I used to work in a bar...
and being the lowest of the low, have the dubious honour of often being sent in to clean the toilets after people had puked and missed, pissed and missed, or worse.
One night the Ladies toilets got blocked. Two of the girls went in and refused to touch it. The manager, desperate to keep the toilets open, found the two youngest members of staff (me and one of the Glass Collectors) and sent us in.
I'd seen the Men's toilets in a fair few states, Bank Holidays tend to bring the worst out in people and leave you with eyes looking like you've just had CS Gas sprayed in them, but this was a totally new level.
There was about quarter of an inch of water on the floor coming from the overflowing toilet, girls had CONTINUED to use it, obviously long after it had been blocked up. There were Tampons and the like thrown against the wall and various messages written on the mirrors in Lipstick (what can I say, we bred them classy in Whitley Bay).
We eventually managed to clean the place up, but the toilet was still blocked. The usual culprit (a broken glass) wasn't there, letting us conclude the blockage was futher along the pipe somewhere. So we went out to the back yard and lifted the Manhole cover.
The stench was the worst thing you can imagine, a whole days worth of drunk geordie effulent building up rapidly.
Our manager, being a tightarse, didn't want to call Dynorod out, as it would cost a fortune (this being a Bank Holiday and all). So had the bright idea of trying to blow the blockage clear using CO2 from one of the Gas Bottles.
We managed to jerry-rig a hose onto a nozzle and thrust it into the brown soup. He turned it on and a fierce bubbling came up from the cocktail of crap, starting to spray it around and out of the manhole, giving a few people brown trouser legs. He then decided we needed to hold it in place, to stop the end moving round. CO2 is cold stuff, so several people ended up getting freezer burns to their hands, as well as shitty trouserlegs.
Apart from stirring up the contents of the drain, exposing smells and sights no person should ever see, the gas did nothing. Our manager then suggested shoveling out some of the drain so we could rod it ourselves. Strangely no-one would do this, so he gave in and got the professionals out. It cost 300 quid and he tried to claim he couldn't buy us all a drink at the end of a 16 hour day because of this. Could still afford several for himself though...
God I hated that place. Thanks for bringing up a long-recessed memory, bastards.
(James_Doc, Fri 2 Sep 2005, 15:06, Reply)