I feel like our RV park’s housekeeper deserves hazard pay.
I continue to be astonished by some people, and the things that they do. Or in this case, what someone did NOT do.
Someone had an unfortunate case of explosive diarrhea yesterday… In the shower. And got out of the shower, still “leaking,” to reach the toilet. The result was poop all over the shower, poop on the floor, poop all around the toilet. The thing that astounds me is that this person just strolled out, leaving it there. I watched him do it.
We have a camera in the hallway leading to the bathrooms, so I know exactly who it was, and he’s getting a nastygram from me, and maybe a fine. If he had made any attempt, or even called to ask for cleaning-tools ,or help (he has my number), I would feel differently. But he just walked away.
I don’t know why it still astonishes me when someone does that, because (unfortunately, astoundingly) this is far from the first time there has been this sort of mess to deal with. All too often we can’t identify the culprit—the multiple-stalls setup of our other bathrooms means that even a camera outside wouldn’t tell us who went where…
Sometimes we have “serial offenders,” the worst of which was someone who was regularly smearing poop on the stall walls. (In addition to my outrage, I admit to curiosity. I can’t quite picture the logistics, if you will. Did he scoop poop out of the toilet to do this? Catch it in his hand? Did he have gloves for this project, or does someone who decorates with poop not worry about such things?) And above all else, resoundingly: WHY??? What the ever-living fuck makes a person do something like this? Repeatedly!
We had a hypothesis, about the identity of our malefactor, and the incidents did, in fact, stop when that teen’s family moved out of the park. We had better luck with ID-ing a serial offender on the ladies’ side—someone who, on a daily basis, left a clogged toilet full of poop and massively excessive amounts of toilet paper. Ultimately we had a good guess because she did the same at our house, when she was there. So when our housekeeper came upon the daily offering, I texted the offender (what better way to reach a teen!) and told her she was no longer allowed to leave her poop-mess behind. She needed to use less toilet paper, and I would show her how to use a plunger in the event that it happened again. I told her, “It’s not Chrystal’s job to clean up your poop!”
(If only that were true! It shouldn’t have to be Chrystal’s job!)
She apologized, embarrassed to be caught out—but the very next day, there it was again. I came down on her like a ton of bricks (apparently I am “scary”), and it hasn’t happened since.
Lower on the “ick” scale—but as high on our frustration scale—was the mess Jon found in the clubhouse kitchen yesterday. Dishes and pans unwashed, food left in the microwave, trash filled up and not emptied, general mess in the kitchen…
It’s a nice little clubhouse, with couches & a TV, long tables for group eating, and—the big draw for people living and cooking in RVs—a full kitchen. A number of people use it regularly, and lately it has become the hang-out for the whole “gang” of kids living in the park. Some of these kids (in my curmudgeonly opinion) are far too young to be running around without adult supervision (I’ve found two of them, for example, crawling and rolling around in a pile of leaves… in the middle of the road!) and a couple of them are, shall we say, behaviorally challenged even with their adults—so I have been uneasy. (None of them are “bad” kids, and most of them belong to our staff, so I know them… But I’m not confident in their judgment and behavior.)
In any case—and this one is probably not on the kids—the mess in the kitchen is far from the first time. Chrystal has cleaned up far too much of other people’s kitchen-use, and yesterday Jon decided “Enough.” The clubhouse has had a keypad-doorknob, with the same number-code as the bathrooms—but yesterday Jon changed it out for a doorknob with a key, and we made a sign-out sheet for the office. There’s still no charge to use the clubhouse, but we’ll have a registry of who has used it. If there’s a mess, now, we’ll know whom to go to. If there should be any “repeat offenders,” we can decline to let them continue using it. And that key is only going to adults.
It frustrates me that we should have to do this.
And I don’t understand it. Never mind the extremes like poop-smearing—I don’t understand the mind of someone who uses a communal kitchen and walks away from their dirty pans.
What are they thinking? I literally want to know what they’re thinking. Do they think it’s someone’s job to clean the kitchen after them? Do they think … What else? I’m trying to think what else they might think, that would explain walking away from their mess.
I guess it really doesn’t matter what they’re thinking—the point is what they’re doing. The point is what some people will do when there’s no one there to make them behave properly. Every few days, in the summer, for example, Jon has to repair something damaged by poor RV-driving, and it’s a rarity for anyone to stop and admit they’ve hit and damaged property. So I suppose my real question is: what on earth is WRONG with people?
Kana's Chronicles 
My sister is an RVer and has traveled the entire country. Her and her husband are “substitute managers” for state parks. It’s amazing how disgusting people can be! FYI poop smearing is a behavior sometimes found in autism and is also diagnosed in people with no issues whatsoever. It’s called encopresis. I’ve had a number of clients with this diagnosis. Regardless, it’s still gross for someone to have to clean it up. Yuck!
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When I was 18 I was travelling with a guy who was 27. He was the actionman type and a bit of a mentor. Amongst many words of wisdom he passed on was.
“It’s fairly easy to suceed in this world as 75% of people are assholes.”
It’s a theory that has very rarely let me down. Lol. Although a little awkward if you repeat it in a room where there are only four of you.
The not tidying up thing, I get a bit, kids can be thoughtless and used to mommy doing it (that’s not an excuse, just a reason) The poop thing? Well that’s just plain disgusting, sorry you had to experience it.
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“Like” feels like the wrong button to press for this post… But, yeah, that sounds awful! I think there has been a shift in the last decade or so away from personal responsibility towards “Well, why should I deal with that?” We see it sometimes in the library with new hires, who say “But that is tedious, or hard work, why should I have to do it?” Well, because that’s what you’re being paid for? I often think of the shopping trolley analysis, that says the basic underpinnings of a person’s psyche can be determined by whether or not they return a shopping cart to the corral, or just abandon it. It’s a choice that’s made without any rules in place, and no enforcement or punishment. It’s just down to whether you’re considerate or not.
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I’ve been considering for a long time that common sense has gone down the toilet. Maybe those new hires should try cleaning toilets for a while, then “hard word” in their brains might be re-defined.
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I think you already understand – these people aren’t thinking, they’re doing.
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I am not surprised by the disgusting or depraved things that men do. They expect to have women clean up after them and forgive all the time.
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At least SOME of our offenders are women… Poop-messes in the ladies’ room… sigh.
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Woah… You have to think it twice, and still, you don’t get it… Lately at the gym there have been one or several mysterious ladies who leave pretty IMPRESSIVE “gifts” in the WC, which cannot go down. And they just leave it there. Whether they keep on training or not, that’s unknown to me… apart from… Who can train with that inside the body?! When you plan to go to a training session, don’t you check some essential things in your body before? Or is the training part of the other process?
Definitely, Chrystal —whose name was also accidental, I presume— deserves an award, but not like the ones that get the cleaners at my gym!
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I’ve worked in cleaning myself, ableit houses and not an RV park. There was one client who never even bothered to tidy up before I came. She’d tell her guests after they’d made a mess to “just leave it, my cleaning lady is coming tomorrow” – which I know she did, because she told me so herself.
I used to go out of my way to help people and clean more than I should in the time I got. But needless to say, I made an exception for her 🤭
I have no idea why some people act like this. I just know it seems to be a universal thing 🤷♀️
I hope your new lock helps with the dirty dishes issue. Sad you have to implement this, but I suppose some people are in need of this “tough love”.
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I’m only sorry about how it impacts the people who DID clean up after themselves, who can’t use the clubhouse in the evenings now when our office is closed… But we had to. It’s not our housekeeper’s job to clean up THAT mess!
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WOW. Sorry for that. People do odd things when they think no one is looking. I had a job for a while cleaning bathrooms at a college dorm. Happily, no one ever smeared their poop on the walls, but there was a bit of, um, shall we say overflow from time to time.
But in a store where I worked—and don’t ask me why—poop got on the walls more than once. Apparently, it’s more common than you’d think at first glance.
And dirty dishes in the kitchen—yeah, that happens. Someone will clean it up, right?
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I think you’ve hit on the key: “when no one is looking”!
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Ugh!
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Hmm I am glad I am not having dinner soon. But you are right. This kind of behavior is not acceptable.
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You have a lot stronger stomach than I do. I admire you for being able to stay in the business in spite of all of that mess.
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The “hero” award goes to my housekeeper and my husband, who actually cleaned up those messes! ;)
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That is great. Bless them.
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Oh lord. Some people seem to be immune to shame don’t they?
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“Immune to shame”—that’s an apt description!
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OMG. If i had a medal to give you’d get it
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I’d pass it on to my housekeeper! She & my husband actually cleaned up all those messes!
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when i worked night shift at a gas station, some dudes left a pile of poop inside someone’s underwear on the floor of the men’s room. they apparently got a kick out of it.
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Wow. Just wow.
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I’ve had encounters with this type. I worked in facilities management for a while, and we had a series of toilet stuffings. That is, the culprit stuffed hand towels – which don’t break up in water – down the S bend. And then did what they had to do.
One day the overflow seeped through to the men’s room on the floor below and got dangerously close to the electrical wiring. The building’s owner was called in and he got the problem solved. In a discussion with my managers he used the words ‘police’ and ‘criminal damage’ several times. I passed that on among the client staff and we never had the problem again.
Like you, I find such people to be a total mystery.
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It’s impossible to comprehend… the MALICE of stuffing the towels down before doing their business—that’s so deliberate, but WHY? As you say, a total mystery.
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Talk about gross, there are some disgusting people around
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It sounds like being an elementary principal. Bathroom issues and playing unsupervised on the front lawn after school were an issue at least once a week or more. Yes, the parents are on the front lawn, but they are having social hour with the other parents and not paying a bit of attention.
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I used to teach—don’t get me started on PARENTS! ;)
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I feel your pain. Part of my job was cleaning bathrooms, and the level of insanity you describe unfortunately is not uncommon.
As a side note generally speaking the public side of which gender has the worst bathroom habits in a public setting women take the cake.
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Too much information.
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“So I suppose my real question is: what on earth is WRONG with people?“
I’ve been around poop my whole life, and I myself poop daily.
Maybe I should call it excretion in order to make the activity universal among living things.
The ocean was full of poop long before decorum of human beings understood human poop needed to be flushed, and then, after careful control, released back into the oceans, where, inevitably, poop– and everything– goes.
By the way, I like graffiti. I admire it. I read it. I decipher it.
Do I like poop graffiti? No, I do not. None of us do. Even members of Congress, and the CEO himself, who farts and wears diapers, do, or does, not. Therefore, there must not be poop graffiti.
In your specific case, I believe you can let it be known you do not like or approve poop graffiti, and that will end poop graffiti.
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I think you’ve got a community there, and the younger folk, as always, are to be treated with deference.
With respect.
This often means they have to be educated.
They are ripe for education.
Poop is a very basic thing.
After a limited amount of time, even a mother gets tired of dealing with poop.
There’s a sense, and contemporary technology allows this, poop can be flushed, and through pipes or whatever, as if it didn’t matter, and the pooping babe, feels rejected.
If they are running around as monkeys we can remind them they are blessed with humanity.
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After reading this, all I can say is you have a soul of gold to put up with such Neanderthal behavior. I learned many moons ago that humans are slobs. My wife and I are now empty nesters and our home is finally clean.
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