The following story contains details that are so foul and vile that I highly recommend that you do not read any further. No really, I mean it. This is quite possibly the most revolting thing I have ever written and submitted to this column. If you are contemplating eating at any food establishment in the next few days or have no desire to yak on your keyboard, just leave the page now.
Today is the last time I will ever eat at the McDonald's at 6th & Virginia, just across from the Westin in otherwise lovely Downtown Seattle. This is the same McDonald's you could see President Bill Clinton dash into since he usually stays right across the street. Bill will not be eating at this establishment after I tell you this absolute tale of horror.
It was late at night and nothing else in the area was open. I was putting in another all nighter at work and I needed to eat something for dinner. In my laziness I went to McDonald's.
This particular establishment is undergoing remodeling, so for the last few months it has looked like even more than a rathole than usual. This contrasts wildly with the beautiful salt water aquarium they have in the (snicker) dining room. I got my food and I ate staring at the fish when sadly the call of nature hit me. I have been battling a cold since I came down with the flu and pneumonia a month earlier. I went to the bathroom, but I couldn't use it because the management installed a token machine so that only the customers that they felt fit the image of an ideal McDonald's customer could use the bathroom, which one glance around told me I was the closest thing to that very low standard.
I got a token from the manager and walked into the bathroom to face the most vile smell I have faced in a while. It smelled as if someone had barfed into a bucket and my nose as a few inches above the partially digested mass. It was a hideous smell which was so strong that it over-rode my very urgent need to visit the bathroom that very second.
I didn't want to investigate where the smell was coming from, I just wanted to get the hell out of there since I was now fighting the urge to throw up. So I turned to open the door and I felt something squishy on my feet. I looked down in horror to find that someone had shit all over the floor.
Not only had they shit everywhere -- and I do mean everywhere -- but they smeared the feces and diarrhea all over the floor with what looked like their bare ass. You could actually see the swirls on the floor, up the walls in back of me and all over the door where they wiggled their ass in the bodily secretions in some sort of weird finger-painting style.
It was far too much for my delicate constitution, so I started uncontrollably dry heaving repeatedly until I finally added to the artists masterpiece by barfing all over the floor. At the same time, the reason I came to the bathroom suddenly decided to join the mess I already created! I was feeling like I was about to collapse from the smell so I bolted out as fast as I could twist the thankfully poop free door handle.
I staggered a few steps where I almost collapsed. I tried pulling myself together as well as I could, but I was really wiped out. At the same time another man came up to the bathroom to use it. I told him you do not want to go in there, but he really had to go as well. He stepped in as I was trying to explain the mess and came out dry heaving with the same intensity as I had a few seconds earlier. I managed to croak out, 'I told you..." before I started to walk to the counter and report that the bathroom was not in operational condition.
Along the way an onlooker piped up that he had already told the Manager it was messed up so he was surprised they had not closed it yet. After hearing this, I got very mad. I mean I was furious! The same son of a bitch that gave me a token knew the bathroom was trashed and he said nothing! Now I had human waste all over my shoes and possibly exposed to hepatitis or far worse! I walked up to the counter and really let him have it.
"The Men's bathroom has human shit all over the floor and you just gave me a token to use it when you knew it was fucked up and I just walked in it!" He quickly moved away from me and made some excuse and dashed into the cooking area to get an employee or two to clean up the mess.
He also made it a point to completely ignore me after that. He also ignored the few customers at the front counter and hung in the back instead of offering to help me clean up or give me a token to the Women's room. Something! I did not want to keep tracking human feces around the restaurant because it is a huge heath hazard. This really pissed me off. Especially when I asked him to come up to the counter. So I decided to take matters in my own hands.
I removed my shoes and started wiping them off on the stainless steel counters. I wiped them on every register, on the front of the counter, on the counter display, on anything in the area. After feeling I did a good job wiping the place down, I proceeded to remove the rest of the shit caked into the treads of my shoes by banging them on the counter the same way a judge might do in a movie when they lose control of a courtroom. This got their attention, but just to make sure, I bellowed out in my loudest possible voice,"EXCUSE ME! I WOULD LIKE YOUR ATTENTION BACK THERE! I KNOW YOU ARE BUSY IGNORING ME, BUT I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT I JUST WIPED HUMAN FECES ALL OVER YOUR COUNTER, YOUR REGISTERS, EVERYTHING!
This got their attention!
They came up to the counter rather quickly and asked, "where did you wipe it?"
I just smiled, bent down and put my shoes back on, stood up smiling and looked them in the eye and said, "beats me, I guess you'll have to clean it all to find out." I turned, walked out the door and never looked back.
After I stormed out of the McDonald's, I remembered I had another problem to deal with of a rather urgent matter. It seems that the expression, "worthless as a liquid fart" was coming to mind because while I was dry heaving my guts I sort of lost bodily control and now I had some sort of mess in my pants and absolutely no bathroom nearby to deal with the sticky situation. I couldn't just go back to McDonald's and pick up a few napkins or something because I was pretty sure that I was not really welcome right then and there. A quick grab of my butt suggested that whatever damage happened back there was safely contained in my shorts so I moved on to my next stop so that I could buy some new underwear.
Lucky for me the place I usually buy was open, so I quickly walked two blocks to the store and into the Mens Department that had conveniently reorganized everything so I had to spend some time poking around looking for the right brand. Not only that, but the damn company changed all of their packaging and styles, so I was busy hunting for the right pair without bending over and showing off any wet spots like some monkey or something.
Naturally the clerk was acting like he had something wedged up his ass so he was completely unhelpful. He was treating me like, well, like I just shit my pants and I for one could understand why. I didn't smell anything, but like the expression goes, who really thinks their shit stinks? The clerk in the underwear department for one...
So finally I got what I needed and naturally the one guy ahead of me in line wants to open up a credit card account with the department store! Like he needs to finance 3 pairs of Jockey at 18% interest! So I stand there getting less and less patient with a newspaper covering and packages of underwear covering my ass as I wait for the clerk and the customer to quit flirting.
Maybe the clerk finally grasped the fact that if I purchased something I would go away or maybe it was the overpowering smell of the shit on my shoes, or maybe the smell coming from my pants, but finally he helped me, did not offer me a charge account and sent me on my less than merry way.
I walked back to my office, walked down to the company shower and cleaned myself up. The pants were fine so I swapped out the soiled undies, threw on a fresh set of Calvins and finished my all nighter.
