The Phantom Shitter

If poo is not your thing, stop right now and go read something else. It's all downhill from here. I mean it.

We have someone at work that I have decided to dub "The Phantom Shitter". This is not a new term - I believe Stephen Coonts described such a character in either "Flight of the Intruder" or the follow up book (five books later) "The Intruders". His was a tale of a sailor who haunted an aircraft carrier, crapping in odd places and never getting caught.

Ours is not like that - he craps in the same place every day, but he's never been caught.

His problem is not so much his crap, as the amount of toilet paper he uses to go with it.

You see, we have only one dunny in our change rooms, and almost every day, the Phantom Shitter has completely jammed it with paper. There are two toilet rolls hanging on the wall, and he will use almost an entire roll every time. Once, he used almost two.

I've gone into the toilet and found great wads of paper drifting across the floor. He's pulled off strip after strip about 12 sheets long, scrunched them a little bit and then just dumped them on the floor. Oh, and he'd dumped an entire roll's worth in the toilet too.

As you can imagine, most flush toilets are incapable of handling that much paper, which means every day, once the Phantom Shitter has used the toilet, no one else can until a cleaner comes along and unclogs the toilet.

No wonder our cleaner always has such a hangdog look on his face. He comes to work knowing that come hell or high water, he has to undo the work of the Phantom Shitter.

I learned yesterday that the Phantom Shitter can be sneaky. Most of the time, it is obvious he has done his work - the bowl is full of water almost up to the rim. A clearly blocked toilet. However, I have been caught a few times where the water level has been low, but I have not noticed the great wad of paper poking out of the pipe at the bottom, indicating a blockage. It's not nice hitting the flushing button and watching in alarm as water starts heading up with a view of pouring onto your shoes.

Yesterday was the last straw. One thing about the timetable of the Phantom Shitter is that he always craps after 9am, so before that, you have a clear toilet.

But Monday was a public holiday, and the toilets were not cleaned. So my sure-fire rule about avoiding the Phantom Shitter was stuffed.

I thought I was safe, so I used that toilet.

And boy, did I use it.

Many years ago, whilst waiting for a tooth to be drilled, I read an article in the waiting room about enemas. I think they were all the rage because Lady Di liked to have them. It described the cleansing properties of an enema, and how for meat eaters, it removes the build up of fermented goop that clogs up your intestines blah blah blah. I particularly remember it describing how sheets of that clogged goop would peel off your guts and be flushed out by the enema, and how awful that goop could be. The enema marketing people really went to town on that article, extolling the cleansing and cancer avoiding properties of a gut-flush. In order to make it sound like a good idea, they really played up the solid, fermented poo in your guts angle.

I'm almost gagging thinking about it.

Anyway, yesterday morning was like having an enema without having an enema. Goodness knows what triggered it, but yesterday was the poo to end all poos. Not as in size, but in smell. It was just awful, and I was out of there quickly.

However, when I hit the button, I suddenly discovered that the Phantom Shitter had done his business the day before - on the public holiday - and the toilet cleaning timetable had gone out the window. That poo was going nowhere, except round and round a large bowl of water.

I had to bail - no sane person with nostrils could bear to hang around in that small, unventilated room.

I felt sorry for those that would follow me - it was truly awful.

However, I also had this sneaky little frisson of pleasure. Because I knew that later that morning, the Phantom Shitter would turn up, and he'd be presented with my ghastly floating turds, and that would be sweet (or smelly) revenge. Those turds remained because of his actions. He'd have to live with the consequences.

I hope he suffered.