In a recent blog post, I mentioned one of my last shifts at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and referred to it as ‘the poop shift’, but did not elaborate.
I’ve decided to elaborate.
May, 2012
It was weird to get a phone call from Disney’s Hollywood Studios at three in the afternoon on my day off. Normally, those phone calls came in the morning, when they were trying to find replacements for performers who had called out sick from the show I spent the rest of my week performing in. Since my natural wake-up time, when left to my own devices, was noon, I usually missed those calls.
But in the middle of the afternoon, there would only be a couple shows left–easy overtime. It also meant something must have gone pretty wrong at the show if there was no one already on the clock who could fill in. I answered the phone.
The call wasn’t what I expected, though. “We need a PM Captain for Pixar Place. Interested in some overtime?”
‘Captain’ was the Disney Entertainment term for area supervisor, basically. I’d been trained in the role for nearly a year at that point, but I’d hardly ever gotten to do it so far. Between my part in the show–for which there were only a handful of people trained–and my other roles facilitating youth programs and training new Disney cast members, there was very little opportunity for Disney to schedule me as a captain. And since I would be moving back to Illinois in a few weeks and working at Disney on a seasonal basis, this might be my only chance to try it.
“Sure,” I said.
Pixar Place was one of the easiest captain shifts you could do, in theory. You were only responsible for two characters: Buzz Lightyear and Woody. They took pictures an autographs all day long in an air-conditioned building with an air-conditioned indoor queue, and there was always a lengthy wait to meet them. Plus, the entrance was right across from one of the most popular rides in the park, which usually had a 90+ minute wait. Because of the high potential for drama and angry guests, the captain at Pixar Place was mostly tasked with standing in front of Buzz and Woody’s building and maintaining a presence.
…And they were gonna pay me overtime to do that.
Halfway through the shift, things seemed to be going smoothly. I’d told the manager that I was new to the captain role, and she promised to keep an eye out for me. Nothing crazy had happened so far. I had just finished helping Woody change Buzz’s batteries, and resumed my position at the entrance to the building, surveying my kingdom and taking a deep breath of evening air, getting a whiff of…fertilizer. That wasn’t unusual at Disney. The horticulture crew meant business.
I gave out a couple park maps, checked my watch a few times, and got another whiff of fertilizer. That was…really strong, considering my distance from the nearest planter. I glanced around…
And saw, mere steps away from me, right under one of the stanchions leading into the building behind me, a superhumanly large pile of human poop.
It was orange.
It must have been…deposited there while I had stepped backstage for Buzz’s battery change. By whom, there was no way of knowing, except that whoever it was obviously had severe gastrointestinal problems.
What was I supposed to do about this?
I almost called the manager–but no. I was the captain. This was my problem to handle. And I could handle it.
I reached into the recesses of my brain for information I had taught to many, many new cast members over the years, but hadn’t actually had to use myself in a very long time. First things first: when there’s something nasty on the ground that you don’t want people to step in, you open up a park map and spread it over it. This prevents anyone from stepping on the thing, and also alerts the custodial team exactly where the thing is.
I had expected to have to use this trick for spilled ice cream…never for poop.
After carefully laying a park map over the offending turd, my next step would be to call custodial. I wasn’t going to clean up that poop. Yes, I’d had to take a class on handling hazardous materials back when I’d been trained to be a captain, but this was the first time I would have to use that information, and I didn’t know where any of the relevant protective gear was. (“It was my first flight, and I’m still getting used to my programming!” to borrow a phrase from a Disney ride of ages past.)
Calling custodial presented me with a new conundrum, though. Over the course of my time at Disney, I had probably trained at least a thousand people on radio etiquette. The first thing I did was hand them their very own earpiece, and instruct them to always use it.
The second thing I did was warn them to always assume that the person on the other end was never wearing their earpiece, and anything they say over the radio will be broadcast to the dozens of guests inevitably surrounding whomever you were calling.
That’s why Disney had some code words in place, which I had taught to all my trainees. Instead of saying over the radio that someone had barfed in front of some attraction or another, for example, we were supposed to describe it as a ‘protein spill’, which was a nice, neutral term that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows of any guests who happened to overhear.
My problems were thus:
1) I couldn’t be a hypocrite now. I couldn’t say ‘poop’ over the radio. Not after drilling it into so many trainees’ heads that they couldn’t.
2) If there was a polite code word for poop, I didn’t know it.
3) ‘Protein Spill’ didn’t exactly encompass the horror I was hiding under the park map. If I tried to summon custodial for a protein spill, there was a chance they would show up with that grit they use to clean up barf (it’s called VoBan!) and not any actual disinfectants.
4) Any alert that there were bodily fluids of any kind that needed cleaning up tended to send all custodians in the vicinity into hiding, hoping it would be someone else’s problem.
Knowing all of this, I made a decision, gritted my teeth, and keyed my radio.
“Pixar Place PM to custodial…I have a protein spill in front of the Toy Story meet and greet.”
The next twenty minutes or so were agonizing, as I spent them directing guests away from the concealed poop while anxiously waiting for help to arrive.
Finally, a gruff, older man in a custodial uniform arrived, carrying a bucket of VoBan. Clearly, he had drawn the short straw.
“You the one that called in the protein spill? Where is it?” He asked.
“Right here,” I replied, cautiously lifting up the map.
He stared at it for a moment.
“That’s poop,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“A protein spill’s not poop. Why did you say a protein spill?”
“Because…” I trailed off. This guys definitely had no qualms about letting guests hear him say poop. This guy needed a refresher on his radio training. …All his training, really.
“Never mind. Can you clean it up?” I asked.
“No, I can’t,” he retorted. “I brought the stuff to clean up a protein spill. This needs a whole different set of cleaners. Why didn’t you just say poop?”
“Can you get the right cleaners?” I asked, my voice slightly clipped. Internally. I was about five seconds from telling this guy to have a Disney day.
He didn’t answer me. “Dunno why you didn’t just say it was poop,” he muttered, as he turned to wander off to whatever break room the custodians were hiding in today.
“That dude is not coming back,” I muttered to myself as I watched him go.
After about fifteen more minutes, it became clear that he really wasn’t, and my panic was starting to rise. In desperation, I radioed my manager. “What’s your 20?” I asked. (That’s radio speak for ‘where are you’.)
“I’m at Fantasmic, checking in the cast,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“…Could you stop by Pixar Place at your earliest convenience?” I asked, still unwilling to go into details over the radio.
“Sure, but it’ll be a while. We have to go over show notes.”
“Okay,” I said, sucking in a breath. I was on my own. I was tempted to go find a custodian myself, halfway across the park if necessary, and drag them over to clean up the poop, but given where it was, right by the entrance to the most popular character meet and greet at the park, if I left it unattended someone would almost certainly step on the map, probably go flying, and land in the poop. Complicating matters, it was nearly time to change Buzz’s batteries again.
Just as I was beginning to despair–I saw him. About fifty yards down the street, a young custodian was sweeping up trash. He looked like a College Program kid, I thought. Poor guy probably didn’t get the memo about the ‘protein spill’. I ran toward him, glancing back occasionally to make sure no guests were moving toward the map, and half-shouted, “I need your help!”
“Sure!” He said, giving me a pleasant smile. “What’s up?”
I led him back to my post and peeled up the map.
I was expecting him to be grossed out, but he didn’t look concerned at all.
“Can you clean this up?” I asked.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, as if it really wasn’t. He took his pan and broom, swept the map, poop and all, into the pan, and emptied it into the nearest trash can.
I was reasonably certain that this was not how you were supposed to dispose of a biohazard, but at this point, I did not care.
“That…was easy,” I said.
Then he took his bottle of all-purpose cleaner off his belt, unscrewed the top, and poured most of it on the spot where the poop had been. “Try not to step on that until it dries,” he instructed me.
“…Thanks.”
“No problem!” He said cheerily, and went on his way.
I stared after him for a few moments, stunned.
Problem solved?
Breathing a sigh of relief, I got my bearings. Five minutes until the battery change. I should probably make my rounds, make sure everything was still running smoothly. I turned to step through the entrance into the queue area–
–and was hit with a veritable wall of smell.
To my horror, the indoor queue for Buzz and Woody looked like–
Okay.
Imagine that someone had played soccer with a turd down a long, winding hallway for thirty minutes.
That’s what it looked (and smelled) like.
Incredibly, the guests were still going about their business, chatting to each other out of boredom, looking at their phones, completely oblivious to both the smell and what they were stepping in.
In that moment, I saw the future. Well, two futures. In both futures, I was being scolded by my manager. In the first future, she was saying incredulously, “There was poop on the floor, and you just let the guests keep walking through it until someone cleaned it up?”
In the second potential future, she was livid. “You EVACUATED a building, CLOSED down the meet and greet, sent Buzz and Woody OFFSTAGE and made EVERYONE get out of line for the better part of an hour…because the FLOOR WAS DIRTY?”
I couldn’t do it, you guys. I was already the girl who crashed the elephant float. I would not be the girl who declared Pixar Place closed for poop.
I stepped back outside and looked around wildly for the young custodian–he was already halfway to the Streets of America area.
“Wait!” I yelled, sprinting after him. When I finally reached him, I was so winded I could barely string words together. “There’s a–I need–just come.” I motioned for him to follow me back to the Buzz and Woody meet and greet, and when we arrived I stood in the doorway and just gestured helplessly.
The custodian took it all in, the pleasant expression never leaving his face. “Hmm,” he said, taking his disinfectant off his belt and holding it up, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to need more of this stuff.”
The young custodian returned moments later with a brand new bottle of disinfectant and a push broom, and we set to work. For the next several minutes, we politely excused our way through the throngs of people waiting in line to see Buzz and Woody, looking for skid marks. “There,” I would say whenever I spotted one, and he’d dutifully spray it with an abundance of disinfectant, then wipe it dry with the push broom. Amazingly, the guests showed little curiosity about what we were doing–or why.
After we’d made it about halfway through, I glanced down at my watch. “Keep going–I’ll be right back. Gotta change Buzz’s batteries.”
*****
It was about dusk. The park would be closing in a few minutes, and I was preparing to start turning guests away–not that I thought it would be necessary. This part of the park was completely dead, now. Almost everyone still in the park was waiting for Fantasmic to start. As I heard the opening salvo of Fantasmic’s pyrotechnics from across the park, I shut the doors to the indoor queue, glanced in to see that Buzz and Woody were finishing up with their last few guests, and started putting away the stanchions.
At this point, who should walk up but my manager.
“So sorry! You called earlier, and I completely forgot to swing by. Everything under control?”
“I, um, had a situation, but yeah, it’s resolved now.”
“So, how was your first shift as a captain?”
“..You know what? I don’t really think I’m cut out for this role.”
Laura Writes 
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