Shart Support

At this time in my life I was working Technical Support over the phone for H&R Block. I hadn’t yet gotten to the point with my Crohn’s disease to be full-on pooping my pants. However, I was perpetually on the brink of shatting myself on a fairly regular basis.

To protect my underpants I usually wore one of my wife’s feminine pads. But on this day I had forgotten to wear one. I was sitting at my semi-cubicle and like usual I had to pass some gas.

I don’t ever hold in my flatulence. I have enough intestinal discomfort naturally, I don’t need to add to it by trying to be polite. So I farted, as per usual.

And I shat my pants; as happens on occasion.  It would normally be fine. I just would go clean up in the bathroom and put in a fresh pad.  On occasion some mess gets outside the pad. In those cases, I would either just get another pair of clothes from my car, or just try to clean up as much as possible and then just stuff a bunch of paper towels in my pants. You know, like most people do.

But this time there was a lot of intestinal mucus mixed in. By the way, a Crohn’s shart is mostly intestinal mucus that smells like poop. This time there was enough that it went all the way through my underwear, pants, and into the call center’s padded chair they provided me.

So I called my supervisor over to let him know what happened and I ask what we should do. I figured they would clean the chair or something but he just wheeled it outside and tossed it in the dumpster.

That’s the whole story. I shat my pants, it leaked all the way into my chair, and they threw it away.

Epilogue

Later on, in that same company I was promoted into workforce management. I was charged with giving an introduction to the new hire classes about our department. For an icebreaker I would ask for everybody’s most embarrassing (work appropriate) story. I frequently set the bar high by telling this one.  

It seemed like a good choice, since I had never met any of these people before and I was supposed to make a good impression for the company. But let me tell you, on occasion one of these brand new employees would tell something even more embarrassing than I to this group of people they just met, and their new manager. And they were my heroes.