Pissy pedestal mats and stained toilet brushes
I worked for about a year in a department store in London - the one all the really middle-class people love. When you applied for the job you didn't apply to a particular department, you were allocated to one in your acceptance letter. I was kind of hoping for haberdashery because it is a brilliant word but was landed with bathroom furnishings instead. Bathroom furnishings were anything from towels to toilet seats.

One of the things that makes the chain so very popular is its returns policy. If you bought it from them originally, you can bring it back with or without a receipt, regardless of when the original transaction took place, and you will get an exchange or a refund. There were a lot of returns and, as a section manager, it was my job to inspect them. I spent my days looking over toilet seats which hadn't been cleaned since they day they were installed, toilet brushes with shit still clinging to the bristles and bathroom bins with unidentifiable crud nestling at the bottom. People really did seem to be absolutely shameless about the dirt they were trailing in with them. I would try to avoid touching anything by asking them to show me the fault (while trying to hold my breath) and generally it worked.

One day, however, a really unkempt older lady with two walking sticks came in clutching a carrier bag and demanding to speak to a manager. She had purchased a pedestal mat, one of those semi-circular bits of carpet that fits round the bottom of the loo or the basin, and she said it had fallen apart in a very short space of time. I asked her to see it and she thrust the carrier bag into my hand. I gingerly slid the contents out and it made a moist splat as it hit the counter. Immediately we were engulfed in a miasma of months-old stale urine which had been kept potent by generous daily top ups. I squeaked out something about a refund but she said, "You haven't seen the fault. you'll have to turn it over." I tried to say it was fine but she wanted to make her point. I couldn't ask her to do it for me as she needed both hands to balance on her sticks. In the end, I had to pick it up and turn it over. It was sopping wet and covered in black mould underneath.

We looked it up in the stock catalogues and found she had had it for 5 years. I don't think it had ever been washed since the day she bought it. Even thinking about it now makes me want to obsessively wash my hands.
(Innogen, Sat 12 May 2012, 17:48, 3 replies)

So that's what "bathroom furnishings" means.
And to think, I was just about to install a three piece suite around the sink.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sat 12 May 2012, 19:53, closed)

thats seriously grim

(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Mon 14 May 2012, 11:19, closed)

Did it not occur to you
to invest in a pair of rubber gloves?
(bat_fudgie, Tue 15 May 2012, 21:18, closed)