You want an anecdote? I have an anecdote.
I once worked for a large yellow and green logo'd supermarket chain whose name rhymes with Norrisons.
I was a checkout operator, so really nothing to do with cleaning or upkeep of the premises. However one fine day, both cleaners were sick. And the checkout manager mentioned to me as I neared the end of my 8 hour punishment that there was 'a problem' with customer's disabled toilets, and would I kindly 'take a look?'. Keen to please management in my naive fresh-out-of-university youth, I replied 'no problem.'
'Great!' said she. And promptly handed me a knife. 'You'll need this'.
A confused me made my way to the toilets, heaving the large door of the disabled throne room to be met with a smell that's best left undescribed. But the hell that followed was far worse.
Upon peeking over the porcelain rim, I was greeted by what I truly believe to this day to be a world record holder in terms of both girth and length. The knife's use very quickly became apparent to me.
When I hear personal stories of WW1 shell-shock, accounts of atrocities committed in Vietnam, or read diary extracts from long-term torture victims, I now feel I have a shared sense of violation with the writers. Only my violation comes in the form of having to literally chop up a 2 turd with a kitchen knife while masquerading as a checkout boy. I still remember the feeling and texture of sawing it into pieces, and since have not been able to look a Christmas yule log in the flesh, let alone slice it up.
Oh, the humanity!
i just held mine in until i got home
. To this day I can’t fathom how something so big came out of a human without the cubical sounding like a maternity ward.