What is the worst mess you've ever had to clean? - Cleaning tips are a bonus

[Damocles_Sword]

Friend of mine has a few rental properties. Whenever a tennant leaves, I help them clean up. I get dibs on any interesting shit they leave behind, some cash, and dinner. The last tennants to leave had 4 dogs (they werent supposed to have) and at least as many rabbits. Every surface of every room save for one, was caked in feces. One room had an 8 inch high layer of rabbit pellets almost uniformly spread actoss the floor. The one room untouched by feces belonged to a fujoshi. The walls had very well hand drawn yaoi STAPLED to the walls, not just a staple at each corner of the drawings, but the staples were used as borders. 30+ staples per drawing. And the closet was filled with ramune bottles and shitty japanese hair product boxes.

The funniest part is that this was my friend's favorite property, but he has a legit phobia of rabbits, and has to live with the knowledge that a rabbit's asshole has been in contact with every surface of that house.

 

[Jazario]

Back in July we were having ant problems in my house. Our house was built poorly to put it straight, there was drywall and wood installed in Florida weather, so it was no surprise that ants came in. One night while I was sleeping I felt some ants bite me. I asked my mom if it would be alright to sleep in the guest room. After turning the covers over I saw a swarm of ants, everything was covered, even the pillows. Needless to say I didn't sleep that night. Oh and there were ants living under the thing that covers the top of our toilet .

 

[The Last Stand]

I remember there was a college party. At the end of the party, everybody just went ape shit after a song playing, that they had to call security and shut it down.

Chairs were flown, trash was everywhere, hell somebody even threw up on a window. It took until 2am to get it clean.

 

[soft kitty]

You know, I've heard stories over the years about this kinda situation, where you open up a stall and the entire thing is caked with shit from top to bottom, and I even saw it myself once at a store when I was a kid.

What the fuck is the deal with the people who do that?

It's their fetish.

 

[Niggernerd]

Back when i worked at a shitty hotel.
Cleaned a raided meth head room.
Purse full of cat litter, shit near the toilet, drug utensils on the tables, spilled beer, needles etc etc.

 

[Stormy Daniel's Lawyer]

Me and two of my buddies decided to drive to Big Bear California to hang out at this Retired Marines Bar called Charlie Browns. We had just got back from a 6 month deployment overseas and wanted to hang out together before we all split on leave for 30 days. After a couple rounds of R/P/S, which I lost, I was dubbed the Designated Driver. Our base was about 90 minutes away with good traffic.

Once we got there, and I have to mention for those who have never driven to Big Bear, there's literally 100 curves on the road...There was a wheel with different colors hanging behind the bar...It represented I believe about 20 or so flavors of Schnapps shots..$1.00 per shot..So my two buddies spun that fucker no less than 20 times each while pounding beer like empty buckets. After about 3 hours, we decided the tank was full and it was time to head back South..As I left town and started hitting the first of 100 curves it started..Schumacher sitting in the back was first to blow and Ennis wasn't too far behind..I pulled over but the damage was done..Front seat, back seat, dash, radio, side windows, etc.. were covered in Marine Corp Chow Hall Dinner and the rainbow of fucking Schnapps..The car was a Nissan Pulsar, tiny fucking import with 2 doors..After about 30 minutes on the side of the road it was over..They eventually passed out and I drove on..

About halfway home, I got the munchies..They were zombies, so I drove through Del Taco in Riverside and started to eat..5 minutes into my meal, the smell of Mexican started it all over again, a fucking 20 minute ralph session on the side of the freeway..I was forced to toss the food and drive home with the windows down..

The next morning..I went out to the parking lot and saw Ennis with a commerical sized water hose literally spraying the insides of his car..Not my fucking car, it was still mothballed from being overseas, lol..Anyway, I agreed to help this poor fucker clean it up..I have never in my life witnessed so much vomit in my entire life..It was literally in every crevice in that car..The stench was so bad you could smell it from 50 feet away..It took us literally all day and into the evening to clean that fucking car..Months after that, Ennis would swear he could still smell vomit..

 

[Non-Expert!]

My parents tenants had to be evicted because they stopped paying.
They of course stayed as long as they were legally allowed to for free because Massachusetts is bullshit, and then they just up and left.

They left so much shit we had to rent a dumpster just to get rid of it all.
Fucking scumbags.

Is this why your avatars wear face masks?

Back when i worked at a shitty hotel.

Cleaned a raided meth head room.

Purse full of cat litter, shit near the toilet, drug utensils on the tables, spilled beer, needles etc etc.

I repeat: FUCK THESE PEOPLE.

 

[???]

Two stories.

I was voluntold to clean a toilet in a public bathroom. Said toilet hadn't flushed for years, which didn't stop anyone from shitting, pissing, vomiting, or spitting dip in it.

Since it was full, I acquired a gardening trowel and shoveled the mess into a bucket, which I hauled down four flights of stairs to a dumpster. Afterwards I bleached everything and poured several buckets of bleach water down the toilet to flush it, then turned off the water and dismantled the toilet.

I was voluntold periodically to scrape feces which had accumulated around the never-sealed hole into the hole.

---

Second story was from my time working in the clubhouse of a golf course.

I was told that the course superintendent was offering overtime to clean up a mess that week. I needed money so I presented myself.

My new, temporary boss had declared exterminatus upon a colony of gophers who had moved into a vacant and sealed-up gopher nest. He sealed all the exits and sprayed carbon monoxide down the hole for a solid hour, killing everything.

Unfortunately, this produced a nasty smell and was strictly speaking illegal in this area, where only no-harm traps were allowed for repatriation of our precious woodchuck population. My mission was to excavate the mass grave, hide the evidence of my employer's war-crime, and dispose of the evidence before his boss's hippy bitch girlfriend smelled it and got him fined and fired.

This was during August, a week after the genocide.

My boss advised us to leave our wallets and cell phones in our cars. I complied.

I and the course workers started excavation with shovels at 9:30 PM. We we're allowed headlamps. We shoveled for about 8 hours, during which time we found 7 adult gophers and two litters of babies. All were in advanced stages of decay, covered in maggots. We put them in bags, tossed them in a Cushman, and disposed of them in a dumpster.

Boss strolls in at 5:30, and all the other guys leave to mow greens. I get in my car to leave - covered in dirt and gopher bits - and the boss comes outside and knocks on my window. He tells me that we weren't supposed to put them in a dumpster, but to dump them in a river behind Green # 6. Since everyone else is mowing greens, this task falls to me.

I climb in the dumpster, throw bags - many of them ripped and leaking gopher - out of the dumpster and into the just-cleaned Cushman. I get into the Cushman and a start it. Since it is basically a tractor and I've never driven stick, it roars to life and flys down a ravine full of blackberry bushes (which have thorns), sending it's contents all over me and the bushes.

I essentially swim over the blackberry bushes and turn the Cushman off. I climb back up the ravine, shaking and covered in maggots and rotten gopher, to find the boss backing his Ford up to the ravine. He hands me the winch cable and gives me extremely precise and specific directions on where to attach it to the Cushman.

He pulls the Cushman out of the ravine, hands me a tarp and a heavy duty set of bush clippers. My task is to retrieve the gopher bits, put them in the tarp, drag the tarp to the disposal site, walk into the river with the tarp, and open the tarp in the middle of the river. Afterwards I am to return, clean the Cushman, and never speak of this to anyone.

It is now 7:30 AM. The temperature is 83 degrees Fahrenheit.

I wade into the blackberry bushes and find all the largest gopher chunks, load them into the tarp, and drag them uphill, and carry the tarp over the gravel to a grassy area. I take a wooded back path to Green # 6, then wait 50 yards away for a group of golfers to tee off on Tee # 7 before I wade into the river.

I complete my mission, the gophers remains are finally at rest, and I return to the boss. He is talking to a salesman. It is 10:27 AM. The temperature is 91 degrees Fahrenheit. I have been awake since 5 AM yesterday. My boss texts me to go to lunch.

I elect to wait, since I am not hungry.

The course workers return, and go to lunch. The boss goes to lunch with the salesman. It is 11:45 AM. The temperature is 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

I wait in the woods, where no one can see me. I see guesthouse workers come and go, looking for the boss or a couse worker.

The course workers return. It is 1:10 PM. The temperature is 97 degrees. One of them backs the Cushman up to the hose, shows me how to use the clutch and shift gears, explains that it doesn't have a gas pedal because it always goes when in gear, and leaves after washing his hands. I clean the Cushman, then the cleaning gear. I strip down to my underwear and spray bleachwater and Dawn soap all over myself, suds, and then spray it off with water.

I think for a moment about the proper order of operations to avoid spreading the mess. I unlock my car's trunk and open it. I put my keys in my pants pocket. I put my clothes in a trashbag, put the bag in my trunk, close the trunk. I go inside and wash my hands. I grab a wet wipe and wipe my trunk handle. Then I try to open my car door.

It is locked. My keys are in my pants, my pants are in the bag, the bag is in my trunk, my trunk is closed, my car is locked.

It is 2:00 PM. The temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

I go to open the course shed door. It is locked. I realize that I can shimmy it with a credit card. My wallet is in my glove box. My cell phone is in my glove box. I can't grab a golf cart and flag down a course worker in my underwear.

I return to the woods and wait. I fall asleep. When I awake it is dark, I am cold, covered in mosquito bites, and dizzy from dehydration. I creep over to the hose and drink my fill, then piss on the grass. I look inside the course shed at the clock. It is 12:50 AM. The temperature is 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

I drink more water, then return to the woods and try to sleep until morning.

I must have slept because I awaken to see headlights turning into the course shed parking lot. I wait to hear who it is. It is the course workers. I scuttle out of the woods and scare the shit out of them. After I explain myself, the course boss pulls in. I explain myself again. They call a locksmith. I gobble some extremely suspect leftovers in the fridge.

The locksmith arrives, breaks into my car, and as payment takes $40 of my hard earned cash. He avoids eye contact with me the entire time.

I drive home. On the way home I have to fart. It's not a fart. I no longer care what time or temperature it is. Resigned, I settle in and try not to move too much.

I arrive home, throw my clothes and shoes in a dumpster, walk into the bathroom, throw my underwear into the trash, take a hot shower, and try to exfoliate off the bug bites. I return to my room and realize that I missed an alarm. My guesthouse boss left me a voicemail, wondering where I am as I'm scheduled to work at 7 AM, 45 minutes ago. I briefly consider going back to work, then dismiss the idea. I eat something, drink water, and sleep for the next 10 hours, waking only to piss.

 

[Token Weeaboo]

I use to work a semi janitorial position at one of my past jobs. It wasn't dedicated to it, but I've had to clean up blood, vomit and one time a dog just shitting in the place ("service dog" my ass) Except none of it was quite as bad as when someone kept flushing the toilet after taking a piss in it. The establishments bathroom didn't have a floor drain- great idea right?- so when I got word of the bathroom being flooded I was greeted with a nice half inch deep layer of gold atop pale white tile. Being that I was working for a company, naturally they had the cheapest materials on hand and even had to order out some gloves and a mask. Has anyone used absorb? that stuff works wonders when the spills are containable- not here. Absorb is a powder that kinda does what it says- absorbs up whatever liquid is around and you can sweep it up and throw it out E-Z P-Z.

I start off by throwing some absorb around to try and lessen how deep the damn lake of sewage was in the bathroom. I think I went through 10 quarts of it before the situation became manageable. When every single grain of powder is working it's job on absorb it becomes very heavy, I think I had two small trash bags of just absorb and it was HEAVY. Hell even sweeping it up I had a dust pan maybe 5 inches wide. After the situation became more manageable and it wasn't like walking in the rain after a nice golden shower I had to mop it up. Would you believe it that I had to replace the water and even when you block off the bathroom door with a big sign that says "HEY BIOHAZARD IN HERE DON'T ENTER" some dumb ass still goes in there and had the gall to complain to my manager about me telling them to get out. Cause the son of a bitch made the situation worse again.

So I had to go back to using the absorb in the corner of the bathroom cause of this guys dumb ass and the place has run out. Now I'm stuck using paper towels- and yes, the cheap kind that just moves the liquid around instead of actually absorbing it in. Meanwhile we have hit peek hours so people are trying to come in and they see someone in employee gear looking like they're from a hazmat zone (because it fucking is, the company isn't going to hold responsibility for people getting infected). So between juggling trying to unclogging the system in bathroom and telling people to get the fuck out I finally get it done. Moped it up again and then ran a dry mop over it to just quicken the process of getting as much liquid off the ground.

I finally got around to disinfecting the whole thing- the WHOLE thing. I sprayed the toilets, stall walls, mirrors just everything in there. We had to let it set for 30 minuets so I got to barricade the entrance of this bathroom with keep out lines and other materials around the establishments. It took me 2 hours to get it all taken care of.

 

[Disgruntled Pupper]

It's not shit related, thankfully, but I've spent a good portion of my life periodically cleaning dripping nicotine off walls. I still do sometimes when I go home and it's bugging me.

 

[Non-Expert!]

It's not shit related, thankfully, but I've spent a good portion of my life periodically cleaning dripping nicotine off walls. I still do sometimes when I go home and it's bugging me.

Is that what that sticky dark yellow stuff is, that oozes out of the bathroom wall, and drips down, out of nowhere? I am trying to figure out what that is ... house built in 1939 ... it is not where you would think it would be, it is over above the sink ... Way over the "standing male inevitable spray accumulation piss line."


Have you tried using a specialized primer, and repainting?

 

[ThinkThankThunk]

How did you all not just straight kick her out of your house/apartment?

She was still young, and the school she was in wasn't doing any favours. She got a lot better as time went on, especially once most of the family stopped talking to her after my report back from the cursed zone. She did however lose a block of cheese in my parents place over the holidays. They still haven't found it. I'm sure that's another grizzly story in the making.

As for the spider bro, fear not. I felt bad that he was subsisting on hair and gunk so I relocated him to our attic to gorge on the flies that bred there, and I don't have the heart to put house spiders outdoors where they simply aren't capable of living. We eventually ended up with a big spider problem in the attic; I like to think it's in part due to him and the other rescue spiders I released up there.

 

[Red Hood]

Roommate made spaghetti and a bunch of extra noodles and sauce got in the drain and solidified. I fought that beast with just a drain snake from Home Depot.

 

[GethN7]

I had the fun task of cleaning a bunch of petrified wasp nests and some other gross shit off the walls and ceiling of a carport once, that was a grueling task that took hours.

Thankfully, the wasps weren't in season, but having to chisel off a bunch of petrified bug nests that had almost calcified to the consistency of petrified wood was bad enough, though some had semi-soft insides, and I had to move a ladder around for hours, using a scraper, hammer, and chisel. In between getting all sorts of gross shit in my hair and having to wash out my eyes half a dozen times because I got that shit in my eyes, that sucked hard.

Didn't even get it all off this way, had to follow up with steel wool and that ammonia based crap for scrubbing those super hard to clean floors with, and considering my eyes were already stinging from all the shit I had to wash out, I was crying like a little girl and had to take several breaks.

Cleaning the walls was even worse. Since the walls were cement and this garbage had literally grafted itself into the cement to the point we had to patch some degraded parts of the wall later, I literally had to bust out a sledgehammer and smash off some of the more hardened garbage.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

Most of the examples that come to mind are various cleaning jobs at the wildlife clinic. Pigeons poop so much, good god. We have rubber mats in the enclosures that get so layered with poop that you have to scrape it off before even attempting to spray-and-scrub. You're *supposed* to shake all debris off of mats and out of crates into the wash station trash can before placing it in the wash pile but that doesn't always happen. The (occasionally un-shaken) rubber mats go into a tank of water to soak before cleaning, and as a result the tank is horrifying. It's a stew of liquid animal poop, mud, feathers, birdseed, occasional owl-vomited bones, mouse heads, pieces of fish, etc... I had to help someone drain it one day becasue the zip tie attached to the plug broke, and when reaching my arm elbow-deep into the sludge I jammed something into my cuticle. That finger was swollen for a week and the fingernail fell off.

 

[Justtocheck]

Very ironically, soap is the hardest thing to clean out, since it disolves and spreads into. Was making homemade soap one time and damn, it never went away.

 

[Beelzebub's Gate]

Oh, a thread for me. My cat before she was spayed decided to have her two kittens on me; I was sleeping on my back. I woke up feeling warm liquid on my stomach but she had her butt towards my face (not directly on me thank god). Her fluids got on my nice sheets (had to throw it away, fuck that). Awkward part was she was halfway through her first kitten and I wasn't sure if moving her would be appropriate so I just let her finish with her first kitten that tumbled towards my neck. After that I immediately got both of them off of me and let her finish with her other kitten before I could completely wash myself up. This was 8 years ago but whenever I'm cleaning something gross/messy her birthing process will always be my, "could be worse" moment.

 

[Non-Expert!]

Forum guidelines

Spoiler adult content. Anything you wouldn't want your boss to see on your monitor should be hidden. Don't embed NSFW content in your post directly.

... except for the fact that people are saying that the boss is the one who created this mess to begin with....

Or that the boss told them to clean this biohazard up, with no safety measures in place.

Doh!

 

[Stranger Neighbors]

Clogged grease trap that had congealed lard that made everything putrefy into the worst smell. This grease trap was in a old dusty basement cellar and we had to put on respirators to just go in the dusty ass basement. Then we took the filter out of a shop vac and we started sucking up all the grease to get to the block. Even through a respirator I was gagging because no one changed that shit for probably over a year. I had to throw my clothes away and I couldn't unsmell it for a week. We had to pour the contents of the shop vac into heavy duty trash bags and walk them up old wooden stairs, the floor was slick with old lard because the last fuck face to empty it spilled it and left it in that doomed Hell gate of a basement. Never fucking again.

 

[The Reaper]

Worst thing I ever had to clean was a ceiling leak. Sounds like it isn't a big deal or gross. The issue was the water was leaking through a light. I was the poor bastard who cared enough to put out buckets to put the water; no one else would. I finally confronted shift manager and said this needs to get taken care of. All of a sudden I was the one standing on a metal ladder in a puddle of water. The manager then turned off the light so I could yank the cover off. After about 10 seconds of struggling I got the cover off one handed which let the water flow freely into the work area (with the cover it was getting close to the light). I got covered in water and no hazard pay. To this day I'm still pissed.