Procrastinet

Wow! The Pong! Tales of a Stinky Janitor

filed under: Stuff you never, ever needed to know

The bathroom janitor in my building at work is stinky.

I first noticed it about a year ago, when my pit stop happened to coincide with his fill-the-papers-and-wipe-up rounds. From fifteen feet across the room his b.o. was shocking.

He must shower periodically, because the level of stinky varies. I've run into him at mild, moderate and abusive levels of smell at various times. There are times he's merely unpleasant.

He also seems angry much of the time. Whether this is because he's a bathroom janitor, or because he stinks so damn bad, or because he's a bathroom janitor who stinks so damn bad, or what, I have no idea. All I know is that it's very disturbing when you're having a nice reading break in the stall (yeah, I bring a book, whaddya gonna make of it?!) to have a reeking, fetid dude slamming doors open and shut and pounding on toilet paper dispensers in barely repressed fury.

Today, he has really outdone himself. I went to the restroom just now. I passed a young, classy looking attorney about 10 feet from the bathroom, who was trailing a nasty pong. "Hm," I thought, "he doesn't look like the kind of guy who'd let himself get stinky." Then I opened the door to the bathroom, and realized the smell wasn't his - it was just stalking him down the hall.

The reek in there was so bad it was tactile, like rotten sweat-pudding. You know the bit in The Rock, where Nicholas Cage gets all covered in nerve gas and jams an eight-inch syringe of atropine straight into his heart? I'd have done that, if I could have.

It smelled so bad it made my neck twitch and my eyes water. It smelled so bad the image of a moist armpit, huge and room-filling, beat its way into my brain and wouldn't go away.

Worst of all: the dude wasn't even in there. Judging by the paper towels already collecting on the floor below the wastebasket, he hadn't been there for quite some while. But his pong lived on, curling and roiling like some great beast, attacking innocent passers-by and chasing them down the hall.

This guy should join the circus. He's got a rare talent, which is going totally to waste. He's like a superhero with a terrible superpower. "Beware, evildoers, for THE STENCH is upon you!" I bet he doesn't even have to walk places. He can just float on a big slimy cloud of stank.

Posted by rjt at April 7, 2005 04:16 PM