What's the Grossest Thing You Have Seen in Your Career?

Inspired by MDStrib's post:

What's the worst thing you've had to deal with at your job? Please keep them work-related... we'll see who's got the 'grossest' job. I don't know how you're going to beat Dr. Stribling though.

 

We had an interesting situation here at the dealership about a year and a half ago. A young guy brought his truck in for service and took one of our loner cars home with him. These loners are intended for the use of the service customer alone for liability reasons. Anyway, his uncle approached him that night and insisted that he needed to borrow the loner car. The customer told his uncle that he couldn't give it up but he took it anyway. The uncle then proceeded to the house of his estranged wife and kids. He went into the house and shot the wife in the head and then drove off to a dirt road in the woods and blew his own brains out in the car. We got a call from the police about what had happened and that we'd be getting the car back. Because this was a suicide, the police apparently weren't required to clean the car before it was returned to us. The car was eventually returned to us exactly how they found it in the woods, minus the body. The guy's brains were all over the car though. Who, you might ask, was the lucky guy that got to check the car back in and get the disposal process handled? Yours truly.

To tell you the truth though, dealing with the living customers around here is worse.

 

I have seen people decapitated, bodies burned to crisp, brains hanging out, the list goes on and on. The worst is when I am looking at a vehicle and see flesh and who knows what else plastered all over the inside of the car.

 

I used to work at a marina when I was a teenager. It was a fairly simple job and usually included odd task around the place to keep me busy when things were slow. The guy that owned the marina had a son that used to go out fishing with his buddies and always come back late. He never cleaned his boat and always had it in the very back racks outside filthy. He took it out a few times at the beginning of the summer but eventually grew tired of it. After three months of his son not even looking at it my boss decided to sell it. I was told to go outside and clean it up. No big deal I figured so off I went with my bucket and brush. I climbed up the rack into the boat and realized I was in for a job. Fishing poles and hooks along with dried blood covered this boatanda few dried up bait fish lay here and there. It was gross!

However there was this big white five gallon bucket at the front of the boat. I walked up to it and glanced down inside. The top of the water inside was crusted over with this nasty film that had solidified into a jelly. I had no clue what was underneath but whatever was had been cooking for about three months under the Florida sun. I didn't bother with the bucket right away and instead went to work on the rest of the boat. As I was just getting it cleaned up and looking fairly new I made the clumsy mistake of backing into this bucket and tipping it all over the deck. I proceeded to jump up into one of the captains chairs and watch as putrid black water along with rotten fish and squid went everywhere. Never and I mean NEVER have I ever smelled something like that in my life. To this day I can still come close to gagging when I think about it. All I could do was run.

I got inside the ship store to tell my boss what was happening. Of course everyone inside laughed and said I was just being a sissy. They opened the door to walk outside and that bucket might as well have been two feet away. Everyone else was walking around holding there nose wondering what on earth could have created that and the rack was well over 200 yards away. Anyways I ended up having to go back and clean it up with a rag over my nose and mouth. Must be nice to be the bosses son.

 

""How did he get it? Why, he was getting f*cked by his buddies in his colostomy!""


Willingly???

 

LOL. I was expecting some wild IS stories about errant network cable and hideous code...

BTW - Gus, have you heard about the companies that clean up suicide victims? I've read about it in an article and seen it on Dave Atell Insomniac (LA episode). Sick, sick, stuff. Lots of $$ though. But the guy seemed socially retarded, but I guess when you clean up four brain-spattered hotel rooms a night it messes you up to deal with living people.

 

I'm a toxicologist, and I work in Safety Evaluation, so I could probably tell you about some gross things, but I better not. Let's just say that as a toxicologist, I have to create toxicity in order to study it.

Dom

 

Gus' story sounds like it is right out of "Pulp Fiction."

 

That never came up.

 

As an oncologist I see bad things frequently, but to add a positive note, I have also learned that people can be braver and stronger than I ever imagined possible when facing insurmountable odds. I learn strength and priorities from my patients every day.

steve

 

Yeah, unfortunately I was on "brain detail."

Ryan,

I have heard about these companies somewhat but I wasn't aware of the social problems that stem from the work. I guess it makes sense though. Exactly how good is the money?

 

I saw Rod Steiger's hairy, fat back.

 

I can't remember exactly, but guessing ballpark I thought they said they billed on the type/messiness/hrs worked, that they would make a couple $k for a 4-5hour cleanup. In hotels that means pulling carpet, removing beds, etc. It seemed to work out to almost $1k/hour.

The one guy I read about got started when his neighbor took a shotgun to the roof of his mouth... he walked over when the cops were there and asked who cleaned up. The cops shrugged - he said he'd do it for x dollars (something like $5,000??). They made some phone calls, got the approval and let him at it. He got some equipment and became a full time contractor for the LAPD.

 

I can't top you guys but I often deal with distressed real estate, foreclosures, abandoned board-ups etc. One time my handyman was checking out a place that had been boarded up for years. He happened to be on the cell phone with me as he walked around inside. He was saying, "it's not too bad, somebody's been in here though, maybe kids partying and "OH, ....OH GOD, they left food, ...maggots all over the place... disgusting...hold on.. BLAGHHH, BLAGHHH! (sounds of vomiting). I was laughing my ass off, going "not on the the rug, not on the rug!!"

Another time in cleaning out an abandoned house, we found a box of ashes, marked "Baby Joseph". Creepy!

Not gross but funny, we took over a two-family. When we got possession, a squatter was living in one side and had the balls to have actually RENTED out the other side! Quite the entrepreneur!

 

I too do not have quite the disgusting things to share. My father, on the other hand, was an EMT in New Jersey and he has a boatload of sad stories, the kinds you NEVER forget.

Anyway, we do have this one guy here on the trading floor who LOVES to shock everyone.. so every once in a while when he thinks its worthy of sharing, he'll leave his **** in the unflushed toilet for all to see. needless to say i've seen some sizeable logs in my lifetime.

 

As an aircraft technician I have frequently had my arms(to the shoulder)down the toilets on B747s and I am sure you can imagine what is there,the toilet is blocked and your face less than an inch from the "offensive"material.
Oh happy days!!!!

 

When I first started my career with the local health department, I was a Disease Intervention Specialist. You guessed it, I went looking for STD patients. The nastiest thing that I saw on the job was a crackhead who had HIV, chancroid, syphillis and gonorrhea. Please do a google of chancroid to see his handywork.

 

thanks for the afternoon gag reflex. lol

 

Nothing quite as bad as some of you, about 6 weeks ago a Jaguar was sent to us for evaluation, the car had been involved in a accident the owner was in a critical condition, the car was kept in the police compound for two weeks before being sent to us, after checking chassis damage i opened the boot(trunk) to check the floorpan, the owner not wanting to mess up his interior had put his 2 pet dogs there on his way to the park to walk them, not a nice sight, and the smell i still gag now thinking about it.

 

Not my own story but still good.

A friend whose family owns about 30 rental properties had trouble several years ago with a tenant not paying the rent and they started eviction procedures. As I understand it, it wasn't winter so over the course of the eviction procedures which took several weeks the gas, water, & power were all shut off. When the tenant finally left and they went in to clean up the place and found the tenant had:

Over-Filled toilet with urine and feces
Filled bathtub with urine and feces
Deficated in the kitchen sink and kithen drawers.
Unrinated anywhere else they pleased in the property.

My friend said it would have been better if they would have burned the place down rather than having to clean it up (they contracted it out I believe).

What happened to the tenant you ask? They still work in the small town I live in. Their daughter was in my wife's first-grade class. As far as I know they were not required to pay any damages. There is a saying I learned after moving down here, "You can't get blood from a turnip." They are turnips.

 

I work in a futures pit, so the offensive things I see are more along the lines of ethical violations. It's gross, yet interesting, to see the way grown people behave when money is at stake and they think nobody is watching...I could fill a book.

 

they had a thing on Myth Busters (Discovery Channel) where they put 3 dead pig carcases in a vette and tried to sell it. i can't remember what the myth was, but they let them rot in the car for a little bit. then, with the assistance of one of those crews you speak of, they attempted to clean it on their own. needless to say it wasn't a very thorough job. the stench was so bad they could taste it. i have to give those guys some credit though, that's a pretty nasty job.

 

i have you all beat

once on a photoshoot this girl forgot to tan after a bikini wax, GROSS!!!

actually when i was at JHU the smell and process of bone marrow transplants, what a combo, reconstructing a skull after we slide the face back is not as bad...

as a film maker the worst thing i ever was 40days/40nights

so glad i went into a more rewarding field, entertainment..

 

A young women with AIDS that started with Acanthaomeba (parasitic) sinusitis that eroded through her hard palate and destroyed her whole nose so that she just had a 2" circular hole in her face. The parasite also went through her bloodstream out into the skin and bones of her hands and ankles. I had her fitted with a prostheses so that she could drink fluids without it streaming out her nose. She responded to intravenous pentamidine (the nose and palate started granulating in), but unfortunately this occurred in the pre-protease inhibitor era.....so she later died of some other opportunistic infection.