Scrutable

A question prompted by the attached clip from a recent Private Eye, suggesting that staff morale at the UK Financial Conduct Authority may be poor.
Twice at my previous place at work we had similar incidents. In the first case, about 20 years ago, someone was repeatedly using the toilet for number two without first raising the lid. Technical Services posted a cleaner outside to check after each visit and eventually the poopetrator was identified. She confessed, saying "The organisation is sh.tting on me [she was in some kind of contract dispute] so I'm going to sh.t on them". About 10 years later, when Mrs sTeamTraen was working at the same place, there was a series of incidents of someone "missing the bowl by a wide margin" in the ladies, with the nature of the finished products (2-3 on the Bristol scale, I was informed) suggesting that this was not just leakage. In the latter case, nobody was ever caught as far as I know.

Until I read the Private Eye story I had thought it might be something in the water at my old employer, and of course, such incidents become known pretty quickly for their gossip value, but this was an organisation of only 2000 employees and we had two cases in the space of 10-15 years, so I'm wondering if this might be something that happens on a rare but non-homeopathic basis in employment situations more generally?

PS: I had difficulty deciding which forum section this belonged in, so I decided on Nerd Lab in the hope of getting some research-oriented responses as well as the inevitable terrible jokes.

I work in a very international company (dozens of nationalities in 120 employees). The tiny Malaysian office manager became a pal, and because she knew I had bike tools she would ask me to fix simple stuff. Anyway, it turned out she had an issue with a problem shitter in the men's bogs - they did huge logs, buried them in a mound of paper, and ran away. The cleaner refused to deal with it after a while, and plumbers were expensively called. Serious (but unintentionally hilarious) emails were sent, but it kept happening.
I started taking care of the occasional one to save my friend's sanity (I'm pretty good at this sh.t ), but in the end she quit.
The problem is still there, the culprit is as yet unidentified. The new office manager is huge and fearsome and I suspect she will show no mercy if the miscreant is caught

rockdoctor wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 25, 2019 8:37 pm

they did huge logs, buried them in a mound of paper, and ran away. The cleaner refused to deal with it after a while, and plumbers were expensively called. Serious (but unintentionally hilarious) emails were sent, but it kept happening.

Reading this, I wasn't sure if the logs were being done in the toilet itself or outside? From the "expensive plumbers" bit I presume that it was in the toilet, in which case presumably the paper wasn't what was making the difference and it wouldn't have been totally the guy's fault. As Kenny said, it's no good installing one-inch plumbing if people have two-inch a..eholes.

And it's not sh.tting on the company at all, (not getting at St.tr. for choice of thread title here): 'The Company' will unlikely never know, is unlikely to care and will certainly not be perturbed by it; it's sh.tting on the people who have to come around afterwards and clean it all up! Outside contractors in this day and age. Cos when your only choice is to have to work for a cleaning company, cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves, your life just isn't bad enough already. So, oh look, let's make it worse.

tenchboy wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 6:48 am

And it's not sh.tting on the company at all, (not getting at St.tr. for choice of thread title here): 'The Company' will unlikely never know, is unlikely to care and will certainly not be perturbed by it; it's sh.tting on the people who have to come around afterwards and clean it all up! Outside contractors in this day and age. Cos when your only choice is to have to work for a cleaning company, cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves, your life just isn't bad enough already. So, oh look, let's make it worse.

Being a pratt to service staff is generally an arshole move, especially when your grump is with a third party over whose actions they have no control.

tenchboy wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 6:48 am

And it's not sh.tting on the company at all, (not getting at St.tr. for choice of thread title here): 'The Company' will unlikely never know, is unlikely to care and will certainly not be perturbed by it; it's sh.tting on the people who have to come around afterwards and clean it all up! Outside contractors in this day and age. Cos when your only choice is to have to work for a cleaning company, cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves, your life just isn't bad enough already. So, oh look, let's make it worse.

I sort of agree with this if it refers to general crappy behaviour in toilets. But deliberate sh.tting on the floor on a repeated basis ought to come to the attention of HR, I'd have thought.

I'm also not too sure about "cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves". Toilets need cleaning even if people are all perfect aimers, and unless you have some kind of a rota in a 3-person office, I'm not sure who should clean a shared toilet if not someone who is paid for that. There are worse jobs.

Speaking as a working director of a smallish business, you'd be surprised at how often dealing with toilet issues gets "delegated up". I suppose in some contexts this would make the sh.tting protests effective - I consider myself blessed never having had to deal with that. (Although a career in software has taught be an unexpected amount about rural septic tanks).

In my years in academia in Switzerland we used to dread the start of the new academic year in mid-September because every year saw the arrival of a new cohort of students who weren’t toilet trained and who had no intention of ever cleaning up after themselves. Footprints on the toilet seats in some instances, faeces on the floor and the walls in many. It usually took a couple of weeks of increasingly angry announcements to get things to settle down.

It must come under some psychological thing, the utilisation of such a taboo thing (faeces in this case) as a protest against authority. However, unlike a "dirty protest" by a prisoner who doesn't care about anonymity (well, cannot have, really), in these cases the person is attempting to remain anonymous.

Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime
That's why I sh.t on company time

You're all thinking of this now, aren't you.



And maybe the answer to the OP is education.

GeenDienst wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2019 7:58 pm

You're all thinking of this now, aren't you.



And maybe the answer to the OP is education.

So as soft as Izal but more absorbent

malbui wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 27, 2019 10:24 am

In my years in academia in Switzerland we used to dread the start of the new academic year in mid-September because every year saw the arrival of a new cohort of students who weren’t toilet trained and who had no intention of ever cleaning up after themselves. Footprints on the toilet seats in some instances, faeces on the floor and the walls in many. It usually took a couple of weeks of increasingly angry announcements to get things to settle down.

Were these people who had grown up in Switzerland? I spent a month living in an undergraduate house in the Netherlands a couple of years ago and at the mandatory induction meeting, we were shown the house rules including this graphic.
Everyone laughed, but the staff person said "We get students from countries where they have only ever used a squat toilet", so the instruction seems fair enough. About 30 years ago it was still quite common to find so-called "Turkish toilets"(*) in public places in France, and I still see one or two, but I don't think I've ever seen one in Switzerland.

(*) Slightly racist joke told by the French about their allegedly "slow" northern neighbours:
Q: Who invented the Turkish toilet?
A: The Belgians. The Turks just added the hole.

jimbob wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:47 pm

So as soft as Izal but more absorbent

In the early 1990s a colleague of mine went to Moscow. He got talking to an America at the hotel bar. The subject turned to toilet paper, which was still Soviet-era at the time. The American said "I call it John Wayne paper. It's rough, it's tough, and it don't take sh.t off anybody".

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 31, 2019 11:44 am

jimbob wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:47 pm

So as soft as Izal but more absorbent

In the early 1990s a colleague of mine went to Moscow. He got talking to an America at the hotel bar. The subject turned to toilet paper, which was still Soviet-era at the time. The American said "I call it John Wayne paper. It's rough, it's tough, and it don't take sh.t off anybody".

That one more commonly involves Native Americans.

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 31, 2019 11:43 am

Were these people who had grown up in Switzerland? I spent a month living in an undergraduate house in the Netherlands a couple of years ago and at the mandatory induction meeting, we were shown the house rules including this graphic.

toilet squatting.png

One of those notices went up in our departmental building last year as, first of all a number of toilet seats were broken, then an entire toilet bowl was smashed... the presumption being that someone had been attempting to squat on the toilet.

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 31, 2019 11:43 am

malbui wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 27, 2019 10:24 am

In my years in academia in Switzerland we used to dread the start of the new academic year in mid-September because every year saw the arrival of a new cohort of students who weren’t toilet trained and who had no intention of ever cleaning up after themselves. Footprints on the toilet seats in some instances, faeces on the floor and the walls in many. It usually took a couple of weeks of increasingly angry announcements to get things to settle down.

Were these people who had grown up in Switzerland?

I really don’t know who the perpetrators were or where they were from. My alma mater was in a phase of massive recruitment of students from abroad, though: undergrads were essentially 80% Swiss and 20% from bordering countries, but postgrads were 50% from further afield paying lovely lovely lovely higher fees.

FlammableFlower wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 31, 2019 12:40 pm

One of those notices went up in our departmental building last year as, first of all a number of toilet seats were broken, then an entire toilet bowl was smashed... the presumption being that someone had been attempting to squat on the toilet.

Many toilets in public places in France have no seat (e.g., pretty much every elementary school, many service stations, etc). You just perch your thighs on the cold porcelain rim. In some cases you can see that they have been designed without the holes that would be needed to fix a seat.

For some reason this feels ickier than sitting on a seat, even though (a) porcelain is probably easier to clean thoroughly than whatever plastic is used in seats or seat covers and (b) as someone wrote in a piece that I read a while back about the futility of those after-each-use seat cleaning mechanisms, it's not very likely that you are going to catch something through contact with the skin of your outer thighs anyway.

Much less bovver when you hover.*

*Ask an old person.

bjn wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 10:49 am

tenchboy wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 6:48 am

And it's not sh.tting on the company at all, (not getting at St.tr. for choice of thread title here): 'The Company' will unlikely never know, is unlikely to care and will certainly not be perturbed by it; it's sh.tting on the people who have to come around afterwards and clean it all up! Outside contractors in this day and age. Cos when your only choice is to have to work for a cleaning company, cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves, your life just isn't bad enough already. So, oh look, let's make it worse.

Being a pratt to service staff is generally an arshole move, especially when your grump is with a third party over whose actions they have no control.

Be a hero, do it on the MD's desk

sideshowjim wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:25 pm

bjn wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 10:49 am

tenchboy wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 26, 2019 6:48 am

And it's not sh.tting on the company at all, (not getting at St.tr. for choice of thread title here): 'The Company' will unlikely never know, is unlikely to care and will certainly not be perturbed by it; it's sh.tting on the people who have to come around afterwards and clean it all up! Outside contractors in this day and age. Cos when your only choice is to have to work for a cleaning company, cleaning the toilets of people who are too selfish to clean it themselves, your life just isn't bad enough already. So, oh look, let's make it worse.

Being a pratt to service staff is generally an arshole move, especially when your grump is with a third party over whose actions they have no control.

Be a hero, do it on the MD's desk

It was part of the Sex Pistols legend that when they left EMI/A&M they left a particularly fragrant cigar* in the ashtray on a particular executives desk.