In my last post I shared a poo story about my little girl that I suspect she may not thank me for some day down the line. So I thought it only fair to share one of my own and then at least I can say that we are even.
In my last ‘salaried’ job – one in which I worked for nearly 10 years before running away to Spain with Mr B and joining the motherhood – I was know in a certain circle, a circle of trust (apparently), let’s say within a certain radius of my desk, as Ropey. Ropey Ringworm-Trotts.
For today I am going to leave out the Ropey and the Ringworm and just focus-in on the Trotts and take you back to a time when my pelvic floor was intact and a rectal prolapse* was not just a thing that happened to other people, but a thing of which I had no knowledge. Oh blissful ignorant days.
I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but I was the first into the office that morning, and it is likely that I was hurtling towards some hideous deadline or other. Stress, therefore, may have been involved and my tummy must have been churning. And, early as it was, I guess that I just didn’t have the chance to complete my usual ablutions at home in my own loo before I left for work.
Can you guess? Let me confirm. I had, as they say, the trotts and I stank the office loo out like a drain. So what? So a person couldn’t walk into reception and the office without walking past the loo. No, a person would have to pass through a small ‘vestibule’, and my early morning bum funk, to get to get to their desk or to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
As people drifted into the office, each one, to a man, came in complaining of the smell from the toilet. I sat up my end of the office busying myself behind my screen, blushing right down to my socks as the witch-hunt for the sewer rat started to gather pace. It was only when the receptionist issued the following immortal line that finally I cracked:
“Oh my god. Any decent human being would have used air freshener!”
ANY. DECENT. HUMAN. BEING. I couldn’t take the pressure any more. I had to confess. And hang the consequences. They can’t sack a person for kicking up a stink can they? I stood up. In front of a fairly full office and purged myself:
“It was me! I did the poo. And there wasn’t any bloody air freshener.
And I think I might have a bit of a bad tummy.”
It was a bit like getting up and speaking for the first time at the pooers’ equivalent of AA. I can’t really remember what happened next. I may have passed out. Or somebody may have clapped.
I can tell you what did happen. My humiliation was complete and they never never let me forget it. Lots of boys you see, and some girls with a very very puerile sense of humor. Juvenile. Not at all like me. God, I miss it.
If you have any office-based tales of humiliation I would love to hear them. In the meantime, what would you have done? Confessed or kept your head down?
~~~
*This has been denied by the medical profession who, to my mind, have been less than rigorous. What’s that phrase about arses and elbows?
