August 6, 2011

• I Rebuke You Willy Wonka!

  Pondering the Shit Phantom

  08/03/2011 08:00pm

  Yes, the Shit Phantom - a menace that I’ve encountered time and time again ever since entering the workforce oh-so-many years ago.  For the benefit of my female readers, as well as those who live in some sort of dream world where the walls of the Men’s Room aren’t routinely smeared with the excrement of their colleague(s), I’ll explain. The Shit Phantom is the evolutionary descendant of that kid in junior high who would shit in the urinal.  He is the elusive chap in every workplace who, upon defecating, reaches down into the toilet, grabs a chunk of his own feces, and scrubs it into the walls around him. 

  “Why would anyone do such a thing?” I have often asked myself. Could it be that he simply feels dissatisfied with the humble bathroom stall in which he shits and is thus compelled to accent it, similar to how they put fishnets and lobster traps on the wall at a seafood restaurant? Or is it some sort of masculine ritual he feels he needs to perform in order to keep from developing an unhealthy appreciation for Liza Minnelli? That I do not know. What I do know is that the Shit Phantom’s body of work is by no means a series of isolated incidents confined to my particular place of employment and performed by one specific social deviant. Over the years I’ve worked for many different companies in different cities and there has always been a Shit Phantom. In fact, at my first job out of college, I would encounter shit covered walls so often, and without protest from my coworkers, that I began to question whether I might be the abnormal one for not emulating, or at least appreciating, the Shit Phantom’s work.

  Now don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t suffer from the proverbial stick up my ass (if I did then surely the Shit Phantom would pull it out and use it as a crayon). I fully accept that some very unpretty things happen behind the door to the Men’s Room -  pissing on toilet seats, sticking boogers to the wall, and hocking lugis into the sink. Revolting as these activities may be, I have grown to tolerate them. They are just part of being man, like smoking Marlboros and watching football. Buttering the walls with shit, on the other hand, IS JUST FUCKING SAVAGE ! ! !Sure, like every other red-blooded heterosexual male, I too have enjoyed masturbating under a glass coffee table while a pretty ethnic girl defecated onto the transparent surface above me. There is, however, a time and a place for everything and, outside of a highly passionate sexual encounter, other people’s shit has no place being in my face – especially not at work!

  Where, I ask, is Corporate Security on this matter? Where is the Department of Public Health? Hell, where are the fucking Police? AND WHY DON’T ANY OF MY COWORKERS SHARE THESE CONCERNS ? ? ! !

  People, there is human shit slathered all over the walls where you read your morning paper each day. What's more, it was put there by someone with whom you work. Someone with whom you might go to lunch on a regular basis. Someone you may have even invited into your home. And yet it doesn't seem to bother you ? ? ? Have you no concern about disease? About good manners? About the undocumented Mexicans who have to clean it up each night?
  

  I just don’t get it.

   

  

  • 4:00 pm
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