I'm not at all proud of it, but I worked for almost four years at Lamonts, a lower-rung clothing store that has since gone out of business. My turf was their men's department-- folding sweaters, telling grandparents what their kids would like in the way of button-down shirts ("They won't like it," I wanted to tell the old lady, "it's velour, for God's sake!"), putting security tags on 1.2 million pairs of Levi 501 jeans-- and it was terrible. I became suicidal, truth be told, while working there. I'm smarter than this, I'd rant to myself (I was saving up money to go to grad school). I'm better than this. Obviously, I wasn't. That all became very apparent one day when I found poop in the fitting room.

It was disgusting. I mean, really, was it necessary for someone to poop in the men's fitting room? How bad could it have been for whoever pooped back there to poop back there? The pooper must have asked me, "Do you mind if I use your fitting room?" I must have said, "No problem," and watched him walk back there, perhaps with a pair of Bugle Boy jeans. Had I known the man was going to poop back there I would have said, "No." "No," I would have said, "please don't poop in my fitting room. I have enough on my mind. My nerves are shot. My self-esteem is at an all time low. I'm so lonely I'm thinking about asking out the autistic girl at the cosmetic counter who wears head gear. I have no friends. I'm living at my mom's house. I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Please don't poop in my fitting room. I might snap." But the man did it. He pooped and he made me clean it up. It was revolting. I nearly barfed, and wouldn't that have been something, cleaning up poop and barf in the same fitting room. There's not much that could have made that much worse, except maybe some syringes laying around or some broken condoms (another fitting room story, and really, you don't want to know).

Let me be clear about this: the store was not without proper pooping facilities. There was a bathroom in the store. I used it many times. It had a stall with a door and everything. It was clean, too, and perfect for pooping. It wasn't used all that often (perhaps because people pooped in fitting rooms instead?), which meant privacy so if one made bad poop noises or poop smells no one else would be subjected to it. The guy who pooped in the men's department fitting room didn't care about all that I guess, he just needed to poop (and violently, I might add). Another bonus to the bathroom was that it was behind the lingerie department, so someone walking over to go poop could check out the slinky lingerie and the girl behind the counter (Miranda - a total babe). Of course, that might lead to some problems too, like getting an erection before taking a dump and doing all sorts of ungodly things in the bathroom. But, like I said, the bathroom did offer a good amount of privacy.

Did the mystery pooper eat something in the food court that made things an emergency (and emergent)? That must of been what did it. But why would anyone eat anything out there? Do you see the people handling food at these places? Take the guy at the corn dog place: his nose always bled because he picked it so much. And don't get me started about the high-caliber employees at the Orange Julius (it must say on their application, "Are you missing a chromosome?"). So, perhaps, the guy who pooped in the fitting room ate, say, a pretzel, became violently ill, ran into Lamonts and shat in my fitting room. Good theory, though, while cleaning, I didn't see any rock salt in the stool.

The world may never know.