Ding Dong Bell, Pottys in the Well (gross)

[Astrokitty]

A bit of background, I work in a small environmental lab, where most of our customers are coal mines, energy companies, and reclaimers, (companies who make money bringing a former mine back to farmable land).

Our specific lab site use to belong to "Alpha," before it was sold to our parent company. Acme is now one of our biggest customers. They have a competitor, "Bravo," who is also a huge customer of ours. These two lovely companies use us as an independent third party to test coal, soil, and water in areas they work on.

Lately, Bravo has had some areas with various tests out of tolerance, which is set by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency - United States environmental regulatory agency). Of course, being the "experts" they are, they can't possibly be giving us dirty samples! We must be running the tests wrong! They even accused us of getting bribes from Alpha to skew their test results. We test what they give us, and for some reason what they've been giving us has been full of crap. Oh how I wish I was joking.

The last our field sampler brought a batch of water samples from Bravo back for us to test, he relayed the following scenario:

A monitoring well, which is protected by locked cover, and which is inside a locked shed, had been accessed, and used as a porta-john, before all the locks were put back in place.

Only the customer and our sampler have access to this well.

It was full of human excrement. How do we know it was human? They took time to wipe and throw the toilet paper in as well.

My coworkers and I had to run tests on this sample. I used as much protective equipment as I could, then scoured myself and my work area with alcohol.

[Bagboy]

That is so nasty. I. have. no. words.

[mharbourgirl]

Tell me it was the customer that did it, please. I'm begging you. I work for a company that digs those wells and sends samples to a lab just like yours.


Though I gotta say, that's some pretty good aim. The average monitoring well is only about 4-5 inches across. And the edges are sharp.

[Astrokitty]

Tell me it was the customer that did it, please. I'm begging you. I work for a company that digs those wells and sends samples to a lab just like yours.


Though I gotta say, that's some pretty good aim. The average monitoring well is only about 4-5 inches across. And the edges are sharp.

I can almost guarantee it was the customer. Our field sampler also has to run tests when he gets back, so I highly doubt he'd do that to his own sample, especially when he came in red-faced and yelling about it.

Though we could never really prove it. I did suggest to the boss that we take a sample of our own to send out for DNA testing. He wasn't interested.