head into the restroom. The dude was NAKED and covered in shit. The walls, floor, and toilet were ALSO covered in shit. We called the cops, who showed up at about the same time the guy’s caretakers walked in looking for him. I don’t know where they had been or how he got away from them, but the cops made them clean up the mess.
DD.
Oh, wait until you have to bus a full colostomy bag left in the booth. Yep. Happened to me. 5% tipper too.
C Tizz
I’ve been in this business for 15 years and have seen a lot of crazy stuff being a bartender…had to clean up puke numerous times, etc but someone actually shitting all over themselves is a new one to me. Welcome to the industry!
Melanie
Someone had such a horrific intestinal apocalypse at one place where I worked that I thought the owner had replaced the white toilet with a brown one. I shit you not. The seat, the tank, the sides of the bowl, ALL of it was covered. There was only one restroom with one toilet on the first floor. Disgusting. We had to send everyone upstairs all night. No one informed the owner because we didn’t want to have to clean it up. Disgusting!
Karin Wolchko
They think no one will figure out it was them. They drop a bomb, stop up the toilet and sneak out like no one saw them.
Rachel
You nailed it. It would be funny that people like that are actually delusional enough to believe that they can ‘hide in plain sight’, with poop hanging off their backs, but it just gets sad.