A Revenge Smear Campaign

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I used to close at my bookstore every Saturday. It was mostly the same team each week, and we also saw a lot of the same customers. One Saturday, someone said over our radios that there was a horrible mess in the men’s room, and it needed to be cleaned. We had a cleaning crew, but they only came in the mornings and this couldn’t wait.

Turns out someone had smeared feces all over the walls. Our manager at the time couldn’t subject anyone else to this, so he got some gloves and cleaning supplies and took care of it himself.

Then, a couple of weeks later, it happened again. Once again, [Manager] cleaned it up.

Then, it happened again the next week. It was always on a Saturday night and always feces on the walls of the men’s room. This was obviously something more than someone just mentally unwell.

So, [Manager] repositioned one of our cameras so we could see anyone that walked down the hallway of the restrooms. And he started checking the restrooms at regular intervals to pinpoint when it happened. Finally, after a couple more incidents, he saw the same person, and on the last night, he saw that this person was the only one to go into the men’s room in the time frame when the mess was made.

[Manager] confronted the man (who was sitting with his wife in our cafe) and told him that he knew what he was doing and that he was banned. The wife was confused about the whole thing, so my manager had to tell her the truth. To say she was shocked was an understatement. But the truth came out from the man, too.

His reasoning for doing this?

The week or so before the first incident, the man parked his car in our fire lane while he and his wife went across the street for dinner. My manager saw this and waited for them to come back to tell them not to do that again. It wasn’t even a heated exchange, just a simple request.

Smearing feces on the walls week after week was this man’s revenge in some way.