Cleanliness in the workplace

DISCLAIMER: If you have a weak stomach, or can visualize things vividly — or worse, if you have a weak stomach and you can visualize things vividly — you probably shouldn't read this post. Really. Most especially if, like me, you can't seem to control what you do and do not visualize when reading or listening to something.

(Disclaimer #2: I'm going to sound like the most heartless and awful of bitches in this post, but I really am not trying to be such; it's just the result of a horridly disgusting situation. Bear with it and you'll see.)

What I'm about to describe is the epitomy of human filth combined with what I can only guess is a lack of ... whatever you would call all those basic common sense/instinctual things that you either do or don't do in order to function as a non-vomit-inducing member of society. There are certain things that you just don't do if you expect the people around you to view you as a respectable human being and not some lowly dirty animal that doesn't know not to eat it's own feces. (See? That sounds pretty goddamned bitchy, but imagine the voice to be ... say ... that of a scientist on Animal Planet — which is how it sounds in my head — and it's not the same.)

Moving on. Remember my post about the reporter with the puss-y hands, Masturbation With Other Peoples' Computers Is Still A Sin? This is about her. Only, my coworkers and I aren't laughing now.

I made light of a disgusting situation in that post, commenting only that this woman "hasn't the cleanliest of habits," and leaving you to your imaginations on that. Since then, many unfortunate discoveries as to the depth of her uncleanliness have been made, and combined with her personality we now dread both her presence and the women's restroom in the main building (there is a second restroom in the warehouse that will from now on be the one that I use, as I don't think this woman knows of its existence).

To begin, I'll stick to personality and intelligence. This woman has all the personality of a rock. A bloated rock, at that, if such a thing is possible. Now, while this alone would normally not bother me (not everyone is a charmer, and there's nothing wrong with that), it is only scratching the surface of this particular individual. This woman has dead, almost hostile eyes, and a voice and manner of speaking to match it. One the biggest pet peeves of a production artist at a newspaper (or magazine) is when a reporter barges into the room and splutters out something like, "Her name's wrong," and then expects you to know what the fuck they're talking about without any further explaination.

As if we would know (perhaps through our closely-guarded secret mind reading abilities) just which female individual — human or animal — in which story, on which page, in which section of the newspaper we're currently building, they're referring to.

Other mindless splutterings include "Who has it," — who has what? — "So the age is in," — the age of who, or what? — "It was in the briefcase," — Wha-??? — and "Nevermind; the mill is off of it," — Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up ...

This seems to be the only way this woman can communicate; in chopped, broken fragmented sentences with no preamble or explaination, with a mostly dead but slightly hostile stare, as she stands, arms limp at her sides, head slightly down, shoulders slumped — like a golem; a being that has no mind of it's own whatsoever, resulting in a virtually inanimate lump of flesh blocking your escape to fresh air and sanity. She is also rather overweight, which in and of itself is not disgusting — hell, I've seen some drop-dead-gorgeous heavy people — but added to all the horrors of this woman it only makes the whole package that much worse.

As if her lack of communication skills wasn't irritatiing enough on it's own, add to it the fact that she blatantly interrupts everyone in the room, other reporters and editors included, to loudly and nasaly splutter these things because she has no idea (and makes no attempt to discover) just which of the three of us production workers she needs to splutter at about her particular correction or addition or whatever. Then there's her manner of entering the room. Again golem-like she thunders in, swaying and stomping, and while most people will stop a decent distance away from the person they want to talk to out of an instinctual respect for personal space, this woman will stand less than one foot away. And then she leans in.

And here's where the filthiness come into play.

Some people forget to wear or possibly don't believe in wearing deodorant. Some simply have a naturally strong aroma, so that they could be covered in prescription deodorant and still clear a room. Still some others seemingly don't bathe on a regular basis, and don't wear deodorant. She is fits into that third category, if my nose is any judge. And keep in mind that 90% of the time I can't smell most things due to fucking outrageous allergies, so the fact that I can smell her so clearly really says something. You'd think that daily bathing would be a requirement for a job where you're interacting the public, but sadly it is not. Or at least it's not enforced, no matter how bad the smell gets.

So, here's the scene: You're sitting at your desk with an oaf of a woman damn-near plastered to your side, and she stinks. You lean away a little bit, trying to be casual about your search for fresh air. She leans in, towering her sweaty bulk over your shoulder and head. The more you casually lean away, the more she comfortably leans in, until you're as sideways in your chair as you can get without falling, and save for her feet being planted on the floor she's in your lap.

And then there's her breath.

I know people with bad breath. I've had some pretty harrowing encounters with rampant Halitosis. This woman's breath, however, is an abomination. When I say her breath smells like shit, I'm not using 'shit' as a hip way to describe something bad; I mean it literally smells like fecal matter. Imagine someone following around a dog bloated from a steady diet of beans and boiled eggs, scooping up the inevitable foul explosion, and eating it. Daily. That is what her breath smells like. Further, it's no little waft that drifts by your nose on occasion; this woman is a full-fledged mouth-breather, and due either to her weight or some anatomical oddity, she's also a hard breather.

So, as she all but climbs into your lap to splutter at you about whatever correction needs making, she's forcefully and loudly exhaling viscous clouds of dog shit at you, and unless you're going to be a complete asshole by shoving her away and running, you cannot fucking breathe.

You dare not breathe.

Oh, but wait! It gets worse!

The women's restroom in the main building, which is used by most of the women who work here, has been tainted beyond all hope of salvation for my production coworker and me. It has been deemed The Badlands, and we dare not enter even for the purpose of quickly purchasing feminine products from the machine on the wall. (There is no such machine in the restroom in the warehouse.)

Now, I can't be sure of this unless I were to run a test involving every living perosn in the United States and several other countries, but I would assume that most people would rather keep their urination and defecation issues to themselves. Hence, in a larger restroom with several stalls (like the one in the main building) when you hear someone walk into the room, you would probably stop making any bodily noises, in extreme cases possibly even "holding it" until the other person leaves.

This woman has no such qualms, much to the dismay of my coworker and me, and probably most of the other women who work here. I have known for a long time, through experiences that haunt me, that this woman is not just smelly, but uncleanly in her womanly parts as well, to the extent that the whole left side of the restroom (which contains three of the five stalls total) she usually uses is now by unspoken understanding her side, and hers alone. Suffice it to say that before said understanding I made the grave error of walking into one of those three stalls just after she had used it one day. The profuse pubic hair, runny fecal matter in, on and outside of the toilet (how the fuck do you get shit outside of the damned toilet?!?), many and large drops of dark urine swirling with something partially solid on the seat and the floor and an unknown crumbly substance of a greyish color smeared on the seat had me reeling and stumbling as I hurriedly backed out and fled the restroom, bladder unsatisfied.

I am not the only unfortunate woman to have witnessed this total and complete lack of not only basic personal hygiene but respect for the other women who have to use that restroom as well. My coworker has regaled me on several occasions as to the condition this woman leaves those stalls in, and I'm sure others have seen it as well. It's sort of hard to miss.

However. This is not the worst of it. Not only does she bomb those stalls on a daily basis, but anyone unfortunate enough to walk into or already be in the room as she does her duty is treated to a virtual concert of sounds. Not only are there the typical sounds of urination and defecation (you learn to get over that) but she makes sounds herself. Seeming to have issues especially with defecation, she gives over to grunting, groaning, sighing, moaning (yes, she hs been heard to flat out moan) and possibly worst of all, she mutters to herself. The muttering sounds very agitated, desperate even at times — sometimes angry. And the diatribe continues no matter how many women come into the restroom, which is all the more harrowing for one reason: This is your typical public restroom. The floor is not carpeted, the walls are not covered in some soft wallpaper. It's all tile, plastic and metal, which means there is no way, even over her own sounds, that she could not hear someone come into the room. This means, of course, that there is no way that anyone walking into the room cannot hear her. But, she doesn't seem to posses that little voice in her head that most of us have that would be screaming at us to shut the fuck up when someone comes in; she just lets it all out.

I was flat-out shocked the first time I heard it, and it is very, very hard to shock me. I continued my day after that in a state of quiet horror, repulsed that such a display could come from a being considerd to be both civilized and socially aware of other civilized beings. I mean, people don't do things like that, right? Right?!?

Good god. I'm still horrified, and it was weeks ago.

And as if that were not traumatizing enough, she doesn't wash her hands after using the restroom.

NOTE: I actually stopped writing this w few weeks ago at this exact point and had decided that I wouldn't post it, because after having re-read it, I felt bad. Since then more disgusting tings have happened, and no matter how bitchy it makes me seem, I have to post this. It's like a therapy to write out all the bad stuff, ya know? I have neither exaggerated nor made up any of this; it is all pure truth, but I really really sound like a bad person in this post. I'm not. I have attempted to make friendly chit-chat with this woman in the past, realizing that most people here have the same reaction to her as my coworker and I do and so attempting to make her feel welcomed. But always there is something to make me end the conversation as quickly as possible.

About a week after I started writing this post, she walked into the room and — thankfuly, as you'll see — stopped a good five feet or so away from my desk so that she could re-read something on the page she was bringing back. As she stood there, she passed gas.

Being my father's daughter (see Mama Wren's post Sweet Cheeks), I'm not usually fazed by such things. However, coming from this woman with her lack of cleanliness, it made my skin crawl. What made it worse was that it wasn't a loud fart — it was one of those soft ones that, muffled through fabric, makes a sort of low popping sound, which can usually be mistaken for something else. In fact, in most instances when such a soft fart has occurred, the farter usually says nothing, trying to pass it off as some other sound. And most of the people in the room with them either don't hear it, don't realize what it was, or are mature enough to say nothing about it themselves. After all, they're not that invasive.

This woman, however, proved once again that she lacks that little voice of reason that most of us have. Instead of saying nothing, even though she and I are the only ones that heard it and I hadn't said anything, she loudly proclaimed, "Excuse me," thereby bringing attention to it. It's hard to ignore a soft fart when attention is brought to it, especially when the farter is someone as hideously filthy as this woman.

I honestly felt nauseous, and was glad when she didn't stay to splutter something at me but rather just handed me the page and walked away.

This Sunday, she had pretty bad allergies, as did most of the people I worked with that day. However, again the lack of that little voice of reason assserted itself. Even though there are a good twenty or thirty boxes of tissues scattered throughout the building, a dozen or so of which are rightin her department, she chose to deal with the allergy-induce dripping nose by wiping it with her hand. Right in front of me. Right after she had handed me a page with that same hand.

I don't want ot think about how many times she had wiped that dripping nose with that hand before she handed me that page.

Further, there was a big, fat, white booger on her upper lip. A wet one. The kind that's so wet you can't not feel it plastered to your skin. And she just smiled a dog-shit-scented smile and stood there.

Shoot me.

I'm not going to attempt to make friends with her anymore. I won't be mean or anything; I'll stay civil, cheerful even, in work-related conversation. But I absolutely positively want as little to do with this woman as possible. Since I started this post weeks ago I haev had several other unfortunate experiences in the restroom. I now cannot stand the thought of using the main restroom at all, even if I keep to the two stalls that I don't think she uses. My stomach turns simply walking into that room.

Even though it's farther away, I will from here on out use the restroom in the warehouse, and hope to every god ever imagined that she never discovers that one.

I can usually get past people's eccentricities and even moronic tendecies. I can even hold my breath for Halitosis and fould body odor. But I cannot endure such a deep lack of cleanliness. I honestly feel that for sanitary purposes alone, this woman should not be working this job. She's a reporter; this means that she sit and stands next to , talks to, and shakes hands with the general public.

Lack of basic intelligence and social grace aside, this woman is fucking disgusting. I don't know how she got this job, but I honestly wish there was something I could do about it. As it is, how do you approach such a subject?

I am so very glad I'm getting my Bachelor degree. I am so out of here at the very first opportunity. I've always had complaints about this place, but this is just fucking disgusting.