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Not exactly something I heard (unless you count a coworker telling me it happened), but the store where I work had to shut down our restrooms again and hire a plumber because someone flushed a mini liquor bottle down the toilet. We used to have open restrooms for customers but had to stop, first because of the pandemic, then because businesses all over town had people smoking meth in bathrooms and leaving residue that required the business to shut down for days while a hazmat team went in and scrubbed it down. Last year, we decided to try opening them back up in time for the busy holiday season… and this happens. Apparently there were paper towels flushed down there too, and dirty needles placed in the toilet tank.
This is the time we live in- where our fellow humans can’t handle the tremendous responsibility of having access to a public restroom.
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As we Increasingly criminalize homelessness and push people struggling with addiction to the margins this will just get worse. The responsibility of creating safe places for the unhoused shouldn’t fall on business owners. I hope that business owner can see the past victim blaming to the root causes, and use their votes and influence in the community to make it better.
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I have sympathy for addicts and their lack of assistance and safe spaces. However, none of that excuses flushing a liquor bottle down the toilet instead of throwing it in the trash. That’s a purely malicious act. And whether or not the business owner sees the root causes, the restrooms are closed for good now. We’re not a big box store, we’re an independent local business. We literally can’t afford to call plumbers every month.
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I understand the struggle of dealing with the cost, like I said: the responsibility of dealing with with the unhoused and addicts shouldn’t fall directly on individual business owner. Not for just wanting to provide a bathroom. It sucks that bathrooms in businesses are some of the only warm, safe places for people on the margins.
I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it was a malicious act, though. You don’t know what was going through the person’s mind, as far as hiding the evidence of their substance use goes. And a lot of people don’t have a good understanding of what can and cannot be reliably flushed. Particularly people who have spent a lot of time incarcerated.
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This is part venting, but also stupid shit I heard at work today. I’m a freelancer, and do a lot of training- and curriculum development. A friend roped me into this pitch to develop pseudo-energy auditor training. The potential client can’t define the audience, or, really, it is 4 distinct audiences. Can’t define the outcome, I.e, what the learners should be able to do after the training. On our call today, I’ve already spent hours trying to shape what I’ve gleaned from conversations with them into a course outline.
On the call today, he said he wanted a new proposal, asked for really detailed stuff.
I said, “we’re starting to get really into the actual content design process, and I’ll need something official to do what you’re asking, some kind of agreement at least.”
He visibly bristled and said, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a detailed course plan! I wouldn’t, you know, hire a builder to build my house, and not know where the bathroom is gonna go!”
Ummm, no. You would either pay someone to come up with a design, or you’d provide a design for them to build. 
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Tell him him to shove his bristles where the sun don’t shine.
(Joke of course.) Sorry to hear about him, sounds like a royal pain to deal with.
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