I was a racetrack groom
when I was 19. Got the job even though I knew nothing about horses, really- but all you really need to know is that they shit a lot, and you get to clean it up and take care of their racing harnesses. That, and that the guys who train the horses (and are usually your boss) are generally arrogant little fuckheads. Mine was no exception.

So one day my boss tells me to get one of my horses ready for training. This means that the horse will be doing basically a dry run for the race, rather than just a jog. No problem, I get her ready and he takes her out for her training.

When a horse has just done a training run, it's standard to give them a bran mash instead of just the usual grain feed. This means that you add a load of bran to it and add warm water until you get something resembling oatmeal. So I make this for my horse, only I add too much water so that it comes out soupy. The boss comments on this, and I ask how it could possibly do any harm. He snorts, makes a comment to the effect that I was a stupid college kid and walks off. I shrug and go back to what I was doing.

Next morning he wants to take that horse out for her jog, so I hook her up to the jog cart and send them off while I go take care of another horse. All is nice and quiet as I work...

What I didn't know, and obviously neither did he, was that the extra water in the bran mash acts like a laxative on the horse. I might as well have fed her a pound of Ex-Lax. Which is a vital piece of information when you're out exercising a horse by sitting in a cart with your feet on either side of the horse's arse and her tail directly in front of your face.

When the peaceful morning was shattered by my boss's voice screaming my name, when I came out and saw him with reeking green horse shit plastered all over his face, and when I had to hold onto a post to keep from falling over with uncontrollable laughter, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was over. And sure enough, about two days later I was unemployed.

But goddam, it was worth it. More than twenty years later it still brings a warm glow to my evil heart.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Wed 27 Jul 2005, 8:32, Reply)