Murder on the Dancefloor: A Christmas Party Disaster

You know how everyone has that one rather horrific and mildly traumatic memory that they've pushed into the deepest caverns of their mind? The kind of memory that you supress in order to go about your life until one day your brain is just randomly like "Hey, you, remember that time..." and then BAM - your day is ruined as the memories come flooding back in a flurried mess.

Well, thanks to the new Vocal Challenge prompt, I've now remembered one of mine (yes, I have many, don't ask). But rather than recalling this particular memory alone, I've decided to share it. So brew your tea and fluff your pillows, folks, because this one's a doozy.

I'm going to preface this story by making it clear that, despite the title, no murder actually took place (don't worry, it's not that kind of story), but I'll admit I did consider it, and what ocurred certainly did kill the vibe. If you're squeamish or bothered by profanities then this one isn't for you, and I apologise in advance for what you're about to read.

But first, some context.

I'd seen some shocking things in the three years I spent working in hospitality.

• A bucket load of messy 21st Birthday parties
• Even more messy 60th Birthday parties
• A wedding where the bride entirely annihilated her cheating fiancé by exposing him at the ceremony (yikes - but it was entertaining).

The list goes on, but work Christmas parties were a whole other type of messy. There's something about all the pent up office tension that creates a chaotic atmosphere. One too many mimosas, and Janet from HR might finally tell Joe from accounting that he really is a sleezy #$*@.

At almost every work Christmas party I've worked at, there were always CEOs telling drunk stories and flirting with employees, management teams high on who knows what, and even the occasional physical fight fuelled by alcohol and a year of having to presumably play it cool in the office (I know, right? Keep it to the passive aggressive emails like the rest of us).

But with all that said, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, outdoes the year where one rather disastrous employee from a company I shall not name, did something unforgivable on the dancefloor.

So here we go...

The venue I worked at was an outdoor venue located by the side of the Brisbane river in Australia. Essentially, we'd set up each event under marquees: a bar, tables, chairs, decorations - you name it. Occasionally, we'd have an event where the guests requested a dancefloor, in which case we'd have to put one together for them. It was essentially just a giant jigsaw puzzle of one-square-foot pieces of plastic, encased by a slanted metal perimeter to stop it from falling apart under everyone's poorly executed dance moves.

Such was the case for this unfortunate event. After setting everything up, dancefloor included, myself and the rest of the staff cleaned ourselves up and changed into our uniforms in time to greet the guests. The event started at 6pm, we opened the bar, served the food and pretended to find it funny when guests would make generic, unoriginal jokes like "I’ll have a Corona, hold the virus."

It wasn't funny the first 300 times I heard it, and it's not funny now, but if you pay me enough, I'll laugh at anything.

By 8pm the dancefloor was packed with sweaty, screaming, highly intoxicated adults as the DJ blasted Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé remixes, and by 10pm it was fairly clear that having 'bottomless beverages' at the event was a bad idea. We'd already had to cut multiple people off from the bar, and even had to kick a few people out and send them home, which was a tricky thing to do considering:

1. We had no security, and;
2. It was an outdoor venue - you can't exactly tell people to 'get out' when they're literally already outside. But somehow we managed.

Anyway, after finally managing to get all of the problematic drunks and the queasy mess-makers out, we were left with a few stragglers on the dancefloor who were just swaying somewhat aimlessly to the music. One woman in her forties looked like she'd died and her body was just kind of floating in the waves of the ocean; glassy eyes rolled back, one shoe missing, and hair stuck out in all directions with her arms flopped by her side like wet spaghetti. There were a few other people beside her which made it seem slightly better, but still. At the edges of the marquee, there were a few other guests having drunk and rather slurred conversations, but most of the guests had left by this point (or, as I said previously, had been kicked out), which was good because technically the event finished at 11pm, and it was now about 11:10pm. As such, pack down had already begun, but generally we didn't mind if guests stayed a little longer than the finish time, provided they weren't getting in the way while we cleaned up, and had moved on by the time we'd finished.

It was at this point that we noticed the smell. It's a smell everyone immediately knows, and it's never welcomed. Being at an outdoor venue meant there was always a chance these things were coming from somewhere else, like the footpath or the parklands beside the venue, and for a few moments we let that idea comfort us. But it was only a few seconds later when myself and a few other colleagues approached the dancefloor and politely asked the zombified dancers to step aside, when our optimism was shattered.

There, on the edge of the dancefloor, staring up at us from the plastic tiles, and fiercely taunting us from below, was a whole, human, poo. Someone had literally pooed on the dancefloor. It wasn't a "damn I have food poisoning and won't make it to the bathroom" poo either, or an animal poo for that matter; this was a solidly formed, (somehow) untrampled on, piece of human poo. This was not the kind of poo that just accidentally happens.

We all just had to take a moment to process what we were looking at. One of the drunk guests slurred something along the lines of "I bet it was Terry," but to be honest I don't think she could even remember her own name at that point so I wouldn't take her word for it. Terry is innocent until proven otherwise in my opinion (not that I ever met them). We politely shuffled the remainder of the guests out of the marquee, clearing the crime scene if you will, and then slowly floated back over to the dancefloor to figure out what to do with... the 'body'.

We all let out some disgusted "what the f***"s as we stared in disbelief, and then attempted to make light of the situation with humour. I think my favourites were:

"This is what happens when the DJ plays your favourite song and you lose your s**t"

"Hey look, it's Shatner Claus – The Christmas Album"

*to the tune of Sophie Ellis-Bextor's 'Murder on the Dancefloor', "It's turder on the dancefloor" ♫ ♪

"I hope they put Metamucil on their Wishlist."

After we'd processed the shock, and run out of steam with the jokes, one of my colleagues (bless his soul) took one for the team and rather bravely stood there on the dancefloor while he hosed the turd out of existence. After a thorough bleach and scrub with disinfectant, the dancefloor was packed down and taken to therapy. No, I'm kidding, we put it back in the storage room, but we never looked at that dancefloor the same way again. It had seen something awful. We all had.

Yet, there was one thing that just never sat right with me - how did it happen?

Was somebody so obscenely drunk that they didn't notice they'd s**t themselves? But even if that was the case, how did it end up on the dancefloor? Did they just shimmy and shuffle until it plopped out and landed there? Was it deliberate or accidental? I have so many questions, and I know I'll never have answers.

We never did find out how it happened, and if I'm honest, I'm not really sure I want to. Instead, we just had to finish packing down the event and go home. That night was a night we'll never forget. Although, I'm sure the phantom pooper likely won't forget it either, whoever they were... I tell this story like it was deeply traumatic for me (it truly wasn't, I'm just dramatic), but I can only imagine how awfully embarrassing it was for that poor unfortunate person who soiled themselves on the dancefloor at their work Christmas party.

I suppose I should thank you for reading this far, and for sharing this bizarre and disgusting experience with me. If there's one lesson I want you to take from this rather unfortunate story of mine though, it's this:

Be nice to hospitality staff this holiday season - they’ve probably seen some 💩.

Happy holidays, and please, for your own sake, stay classy at your work events.