This takes place in an ice rink, where I regularly skate for team practices and lessons. As my practices are in the afternoons, I often go to other places before practice, which means I don’t have time to go to the bathroom before getting to the ice rink.

I usually put my skates on before I go to the bathroom because I want to make sure that I am not late onto the ice for pre-skate and on-ice warmups; we have a limited amount of ice time and we must cram as much into our allotted times as possible.

As long as I have been skating, I have always found it unwieldy and awkward to walk on the ground with skates on, as they aren’t meant for that task and because of the extra three or so inches my ice skates give me and how careful I have to be not to damage my blades. I often find it easier to go into the disability-accessible stall, as there is a handrail I can hold onto to steady myself and extra space so I don’t bang my skates on anything.

One day, as I am doing my business in the accessible stall, a woman in a wheelchair comes into the bathroom and starts waving her hand under the stall door and banging on it. My initial reaction is that she is checking to see if it is occupied, so I politely call out that I am in there.

Woman: “Hey! Who is in there? I need to use this stall!”

Me: “Sorry, it’s occupied! I’ll be out in two minutes.”

Woman: “You need to get out! This stall is for disabled people only!”

Me: *Exiting the stall* “Hi, so sorry. It’s open now.”

Woman: *Getting angrier and angrier* “What are you doing?! I said this stall is for wheelchair use only! You have no right to use this stall!”

Me: *Backing away to wash my hands* “So sorry, ma’am. There are not a lot of disabled people here, usually.”

Woman: “How could you do this to me?! This is discrimination! I’ll have you kicked out! Normal people can’t use those stalls!”

[Teammate] enters the bathroom.

Teammate: “Hey, [My Name], it’s time to go. [Coach] wants us right now.”

Woman: *Practically steaming at the ears* “I will call the cops! This is a personal attack! You g**d*** ice skaters! Always so rude and disrespectful! I will see to it that this place gets shut down!”

Teammate: “Lady, I suggest you get on with your business. Clearly, you must have to s*** really badly if you’re making this much of a fuss. Do you have someone here to change that diaper of yours?”

In the end, the woman kept screeching about injustice and how she’d have the place shut down.

[Teammate] and I just went along with our day. I was a bit shaken up, but there was no harm done.

I work at a football stadium as an usher, mainly giving directions to customers. Most of them are okay, but we get the odd one who gets aggressive and angry, especially if they’ve been drinking.

The toilets are placed around the first floor of the stadium, about 100 meters apart, with male and female toilets alternating. I am stationed outside the female toilet when a male customer asks for directions to the male toilet. I point to the left.

Me: “Just down that way.”

Customer: “How far is it?”

Me: “About a hundred meters.”

He starts yelling.

Customer: “What?! Why is it so far? How come the male toilet is so far away when the female toilet is right here?”

Me: “Every second toilet is a men’s toilet so—”

Customer: “It’s discrimination! I’m not going all the way down there!”

There is also another men’s toilet down the stairs opposite me, but I usually don’t suggest it first because most customers seem to hate using stairs. I realise that some people have genuine reasons for not wanting to or not being able to, but I doubt that is the case here.

Me: “Well, if you head down those stairs, just one flight down—”

Customer: “I’m not using stairs!”

Me: “…”

Customer: “Well?”

Me: “The men’s toilets are located down those stairs on the landing or a hundred meters to the left.”

He kept yelling and spluttering for a minute or two before, presumably, his bladder got the better of him and he headed off to the left. I don’t know how he expected me to move the toilets closer for him with my mind.

Customer: “Is there a key for the bathroom?”

Me: “Nope, there’s no key. If it’s locked, that just means that it is occupied.”

Customer: “Well, I can’t get in. Can you unlock it?”

Me: “No… If it’s locked, it’s occupied…”

Customer: “Well… un-occupy it!”

I work in a clothing store. I arrived at work the other day and was greeted by one of my supervisors telling me, “Keep an eye on anyone who comes in; we had some weirdness earlier.” She couldn’t tell me any more than that. Of importance, though: we had a roof leak, and because of that, our public restroom was closed for safety reasons.

A little while later, I was in the back room grabbing something and greeted a coworker who was doing some work on one of the store computers. She immediately gave me one of those looks and told me the story.

Apparently, a customer had taken extreme offense to the restroom being closed. He got extremely angry and aggressive, swearing at my coworker — a tiny little thing who wouldn’t hurt a fly — and refusing to accept any explanations. He refused to hear that there was a [Popular Coffee Chain] location literally in our parking lot and a [Gas Station Chain] right next door, both of which very likely had accessible restrooms. He just blew up and eventually stormed off.

Shortly after, my coworker saw the customer looking through the shorts and shirts we had on display. She assumed he perhaps didn’t really have to “go” that badly after all. The customer then selected a few things and took them to the fitting rooms. A bit after that, he bought some things and left.

End of story, right?

Nope.

Apparently, this sterling example of humanity decided that the perfect protest of our restroom being closed was to leave us a gift in the fitting room… which was discovered by my poor coworker when she went to clear them out after the guy left. And she discovered the rest of the items he had taken into the fitting room with him in a heap on the floor, soaking wet. Yep. He had relieved himself in our fitting room. On our merchandise.

My poor coworker was rather put out by all this. I’m not sure what the manager was doing about it; if they did anything, we weren’t told.

Seriously, though, who thinks this is okay? That an acceptable form of protest is… that? I don’t understand people sometimes.

My first job while in high school was at a local theater. I have quite a few fond memories of that place, but this experience always has stuck with me.

This is a unique live theater that is called a “theater in the round”. You have to go up a flight of stairs before going into the theater and then go down into a sort of pit to view the stage in the middle with seats all around. It’s pretty dark, so there are ushers at each door with a flashlight if someone needs to exit the theater for whatever reason.

The managers are very firm about manning your door and get upset if you are absent for any amount of time. You also have big doors to get through the outside of the theater before the door to your seating area with another usher to help out latecomers.

In this instance, an older gentleman comes out of the theater with an urgent need for the bathroom. The bathrooms are right next to the openings to the doors, so while he’s doing his business, his usher is standing next to the door usher just chatting. This guy is taking quite a while, so a manager swoops in to tell off the usher for not manning their door. When it’s explained that they are waiting on a patron in the bathrooms, the manager grumbles and says they’d better not be much longer before heading off.

Fast forward a bit, and it’s almost time for intermission. I’m setting up concessions on the other side of the lobby with a clear view of the two ushers standing at the door, who are now looking worried about the patron still in the bathroom. He finally emerges.

He dashes over to the two ushers, says something, and then proceeds to sprint down the stairs and out the front doors. The two ushers are looking perplexed when a look of horror suddenly spreads over their faces. Then, they start to uncontrollably dry heave while trying to cover their mouths.

They soon follow after the patron and run outside to get fresh air. The manager has missed them running out, but she has noticed that a door still isn’t manned, so she is on her way up to rip an employee a new one. She gets about halfway up the stairs before she appears to hit an invisible wall, sways a bit, and then cries out, “DEAR LORD!” before retreating quickly back down the stairs and also outside.

At this point, the other ushers at concessions and I start to look very worried about what is clearly headed our way and what we should do…

….and then the tone rings for intermission and the doors to the theater open up.

After all the chaos is over, the theater apologizes and makes the excuse that a sewer main backed up into our upper-floor toilets. One of the newer ushers draws the short straw to clean it up (which we now know was illegal). He has to take frequent breaks and just keeps asking, “How?”

To this day, I still wonder what exactly was wrong for one man to produce something so toxic to almost clear out a whole theater.