The Shitter

Every workplace has one in residence. So I would think. We certainly have one and his name is Michael. He’s the Shitter in the office. Michael arrives at work his usual way – with a work car – and parks within our workplace premises, locks the four-wheeled modern transport unit, and then enters the door at ground level before ascending the stairs to the second floor. He settles at his desk.

I also work on the second floor. I like Michael. But I keep getting stung. He’s always shitting and I keep getting hit with it. It’s like innocently walking along before abruptly slamming into an unseen elephant. In I go to the bathroom to wee and POW! I breathe the gut wrenching stench into my soul. What ensues is a life-or-death situation where I try to hold my breath while having a wee, but to finish and exit the death chamber before sucking in my next breath. Not easy.

Michael’s always have a particularly bad signature smell. Like that of a long-undiscovered dead rodent invisibly lodged within a wall cavity in your house. Decomposition has already commenced. Hardly ever do we have many people on our floor, so I know Michael is the guy. Whenever I do the forensic piecing-together in my head from my wobbly office chair with no wheels, Michael’s absences invariably correlate with the timing of the event and subsequent lavatorial fallout.

Sometimes I would have already been to wee, as I do drink a lot of water during the day, and I’ll have noticed the bottom of the toilet was sans skiddies. I always urinate into the bowl, so I know this to be the case. You see, over the years I have calculated that standing over any bowl, anywhere, should lessen the chance of me standing in another male’s piss – their little drips and misses. This is because mostly when a male is using the bowl, it’s for a number two. When a male uses the actual urinal, he can’t help – or won’t care – splashing the floor in his immediate vicinity with sparkling gold. And I don’t want to stand in it. Anyway, the next time I’ve gone to wee, this time the bowl is avec skiddies – and of course I’ve already face-planted into the elephant come this moment.

My vision of each day is Michael undertaking daily tasks in front of a PC, participating in some telephone calls and getting up to take a shit, or that he is returning from the bathroom having just taken a shit.

Morning, Michael, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Good, thanks.

He sits down: Work work work. Discuss discuss. A bit more work.

He’s gotten up and gone to the bathroom: Shit Shit.

I get up some time later to use the bathroom myself: Oh, GOD!!! He got me again. That really STINKKKS…

Both of us: Work work work. Discuss discuss. The day passes.

See you tomorrow, Michael.

Yeah see ya, mate.

Somehow I consistently fail to remember Michael’s foul-bowel activities. So I forget that I could be making use of the downstairs bathroom. Although, I do congratulate and thank myself for at least taking some preventative measures. You see, another scary truth revealed to me during my office years is that so many men don’t wash their hands with soap and water after a number two. Accordingly, I now automatically make contact with any door handles, taps, toilet flush buttons, soap dispensers, or anything else, behind the safety barrier of a folded paper towel. This is mandatory. I also mandatorily wash my hands if circumstances force me to shake hands with any male. While this is action taken after the event, I can’t exactly ask the person to wait while I slip on a latex glove before gripping their potentially bio-hazardous appendage. Pleased to meet you…

Where was I? Oh, yes. Concerning Michael, I’d make good use of a gas mask, you know, like the ones issued to civilians after some madman has unleashed the power inherent in biological weaponry. Only that would be all too obvious. Besides, I still like Michael despite his eau de rotting rodent.