Only three more shifts to go...

By now you've probably seen these slightly vomitous offerings: Discovery Channel and XKCD. All I can say is I'm very sorry, my brain is obviously turning on me due to prolonged inactivity.

I hate the popcorn,
I hate the Fanta Freeze,
I hate the nachos,
I hate the nacho cheese,
I hate the hotdogs, shrivelled on the grill for hours.
Boom de yada etc.

I hate the weekends,
I hate the lengthy queues,
I hate the mess made,
I hate mopping the loos,
I hate the children's noise and stupidity.

I hate the public,
I hate being polite,
I hate the rudeness,
The customer's not always right,
I hate the nutjobs with all their mad complaints.

I hate the wages,
I hate the sick kits,
I hate the Big Boss,
I hate cleaning up shit,
I hate the whole goddamn fucking company.

Why I Don't Do Exercise Or "Look at the state of that!"

I don't like the summer much. The sun serves only to make me pink through sun burn or eczema and, being the self-absorbed person that I am, the sight of pretty young things gallavanting about in next to nothing leaves me beset with a pathetic self-loathing. The other day at work a tanned and long-legged, scantily clad goddess walked into the foyer, causing an awed silence to fall across every male present. I bitterly muttered something to Female Colleague about forgetting to put any clothes on that morning, or something equally hackneyed, whilst inside wishing desperately that I had slim, toned thighs of polished mahogany rather than hideous limbs with the appearance of a poorly-set blancmange. It's at times like these that I start to have dangerous thoughts. Thoughts about exercise. Thoughts that need quashing immediately. I don't do exercise and it's for very good reasons.

GPs have often suggested to me that a bit of "gentle exercise" will help with depression. I've always dismissed it as a completely ludicrous idea. To me, there's no such thing as "gentle exercise". Being fat and rubbish at sport taught me that physical exercise is nothing but brutal torment. Games at school was ritual humiliation for me and as soon as I had the werewithall I bunked off, hiding smoking in the junior school changing rooms, like every other sensible person.

However, I did entertain the idea while at university that perhaps not all physical exercise had to be quite as traumatic as what I'd experienced at school. Surely in the Real World there weren't games teachers who hit you on the arse with a hockey stick if you didn't run fast enough or people who howled, "fucking fat idiot" when you failed to do something as trivial as catching a rounders ball?

I went through a phase in my second year where I was very fond of having the sort of fun that makes you dance a lot and eat nothing. I stopped this due to the realisation that it may not actually be all that good for my, precarious at best, mental state. Having laid off the appetite suppressants, I realised I was putting weight on and decided to do something about it. I considered my options and immediately ruled out jogging. If I was going to embarrass myself I was at least going to do it somewhere where everyone else was in the same boat as me. I still have no idea why people would choose to huff and puff around in hideous sports wear in broad daylight where it's perfectly possible that you'll bump into an ex or an enemy looking perfectly dressed and cool as a cucumber. You may as well park an exercise bike in the middle of the supermarket as far as I'm concerned.

So, having never been into public humiliation, jogging was out. I didn't even give a minute's thought to the gym, convinced that if there were the types in the Real World to hit bums with hockey sticks and yell insults, it was there that they would lurk. That left me with one viable option: swimming. So I rallied some friends to come with me for my first foray into the world of exercise since school. I was even looking forward to it a bit. There wouldn't be teachers, I wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to. Surely it couldn't be that bad?

When optimistically planning my swimming trip there were several factors that I failed to take into account. The first of which conspired to humiliate me before I'd even left the changing rooms. Without the aid of glasses or contact lenses I'm really quite blind and unfortunately swimming pretty much precludes both. So, having wrestled my way into my swimming costume, I groped my way towards the lockers where I saw a girl whom I took to be my friend. It was only after I'd rushed up to her, grabbed her arm and asked, "Can we go in together?" that I realised she was in fact a complete stranger. A stranger who now thinks I'm some form of sex pest who's escaped her carer. Embarrassment number one.

The second factor was that the fitness pool is at the opposite side of the building from the changing rooms, and to get to it involves walking past the baby pool and the leisure pool. This in itself isn't that bad, I'm not quite self-absorbed enough to believe that everyone in the entire leisure centre will simultaneously stop what they're doing and stare at me, like in that horrible Boots suncream ad. And even if they did, if you go out looking like me you know that a swimming costume is hardly the worst thing you could be wearing for a walk of shame. Try having to ask a cab driver where you are at seven in the morning while wearing a corset, ripped stockings, one false eyelash and carrying a pair of six inch heels in your hand. No, it was only when combined with factor number three that this became a problem.

The third thing I'd failed to take into consideration was that it would be horribly busy on a Sunday morning. The so-called leisure pool was teeming with the type of adolescents usually found skulking around shopping centres in baseball caps. They'd managed to turn the entire pool into a warzone and were engaged in divebombing and spitting pool water at each other. By now I'd found my friends and was walking arm in arm with a girl who was well endowed, to put it mildly. Unfortunately this got the attention of the ASBO kids and they stopped fighting, coming together in a momentary truce to shout, "Look at the tits on that!" Friend and I sped up, ignoring them, hoping that was it but before the echo of the last comment had finished bouncing off the water, came another shout, "But look at the state of her friend!" Keeping my eyes fixed firmly forward I carried on to the fitness pool with the jeer ringing in my ears. Embarrassment number two.

By the time I got into the water, I didn't care that my friends hadn't really meant it when they'd said they were really unfit and had gone straight into the middle lane, leaving me in the remedial lane. After the previous incidents, I was swimming with a grim determination and was almost considering moving up a lane and attempting to swim faster through sheer bloody-mindedness when I was barged into by a man over taking me. He managed to kick me in the side, causing my head to go under and me to flounder about spluttering in an utterly undignified manner. When I got to the side he apologised to me and I realised that, third and final embarrassment, he only had one arm. I had been over taken by someone with one arm.

It was then that I decided that nothing really changes and I vowed never to do any form of sport or training ever again, blancmange thighs be damned.

This paint by numbers life is fucking with my head

Big Boss has taken to telling me to "Smile!" every time he sees me at work, whilst gesticulating and pulling a face in the manner of a childless uncle attempting to get a toddler to look happy in a birthday photo. It's almost enough to make me wish he was refusing to speak to me again. But I have to admit, I may well be walking around with a bit of a face on. When it comes to [cinema], I have of late, wherefore I know exactly, lost all my mirth. To be honest, I think this job is sending me loopy.

Case in point, at [cinema] whenever someone buys a ticket they get given a voucher which gets them an amount of money off the next time they come to see a film. When we are handed these vouchers we have to void them, tear off half of the customer's ticket and staple that to them. I must fold the vouchers a certain way and staple the ticket vertically on the left side. If by some appalling oversight I manage to do this the wrong way, I have been known to unpick the staple and do it again. And if someone offers to do my stapling for me while they have custody of the company stapler I refuse in no uncertain terms to let them. After all, they might do it wrong and I just couldn't live with that. See, loopy.

Worse is the ridiculous situation I've got myself into with the straws. If someone orders a fanta I can only give them a yellow or a red straw. With coke, coke zero, and diet coke, it can be a blue or a red straw. I prefer a red for coke and a blue for diet coke, coke zero is still a bit of an unknown quantity. Sprite is the easiest as it can have a blue, green, or yellow straw. Even more ludicrously, if a customer annoys me I give them the wrong colour straw for their drink, green for coke for example, as if that would affect their mental equilibrium in the same way it does mine. Fucking nuts.

I'm not entirely surprised that this job is sending me a few jelly sweets short of a kids' combo. Through the gossip mill I've found out that a couple of people on management consider me to have an attitude problem. Fair enough, I'm not a mindless retail drone and I am a bit (read very) mouthy. Plus when it comes to Big Boss, it's all a bit attitude problem/personality, tomayto/tomahto. However, despite appearances, I don't actually enjoy being hated and this has lead to me doing some things in the name of getting on at work that are more insane than my popcorn-addled brain could conjure on its own.

Last week the dreaded call came over the radio, "Usher on the radio, someone's had a very nasty accident in t'downstairs disabled toilet. Needs someone with a good gut to clear that up immediately". And what did I do? I volunteered to deal with it. To be fair, the other Guest Assistant turned white at the mere thought of it, and I do possess a strong stomach. Plus I'm hoping to work in social care and need to get used to dealing with this sort of shit. So, yes, shit. I found myself cleaning up a sizeable amount of it armed only with a sick kit. I'll leave that to your imaginations. What never ceases to amaze me about [cinema], though, is that there is always something worse. As Nice Manager thanked me he told me about the time he opened the cinema in the morning to find that the drains had backed up and flooded the entirety of the bottom floor with liquid human waste. Head office helpfully had him wading about in it trying to stem the flow with blue roll.

The final indignity was thrust upon me at the weekend in the form of a woolly hat and some sun glasses. "Just put your Hancock stuff on", said Team Leader, "it's in the office". There sat Big Boss surrounded by the instruments of my humiliation and there was no way I could refuse. I'm loathe to admit that I've almost got used to my baseball cap but this was something else. The combination of an oversized beanie hat and sunglasses on my round head left me looking like someone whose carer had let them get dressed by themselves for the first time. Add to this that it was a very warm day and our tills are directly in front of the hotdog grill and you have an itchy, hot and definitely cruel and unusual punishment. Give me excrement but not this.

So I'm handing in my notice. I have well and truly had enough and need to leave before I find myself up to my neck in raw sewage. Literally and metaphorically.

In which our glamorous heroine goes for a quiet pint after work and ends up in the police station

It was half term last week and work kindly scheduled me seven shifts in a row, most of them lasting 10 hours. As I crawled into work for midday on Saturday, having finished at midnight the previous night, I saw Big Boss waiting for me and realised I was a couple of minutes late. Again. Big Boss has an extremely thinly veiled contempt for me at the best of times and is a real stickler for rules. As far as he's concerned, two minutes late may as well be two hours. It's all a jolly good excuse for him to throw his (not inconsiderable) weight around.

"I'm sorry I'm late, I..." "Lizzie, I don't want to hear it. You're always late and you always have a story. I'm not saying I don't believe you but you must lead a very eventful life." This was said with the sort of half-smirk, half-sneer on his face that meant I couldn't answer back as he was being 'funny' rather than rude, 'joshing' rather than having a go, so I stood there trying to keep the sort of insolent look off my face that used to get me into trouble at school. Not only do I actually lead an eventful life, but I wasn't about to be offended by such an accusation from a man who appears to spend all his time when not in work making photo manipulations of himself in various famous films to put on his Facebook page. Hurray for having no need to recourse to photoshop to make myself seem intertesting. I'll take my eventful life over yours any day, you pathetic cunt! However, such smug internal crowings were to have proved foolish by the end of the day.

When it comes to my life, 'eventful' is one way of putting it. I often say that I 'just get myself' into situations. Situations like finding myself locked out of my college and having to ask my famous-academic-ex-director-of-studies to let me in whilst paralytic to the point of incoherence. Or like finding myself by some cruel trick of fate seeing two men at the same time who turn out to be housemates. The thing about these situations is there's usually no 'just get' about it, it's all entirely my fault. And I'm now starting to wonder if what happened on Saturday night might be exactly the same.

Saturday's shift contained the usual mixture of grinding menial tasks and abject stupidity, with added hysterical, idiotic women thronging in for Sex & The City. Come the end of my shift, I'd planned to go straight home and get some well-earned sleep however some how, as is the way of things with me, I ended up going for a 'quick pint' after work with colleagues that turned into me staggering out of WT's Snooker Club at 3.30 am, pretty fucking drunk. This, perhaps, was error number one.

Error number two occurred when I decided to go with a work friend to get some food from the kebab shop next door. On entering the shop I noticed two men sitting at a table in the corner. They were drunk and rowdy and as I was comitting the crimes of being female and fat, I was an ideal target for their drunken arseholishness. This isn't an unusual situation for me. If I had a penny for every time some man decided to inform me that I was fat I could buy another packet of biscuits. Usually I ignore it but drink had been taken and I was generally at the end of my tether due to work. So I gave the guy who insulted me (Skinny Rat Face) a mouthful in return. Words were exchanged and I could tell that Skinny Rat Face was a bit taken aback that I was standing up for myself. He got up from the table and squared up to me against the counter, "You're a gobby bitch. You wanna shut up, you fat cow. You wanna be careful, I've got people waiting outside." I informed him that if he was threatening me I would call the police. I might have given him a few choice words as to what I thought of men that threatened women, too.

Skinny Rat Face sat back down at this point but continued to shout abuse. Enter Stocky Skin 'Ed, drawn to the aggro like a really thick, football-shirt-wearing moth to a flame. Stocky Skin 'Ed assessed the situation, realised it was only a girl that his mate was engaged with and decided to attempt to change the subject by opining to Skinny Rat Face, and the kebab shop at large, that he was going to "Stab those fucking pakis" whilst motioning next door to WT's. Here comes error number three. Riled up from the previous confrontation I asked Stocky Skin 'Ed not to use racist language and threats. He didn't exactly see my point of view and yelled at me before going back to threatening to "stab up the pakis". At this point I phoned the police to report racist and threatening behaviour.

The owner of the shop got the men out but they stood outside shouting yet more extremely original and funny abuse about my weight into the shop and threatening to 'have us' (me and my colleague) when we left. Eventually my work friend snapped ad shouted something back at them in my defence. This caused four of them (Skinny Rat Face and his Lackeys) to pile back into the shop, corner him, hit him in the face and hold him by the neck up against the wall. I called the police again, causing Stocky Skin 'Ed, who must have been at least 45, to come in and attempt to intimidate me, a young girl, by squaring up to me and shouting in my face that I was a stupid gobby bitch and calling the police wasn't going to do anything as he'd dealt with them before and could wrap them around his little finger. I'm afraid I let him know what sort of person I thought he was with his racist threats and picking on girls. I don't think this helped calm down the situation.

Eventually the police turned up and arrested the men, not before I heard Stocky Skin 'Ed say to the shop owner that he was going to "burn his fucking shop down". What a charmer. I made sure I told the police immediately. The shop owner thanked me for calling the police. He said the men had been causing trouble all night and had been racially abusing some asian gentlemen earlier and being generally intimidating. I went to the station to give a statement and the men were kept in over night. Hopefully this will count against them next time they choose to spend their Saturday night being racist oiks. But I can't quite shake the feeling that I bring drama like this upon myself.

It was when I was leaving the police station at 7am with work mere hours away that I realised that perhaps 'eventful' wasn't always the best way of life. WHilst trudging home through the grey dawn, carrying my now stone cold chips I decided that for the next couple of weeks I'd try for positively boring. I might even attempt to 'keep my fucking fat gob shut'. Except when it comes to challenging racist threats and giving good excuses as to why I'm late for work. I have principles after all.

Cinema Usher II: Return of the Sick Kit

Recently [cinema] has been involved in promoting Dr Pepper. This has meant we've all been issued with fetching Dr Pepper t-shirts with, "What's the worst that could happen?" boldly emblazoned across the back. I think that this is a frankly naive question to be asking in the circumstances.

As fate would have it, I'd chosen to wear said Dr Pepper t-shirt on my ten hour ushering shift last week. I'd just emerged from cleaning a screen so comprehensibly covered in rubbish that it had caused a customer on her way out to blush and apologise for humanity at large, when a colleague approached me with a grin all over his face, "I've got a special job for you, a little girl's just been sick in screen 8." Music to my ears. Since the previous sick incident I'd learnt a bit more about the procedure involved and knew that a manager had to be present during the clear up for health and safety reasons, so I marched away to phone the upstairs office. With a manager's help surely it would be bearable. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

[ring ring! ring ring!]
Manager: Hello?
Our Glamorous Heroine: Hi, I need some help, someone's been sick in a screen.
M: Oh, ah, er... can't Other Usher help you?
OGH: Yes, he can, but in training we were told we need a manager present.
M: Erm... well technically you do but really all it means is that you can refuse to do it without a manager present and, er... I think it would show great strength of character on your part if you just got on with it
OGH: Right. Fine. [Puts phone down with rather more force than strictly necessary.]

Luckily on this occasion there was a sick kit in the ushers' cupboard and, clutching it to me like a comfort blanket, I made my way to screen 8. I'd been told that the vomiter was a little girl so, foolishly, I was hoping there wouldn't be too much mess, I mean, what's the worst that could happen? The pile that greeted me looked like it could comfortably have been made by a large adult after a junk food binge. Floating in the pool, I could make out semi-digested popcorn and pick & mix. Once again the solidifying crystals were rendered useless by the sheer volume. And so I found myself shovelling rancid smelling excreta into a bin bag, this time to the fitting soundtrack of 'When Will I Be Famous?' by Bros.

As soon as I'd finished my unsavoury task, Manager appeared downstairs. "All done?" he asked too cheerfully, "Could you do a toilet check then, please?" As I trudged down to the ladies' I comforted myself with the fact that I must have fulfilled my gruesome clear up quota for the day, nothing could be as bad as what I'd just dealt with. I mean, (all together now) what's the worst that could happen? It was upon peering into the third cubicle that I got my answer. I pulled the door to and hurried out.
Manager: Everything alright?
OGH: Er, no. What should be used to clean blood off a toilet seat?
Manager: [turns white] Oh God!
And no, there isn't a menstrual blood kit either.

Irritating Customers: A Study

Working in customer services, sometimes you can tell when someone is going to be a difficult customer before they open their mouth. For example, the ugly and rather effeminate man who approached my till with his face screwed up into the sort of permanent grimace that suggests the universe has left a bad taste in his mouth. I sold him a ticket with the utmost politeness and helpfully told him the time when he asked. However, this was not good enough, for this customer was of The Complainer variety. The Complainer has not had a fulfilling day unless they've found themselves inconvenienced in some way and had an opportunity to moan about it. So for this man good service just wasn't enough.
Ugly man: [In an irritated manner] Erm, could you get a clock in here please?
Our Glamorous Heroine: Er, pardon?
UM: A clock, a clock! So we can tell the time?
OGH: Oh, I see ah...
UM: There's no clock in here, no clock in the Grafton Centre and I don't wear a watch so I've no way of telling what time it is
OGH: ...
UM: and you're running to a schedule so surely it would be convenient if you actually had a clock
OGH: Do you own a mobile phone?
UM: ...yes.
OGH: You can tell the time on that.
UM: [Glares for a minute, then flounces off]
Work Colleague: I hope that wasn't a mystery shopper.

Or the man who accosted me on gate and asked me about the films we had on the other day. He was a perfect example of The Lonely Old Person. The Lonely Old Person likes to come in during the day, when it's not too busy, to use their senior discount and have a good natter with people who are trying to do their job. This particular man was enormously tall, wearing an ill-fitting woolly hat and smelled a bit like a wood pile. I humoured him, tried not to mind his constant use of my name and semi-personal questions, recommended him In Bruges and thought that was the end of it. Unfortunately the very next day he came lumbering up to my till.
Jolly Green Giant: Hello! I came in yesterday.
OGH: Yes, you did.
JGG: You recommended me a film and the acting was terrible.
OGH: Oh, I'm sorry. I really enjoyed it.
JGG: That's okay. I can see why you recommended it. I suppose it's the best of a bad bunch. Ranulph Fiennes was good in it though.
OGH: Er, I think you mean Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes is an explorer.
JGG: Oh yes. I'm old you see. I make mistakes like that. You see, I'm old, I just want to see a film with characters in it. Not a film for children. I'm too old for that.
OGH: To be honest, you might consider going to another cinema with a selection more to your taste.
JGG: But this cinema is so convenient. What about this film? Does it have characters? Real emotions? Integrity?
OGH: Er, Forgetting Sarah Marshall? I don't really think...
JGG: Oh never mind, I'll take a ticket to it.
OGH: [Dreads to think what he'll have to say about that next time he comes in.]

Then there's The Downright Stupid. A fine example of this customer group was the large gaggle of American students that came to concessions the other weekend.
Group Leader: Hey, five tickets please.
OGH: Which film would you like to see?
GL: Uh, that film, y'know the one with the American actor dude.
OGH: You might have to be a bit more specific.
GL: Uh, Bruce Willis, that's it, Bruce Willis.
OGH: There isn't a film with Bruce Willis out at the moment.
GL: There isn't? Are you sure?
OGH: Yes, do you mean Kevin Spacey? George Clooney?
GL: Yeah, that's it! George Clooney!

And finally there's The Unlucky. The Unlucky have the misfortune to be served by me after a day of dealing with The Complainer, The Lonely Old Person, and The Downright Stupid and committing a minor indiscretion. For example the youth who came up to me and demanded "Popcorn!" to which I snapped back, before I could stop myself, "Please!". Or the unfortunate pair of Cambridge students who came to my till at the end of a long day.
Cambridge Student 1: Two students for 27 Dresses.
OGH: Could I see your student cards please?
[CS1 and CS2 get their cards out]
CS2: [to CS1] Oh my god, look at your photo!
CS1: You should see my driving license, I look awful! I look like a lesbian!
OGH: [With eyebrow raised] Because being a lesbian is the worst thing in the world.
[CS1 and CS2 blush embarrassedly and hurry off with their tickets].

The curse of the drinking classes

It was never going to be a good day. I'd spent the previous day assigned to the most hated of all the positions at [cinema], the ice cream stand, for 10 hours. It's on the other side of the foyer from the gate and concessions so opportunities for chatting and mucking about are severely minimised. It also gets the least custom of any sales point in the cinema. So you spend most of the day so bored that you consider gouging your eyes out with a spoon just to break the tedium, except for two frantic periods when everyone wants their ice cream at once and no one has the patience to wait while you try and sculpt the perfect company-regulated scoop from rock hard ice cream with a rapidly-freezing implement.

That particular day, at the height of busy period number two, a group of six tourists were at the front of the queue. A group of six tourists that all wanted sundaes, the most difficult thing to make. A group of six tourists that hadn't made their minds up as to what they wanted by the time they got to the stand. A group of six tourists that only included one English speaker. My fury was only slightly abated by being able to ask them agressively if they wanted crushed nuts only to be enthusiastically answered by two of the girls with a chorus of 'Crushed nuts! Crushed nuts!'. I'm a simple creature.

10 hours of ice cream scooping take their toll. By the end of the day my arm felt like that of a teenaged boy who'd just spent the weekend indulging in the pleasures of the palm. And however careful you are, you can't help but get ice cream all over your hand and arm. The chocolate ice cream is particularly bad for this and I didn't realise until I got a funny look whilst standing outside smoking that it had clung to me making me look like I'd just finished fisting a tramp.

So, after that ordeal, I was hoping for a quiet and uneventful stint ushering the next day. This was not to be. Before I started working for [cinema], a cinema usher conjured up images of a pin up girl with a torch and refreshment tray, probably wearing an apron that almost covered her stocking tops and drawn by Gil Elvgren. Unfortunately this couldn't be further from the truth. An usher's job is to clean the rubbish from the screens between film showings (on school holidays this is no simple job, I've seen farmyard muck heaps more clean and presentable than Screen 4 after a packed out showing of Step Up 2: The Streets) and field idiotic enquiries from the public on the gate. As my first customer approached me I braced myself and heard the worst, "Er, I think someone's been sick in Screen 8".

I ran to get a manager who appeared bizarrely chirpy about the potential pile of puke awaiting us. "It'll be fine, we've got sick kits that have gloves and disinfectant and a chemical that you pour onto the sick and it turns it to crystals that you can easily pick up," she explained. Great. Only on arriving at the ushers' cupboard we discovered a distinct lack of sick kits. Manager's chirp level lessened. And so we proceeded to screen 8 armed only with a bucket of disinfectant, a role of blue roll and a bin bag. When the customer said someone had been sick she wasn't lying, my god had someone been sick.

Immediately upon opening the doors we found a small pile covered in napkins. That was quickly followed by the discovery of a trail leading all the way up the gangway. This was all on the carpet and so we set to disinfecting and scrubbing it. The question, "Do you think that's it?", was barely out of my mouth when I saw something at the end of one of the rows of seats. It looked like Vesuvius had erupted, it was a volcano of vomit. Popcorn boxes lay around the chair empty while effluvia seeped into every nook and cranny around the seat. This was too much. Manager's chirp ran out of the room holding its nose. We called for back up. After far too many minutes spent in the stench, Grafton Security came through with a sick kit. Such was the volume of bodily fluid that the special crystallising chemical was rendered ineffective, merely turning it into an even gloopier mess. The special shovel broke under the pressure. Half a bin bag appeared to be filled by the end.

Occasionally I have cause to step back from a situation and assess my life. And so it was that I saw myself in a baseball cap, passing blue roll to my manager as she stalwartly shovelled sick into a see-through bin bag while 'Pray' by Take That played in the cinema and an advert for discounts proclaimed loudly across the screen, "You'll wish you could be a student all your life". Truly, at that point I knew I had reached the dizzy heights. However, apparently anything is possible at the cinema and things could have been worse. "This is the worst case of sick I've ever seen," said manager, "but at least it's not as bad as when there was shit on the mirror". I stared at her aghast as I was shown a picture on her mobile of the gents' toilets' mirror smeared with excrement. So I suppose it could have been worse. And no, there isn't a shit kit.