Slum Enterprise - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

15 ozs turned to zero. Something began to move in Lee's lower gut. It rumbled and moved from side to side. Lee knew the signs. He left his desk and walked down to the porcelain throne room to conduct personal business on company time.

Lee transitioned into a flow state. He believed this was one of the true flow state activities (figuratively and literally). He entered the bathroom with haste.

The bathroom was remodeled, a white tiled room with 3 stalls and 2 urinals which you had to walk past the sinks to get too. Upon entering, Lee stopped in his tracks. It smelled different. A strong wave of methane and fecal particles assaulted his nose. “Oh no, it usually doesn't smell this strong,” he thought. Lee knelt down and saw all 3 stalls had pairs of legs. 

Lee stood frozen in thought. Then, a loud gushing sound of water being flushed and the movement and clang of a belt buckle being refastened. A few short coughs came from the middle and stall and the door swung open. A flustered red face gentleman appeared, Lee and the man made quick awkward eye contact. Lee could tell that the man knew what he was thinking, “I know exactly what you were doing in there…you passed number 2.” It was too much for the man and he ran out of the bathroom forgetting to wash his hands.

Lee reluctantly walked into the middle stall and shut the door and latched it behind him. He dropped his pants and sat on the pre-warmed plastic toilet seat. He was completely surrounded. All 3 shitters went on a battle of the mind, body, and secretly, the soul. Lee calls himself and the group the porcelain 3 musketeers. 

As he is hanging above the water, Lee must tuck and hold his genitalia underneath the inside rim of the toilet seat. This gives him the creeps and it feels wrong and begins to think about that one Frank Zappa song. The dam was released of pressure. The gates allowed the flood to reach the valley below. The worst part was, that bathroom was completely silent besides the sounds of gastrointestinal movements. They should have installed speakers that play elevator music to drown out the sounds, Lee thought. The sounds would echo and bounce off the tile walls amplifying them. He began to cringe in embarrassment as the load was being delivered.

Lee didn't know why he had to feel so shameful about a common human function. He only did this because biology told him so. To counteract the anxiety, Lee thinks about how the other shitters are just as shy and awkward as he is.

For 15 seconds the ego is forgotten as the load drops into the water. Pure bliss, then right back into self consciousness. Lee looked into the bowl to assess the damage. He felt like it was pretty contained, solid, firm, a large snake covering most of the bowl. He commenced on cleaning duty. 

After years of whipping his own ass, Lee knew that the other shitters in the stalls would know how contained or sloppy the load was. He started to unroll the toilet paper from the stainless steel enclosure. He wiped light and fast to avoid creating anal fissures because the company stocked the cheapest single ply they could buy. In order to wipe effectively with the single ply, he basically had to use half a roll per just to get enough structural surface area. 

Lee confirmed cleanliness by checking the last wipe for excess brown smears. He was satisfied and finished up. Every toilet had an automatic sensor. Lee scooted too far up on the seat which the sensors saw as the time to flush. The toilet released the valve and a stream of high pressure jets turned the mixture of fecal matter and paper in the bowl. Lee wasn't fast enough so bits and pieces of dirty grey water splashed on his ass checks. 

“God damn it.” Lee said.

 The shitters behind the stall walls let out a snicker. Now, in a half crouch position with his pants at his feet, Lee loads up another wade full of toilet paper to clean up. Then, he had a moment of mental strength. His bashfulness and anxiety dissipated and he realized that “everybody poops.” He once heard a song about this in childhood and began to hum the tune. This spark ignited something in him. Lee wasn't afraid to make large movements and noises. He embraced the fact that pooping was just a normal thing. He felt liberated from his previous emotional state. He jumped up, ass all clean, the toilet flushed again. As the bowl flushed he bent down to pull his pants up, he started to shake his ass to the tune he was humming. Belt rebuckled, he un-slides the stall latch and bolts out. The methane smell was prolific, his overpowering the others. Lee had made the most manly statement of all. 

Lee washed his hands and headed back to his desk. “Good work Lee.” he said to himself. Now 2lbs lighter he was ready for the work day. Lee arrived and sat back down, he saw Chester Scott punching in data in the cubicle behind him. 

Scott took a break and gazed over into Lee's space. “Say bucko, did you ever get any updates on the new safety policy?” Lee turned around and saw that he had a more serious look.

“Which one? There are so many in the implementation queue now.” Lee said.

“The long sleeve policy, ya know, they're trying to tell us what to wear…Just so you know kiddo, I will not be wearing extra clothing, the lab only deals with non hazardous OSHA approved fluids, if any gets on my arms I just wipe it off. Simple as that.” Scott was very intense and focused on this. 

Usually, Chester Scott was the easy going one on Lee’s team. He never complained about anything and always was receptive when someone told him what to do. Recently with constant additions of safety "improvements" he began to get more flustered and defiant on the changes. As the most senior tech in the lab, Lee counted on him for the most complex work, he also produced the most data and had the most expertise when designing new testing fixtures. 

Scott had Veteran status, his opinion was one of the few that the Execs actually listened to. Without him, lab operations would surely fail. 

Scott continued. “The lab gets hot as hell, trust me, all the guys on the team think this is pointless. If it goes through, just expect to find the whole team dead of heat stroke in the summer months…just think of paper work. Just think of the work you'll have to do to staff the entire lab again. I say, I SAY, THIS IS MORNIC.” Scott began to yell. “I SAY the lab techs need to band together and fight these oppression laws. They wouldn't stand a chance.”

Other employees and lab techs peeked their heads out again to see the commotion. 

Scott’s eyes began to turn red and Lee was sensing a deep feeling of dread. If Scott kept up with the outburst another visit from the HR SWAT was bound to happen. “What had made Scott act up in a way like an anarchist rebellion leader?” Lee thought. Chester's outburst continued to travel through the halls. 

“Now listen here, I don't give a damn what the Exec’s think, I dont care whats ‘best for the company’. I want what's best for me and my fellow man who gets beat down here in the lab. You think all of us are low level fuck ups.” Scott was now the speaker to the crowd, all who would pay attention and peering from their shield of cubes. “We bust our ass all day and get treated like dirt from engineers and the ‘leadership team’.” Scott brought his arms up over his head and signaled quotation marks with bunny ear shaped fingers. He began to travel away from his desk out to the main hall.

“Without us, the data you monitor and use to control would cease to exist. What now then? How would you report back to the shareholders, how could you convenience them of your value.” At this point, Scott was yelling to the ceiling where Murphy and Lee were dragged up not too long ago.

“They’ll fire all of you and purge the fucking place. I speak for the trees, it's all of us,” He looks in all directions catching eyes and points. “If all of us band and join together, dare I say unionize, and combine our intellectual strength we could stop the rain of shit.” 

Lee runs over and grabs Scott tightly around the shoulders. Scott resists his pulls, all Lee wants to do is put him back in his desk. Surely the HR SWAT were gearing up above.

“Scott, please shut up, what are you doing?" Lee said.

“Get off of me, I know exactly what I'm doing.”

Scott was spewing a grey fog of stress hormones and purposely went closer to the black vented box on the green pillar. Lee gave up and went back to his desk to assume the bystander protocol position.

The hormone smog hit the sensor, the sound of shriek police alarms went off. The office lights turned red and the trap doors all sprung, locking it down. Chester stood right under the main trap door waiting for the HR SWAT to drop down. 

 In an instant, the SWAT surrounded Scott. He didn't move. He looked deep past their gas mask goggled eye sockets and said. “Will you join me, just think of the possibilities with all of you on our side. I can tell you guys are family men. I know you're a momma's boy.”

The tactical men did not respond. They read off the charges in that robo cop voice and cuffed him. The climbing belt was installed and Scott was hoisted back up to the secret floor. The trap door slid back and sealed shut, the lights returned to normal and the barred windows and doors were cranked up with automatic motors with steel cable back up into the stationary location in the ceiling.

All of Lee’s cubicle neighbors looked at him. Stan Hentz was frantically writing down what had happened in a journal for documentation purposes. Lee noticed that his cube was becoming a dumping ground for boxes and stacks of paper. It looked like a hoarding house. 

Murphy was shaking, likely from the PTSD he suffered from his HR conditioning stint. 

Joe Fischer watched from behind his sliding glass door. Lee was sure that this would now go on his yearly review writeup as “No direct conflict resolution skills, failure in execution resulted in HR SWAT interference.” 

Lee’s other direct reports scattered in the cubical zone saw that their heads were buried on their desks. Lee saw that during Scott's rant, the techs were inspired for only a brief moment. The controlling power put everything to bed and had crushed their hopes and dreams for change. Lee looked at all of them and said, “Back to work, don't worry about Scott, he can handle the recondition program.”

Lee did a little shake of his body to re-focus himself and went back to emails. Again, he looked over at his calendar. The company was in a few weeks, he was hoping it magically disappeared.