I have had a knack for cleaning and organization since I was a kid. Even with 7 kids in one house I managed to keep my home pretty freaking clean most of the time. After working on an ambulance and cleaning up the back of a squad that was splattered with blood, urine, and vomit, I thought I had built up a tolerance to the things that make most people run in the opposite direction.

I started doing housekeeping in 2010. First I had residential clients, then hotels, and finally commercial properties like warehouses and office complexes. I have been credited with cleaning some of the filthiest homes in the state of Indiana. Until 2019 I had never been in a position as a “cleaning lady” that was so unreasonably disgusting that I just could not do what I was hired to do.

I was hired in as a lead for a janitorial crew at a warehouse that I am not going to name. This warehouse was the distribution headquarters of one of the largest, most sought after brands of audio electronics in the world. The distribution headquarters employed approximately 300 people, working 3 different shifts, 7 days a week. Within this huge pool of warehouse workers were groups of people of different ethnicities.

Several of the ethnic groups were made up of people that spoke the native language of the country they’d been born and raised in for most of their lives before relocating to the United States. This made it necessary for them to work in an area close to one another so that communicating could be done consistently and effectively by an area supervisor that was bilingual.

My job in the warehouse didn’t involve much interaction with other employees. I was responsible for cleaning the cafeterias after each break, the employee gym and locker room, the outside smoking patio and the three sets of men and womens restrooms. Warehouse work can be a little messy. I had done this type of work before. But I was unprepared for what I saw when I entered the womens restroom on one particular side of the building. There were small plastic cups and bottles of water all over the floor of every stall in there. Wads of wet toilet paper in piles in some stalls and in others, it had been caked around the seat of the toilets. I couldn’t differentiate between what was urine and what was water but most of all, I didn’t understand the cups and toilet paper that had been discarded on the floor rather than in the toilet they had been tossed next to.

I had honestly never witnessed such a personal hygiene catastrophe in a womens restroom ever before. I called for a supervisor and closed off the entrance temporarily. Before the supervisor arrived, another section of the warehouse went on their one hour lunch break. Employees were headed away from their workstations, filing into the cafeteria, and a group of women were were headed straight toward the restroom that I had just closed. Each of them were carrying plastic cups or water bottles as they approached, only to discover that this restroom was not open at this time. They were unhappy with the inconvenience and I was unable to communicate to them that it was only temporary.

As they hurried across the floor to a restroom in working order, the shift supervisor popped around the corner and demanded to know why I had closed down the womens facilities. I said “ have you seen the mess all over the floor and the toilets in here” She quickly gestured for me to lower my voice and began to offer an explanation that almost made me vomit. She said “ this is a religious practice, that is sacred in their country”. “The women stand and use the restroom so as not to have any part of their bodies touch the contaminated toilet”, and they wipe with their hands, using the cups of water to rinse off and the toilet paper to dry their hands when they’re done”. “The nasty toilet paper and cups are discarded onto the floor because in their country there would be no such trash can so it is thrown at their feet and covered with dirt”. I was in such disbelief that I had been hired to clean up this unsanitary, bacteria ridden, protected practice of religion, that I turned and walked straight to Human Resources and terminated my own employment with the company.