The Changing Room In David Sedaris Adventures At Poo Corner

The Changing Room Restroom

Are changing rooms of large chain retail stores becoming a place for a political statement? In a reading by David Sedaris entitled Adventures at Poo Corner he discusses the topic of public defecation in the retail setting. Sedaris gives many possible explanations as to why this is, as well as providing a tremendous amount of examples. To determine that Sedaris truly isn’t making up these stories, some examples that are close to home—Sioux Falls, SD—will also be examined, along with further explanations as to why people choose to defecate in peculiar places.

David Sedaris first heard of this strange phenomenon from his boyfriend Hugh Hamrick. Hamrick worked at the local Gap in high school and mentioned people defecating

in the changing room during a conversation; having dated him quite a while before this, Sedaris wondered why this had never come up. During the reading of Adventures at Poo Corner, Sedaris felt it was his duty to “spread pertinent information from one part of the country to another.” (Sedaris) Most times Sedaris would bring up the topic of public defecation in retail stores, 97% of the crowds would think he was lying but the other 3% would “nod, yes [because] these were the ones who worked in retail.” (Sedaris) After learning that this phenomenon was not localized to a single place but spread out across the country, Sedaris wonders why people would do this.
Sedaris starts his reading with a conversation he had with a lady during a book signing.

Sedaris learns that this lady worked at Target and proceeded to ask her if “a lot of people defecate in your store?” to which she replied “How did you know.” (Sedaris) Sedaris learns that people would go to her Target and crouch down in the round clothing racks and proceed to defecate. Sedaris also learns that in Pier One some people will just lean against the wall, lower their pants and defecate right there on the floor. A stock boy from Kroger told Sedaris that it happened all the time; typically a 4 year old would ask to go to the bathroom, their mother would point to a dark corner, and then pretend like nothing happened. Sedaris also mentions a librarian who had made a large cardboard castle that she had built and painted by hand to place in the children’s section of the library. After two days of the castle being up, “what did she find lying just inside the drawbridge? A turd, that's what.” (Sedaris) The library defecation was left by a teenager who confessed after defecating in the elevator also. Sedaris comments on a Vegas security guard that would have to kick people out after they defecated in their pants because of not wanting to leave their slot machine. There was a lady who defecated inside the center of a toilet paper role, a college student that defecated in the dorm washing machine, a customer defecating in a urinal, and also someone who defecated in an ashtray at a

hotel. Sedaris gives so many extreme examples of public defecation that the listener must wonder if these events really happen.
Many of the events that Sedaris mentions happen in large cities across the US, but do these things happen in the Midwest town of Sioux Falls, SD?

In high school I worked at Jimmy Johns and have had to clean up after customers that have defecated on the floor next to the toilet. At the Men’s Wearhouse in Sioux Falls where my fiancée works, people have rented suits and returned them after defecating inside the suit. At the Kmart that my stepdad worked at for twenty years, elderly customers have not been able to make it to the bathroom on time and leave a streak down the aisles to the restroom. At the Starmark in Sioux Falls where my father was employed for many years, employees defecated in the corner of the factory bathroom. My father also worked on many construction sites around Sioux Falls where other workers would urinate in a bottle, place the bottle in the wall, and build around it. My father also worked on an apartment complex renovation where the tenants of the building defecated on the newly-carpeted hallways and proceeded to smear it on the freshly-painted walls. These stories provide some insight on the public defecation phenomenon in that it is not localized to one specific area or just large populated

cities.
The question remains as to why people continue to defecate in these places. Sedaris notes that people may be trying to make “a political statement, or an attempt to even some sort of a score” but later concludes that this “probably giving credit where it's not due.” (Sedaris) Sedaris also notes that the store or location has no relevance to it, it is seemingly random. Sedaris considers that this public defecation may be attributed to a form of self-expression, but feels that “defecating into a washing machine falls somewhere between scratching your initials into a bus window and setting fire to a trash can.” (Sedaris) In an article entitled “Brown Friday: Why do people poop in retail stores?” David Ferguson contacted psychologist Jeanne Dugas as to why people may be doing this. Dugas first response to Ferguson’s question was “they do what?” (Ferguson) Dugas contemplated, “that they were unable to make it to the rest room in time to get back for a particular sale item, or maybe they just weren’t up to the fight through the throng of holiday shoppers,” but concluded that, “the acts sound more like aggression.” (Ferguson)
At the end of Sedaris’ reading of Adventures at Poo Corner, he notes that “Whatever notoriety there is to be gained is destined to be private and hopefully short-lived. But that's what you get when you settle for number two.” (Sedaris) Whether these acts are a form a self-expression, as Sedaris concluded, or an act of aggression, as Dugas concluded, the seemly strange event of public defecation doesn’t seem to be going away.