Reddit user u/Personthing23 recently asked, "What is your most disgusting work story?" and the responses have me quite literally gagging.
Here are the top-voted responses:
1. "I used to work as a dog bather at a grooming facility. Ever heard of anal glands? Oh, the stench. And if you're not careful, you'll get hit in the face and smell it the rest of the day. Happened to me a couple of times."
2. "This is probably gonna pale in comparison to some people's stories, but one time when I was working at OfficeMax we checked the bathroom at the end of the day and there was just this absolutely gigantic shit clogging the toilet. No toilet paper, nothing else. Just this almost football-sized turd that was vastly bigger than the hole for it to go down. All of us were just in absolute awe and disgust trying to figure out how someone could leave a shit that large. Also…who was gonna take care of it? We all kept saying we didn’t want to deal with it, then this random German guy who recently moved to America just came in with gloves and a plastic stick and just started grinding that shit up. I forget his name, but he had more balls than the rest of us."
3. "I'm a tattoo artist and was doing a small hummingbird tattoo on this lady's shoulder. As I was finishing up, I said 'Go check it out, let me know if you want to keep it!' She said 'Oh thank you it looks gr–' and suddenly passed out. I caught her and lowered her gently to the floor. I assured her that she wasn't seizing and asked a coworker to grab a popsicle. She then proceeded to pee herself. Then her husband came into the room to check on her, slips in her pee, and falls down. I’m struggling to keep it together so nobody feels embarrassed. After a couple seconds, she comes to and stands up. Then, I realized it's not just pee. She had shit up her back and smeared it onto the floor and all over the bottom trim on the walls. Nobody says anything. We wrapped her in husband's flannel, they paid and left, then I had to clean it up."
"I had a client shit his pants while getting his tongue pierced. No words were spoken. Just a silent understanding of what had transpired."
4. "I'm a farmer. I bent over to pick up a tool that I dropped and a cow shat directly into my butt crack."
5. "I worked at a liquor store/gas station/deli combined. One night, the store was empty and a woman came in to just use the restroom. Nothing seemed off, totally fine. Then 20 minutes go by and my coworker says, 'Hey, she hasn’t come out of there yet.' We wait. Five more minutes go by and she finally emerges from the bathroom. While she's walking out of the store, we notice she's smelling her hands, like just giving double-fisties to her face and deep whiffing those bad boys and LOVING IT. When I went into the bathroom after to investigate..."
"We saw that she closed the toilet lid down and shit all over the lid, aka "upper-deck." She just blasted diarrhea down the entire toilet for no reason. Then, when we eventually lifted the lid, we saw that she flushed her flag-sized undies down the toilet (or tried) and broke the pipes. I drew a picture of her and hung it up that said ‘Wanted: The Serial Pooper.'"
"This right here is why you need to have emergency savings. The emergency here being that you need to quit your job on the spot to preserve your sanity."
6. "I fix equipment in convenience stores. A young lady once thought it would be hilarious to place a used tampon into a microwave, turn it on for as long as the dial-timer would allow, and then leave. The smell was indescribable. That microwave got thrown away and replaced, though I was asked if I could fix it first."
7. "I worked at the child casino that serves pizza and has a mouse mascot. I was 19. It was the only job I could find. On my second day, there was a kid, probably around four years old, who was playing the tubes. He didn't want to stop playing to use the bathroom so he went to that end of the tunnel where there are vertical bars (that sorta look like a cage) and just peed off the side of the play area. My manager was hit in the shoulder with the urine. It sprayed everywhere. It was pretty magnificent. The manager quit on the spot. Totally understandable."
8. "I used to be the front-end manager at a supermarket. One night, I had to head back to the deli for some reason. As I made my way through the kitchen there was a bucket of rice on the floor. They use that rice to make grab-n-go dishes we serve at the deli counter. To my surprise, two rats about the size of my hand jumped out of the rice and scurried under the oven. I told the deli manager the next day and he just brushed it off. He said he was 'aware of the issue.' I'm 99% sure they still used that rice."
9. "I'm a pest control technician, aka exterminator. One of my first cockroach jobs was one of the worse I’ve ever seen. My seasoned coworker pointed out that when people have severe roach problems, they tend to not have any hair on their face (no eyebrows/eyelashes/etc). When I went back, I noticed not a single family member had any kind of facial hair. Even the toddler had no eyelashes. Definitely still haunts me."
"What do you mean when you say they have no hair and why is that? Does it fall off?"
"Because there’s so much competition for food with a severe roach infestation, the roaches will eat the hair on these people's faces while they sleep."
10. "I worked in a lingerie store. We had a lot of issues with theft and used to have to thoroughly clean the store every night and report any detached sensors or price tags. I was sweeping the fitting rooms with a coworker and he runs his hand across the top of a mirror and finds something. He pulls it out, screams, and reflexively throws it at me. It hits me right in the chest and goes down my shirt. It was someone's dirty period panties. They were soaked in blood. Someone clearly got their period, swapped their dirty undies for a stolen pair from the store, and couldn't even be bothered to take their mess with them."
11. "I’m a landscaper. I was weed-whacking in a backyard and turned the corner right into a spider web. A giant spider was flung directly into my mouth and I spat it out onto the ground. Not a good day for me or the spider."
12. "I used to work as a sous-chef at a restaurant. I once told my boss (the head chef) that a big pot of stew that had been left in the fridge had some mould floating on the top. He got a spoon, started stirring it up and said, 'I can't see any mould.'"
13. "I was a preschool teacher. One day, a mom sent her very sick child to school. She apparently gave him meds that got him through about two hours. Then at recess, he vomited all over the playground and we had to call all the kids inside. He saw the other kids going in and didn't want to come down from the play equipment. Another teacher climbed up to get him. He then slide down the slide to escape the other teacher and that's where I caught him. Turned out he had liquid shit everywhere. In his shoes. In his hair. On his face. He pooped himself and tried to ignore it, I guess. It was the worst smell I have ever smelled. I managed to get him into the bathroom. I struggled to clean him and while doing so, I vomited over and over into the sink. I just kept retching after my stomach was empty. I changed jobs after that day."
14. "I worked airport security. I was searching someone's bag, as it looked like they had a suspicious brick-shaped something in the bag and we had to investigate. I opened the bag and looked inside. The smell was...indescribable. As soon as I opened it, I got hit with the most foul stench I could imagine. It was like sewer gas, but worse, somehow. I look inside and..."
"The bag is full of dirty adult diapers. It was fucking vile. I was thankfully wearing gloves and a mask (COVID protocols were in place at the time) so I searched the bag as best I could, changed my gloves, changed my mask, spent about 45 minutes in the bathroom throwing up, and scrubbed my hands and arms. It was the worst day I've had at an otherwise enjoyable job."
15. "I was working in hospitality when I saw one of my 'superiors' drop a half-roasted chicken on the floor. I watched it fall against the fridge and then clatter onto the floor. Pieces of meat were everywhere and all the marinade had fallen off the meat. He just picked it up, looked at it to see if there was anything obviously stuck to it, and then served it. Awful."
16. "I worked at a big-box store in high school. One day, I got called over the intercom for a clean-up in the bathroom. Took the janitor's cart, opened the door, and just stood in amazed shock. Told the manager to order a couple of Porta-Potties because this was gonna take a while. He thought I was overreacting until he came to take a look. There were caveman-style poo drawings on the walls, shit on the ceiling, in the sinks, on the mirrors, everywhere. I figured there had to be a team because there's no way one person has that much poop in them."
"My coworker (another high school guy) and I took garbage bags, duct tape, rubber boots, and other stuff off the shelves to make ourselves make-shift hazmat suits and were just about to get to business when the store manager got there. He laughed his ass off at our getups, took some pictures, and said there was no way in hell he was gonna let us, citing liability, and common sense. He taped the door shut and called in professional cleaners."
And finally...
17. "I'm a nurse. I was helping a 90-year-old patient change when I smacked my head on his support bar and went face-first into his naked lap. I even left an 'O' on the inside of his thigh with my lipstick."
Now it's your turn! What's your most disgusting work-related story? Comment below!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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