The Rat, the Stall, and the Underwear Crawl

We are kicking off the month of October with our creepy, crawly (and sometimes haunted!) stories. Before we get to ghosts, let’s start with something a little more… alive. And unfortunately for one employee, it picked the worst possible moment to make an appearance.

The Rat, the Stall, and the Underwear Crawl

I (46F) worked in the office part of an industrial plant. It was a gritty environment due to the nature of our product, and we typically kept our bay doors open on hot days. It was not a dirty environment per se, but we definitely had critters running around the shop floor.

One afternoon, my coworker (55F) rushed into the office in a panic and nearly in tears. We sat her in our back room, calmed her down, and asked her what had happened. She said she was using the women’s restroom on the shop floor. While she was sitting on the toilet with her pants and underwear around her knees, a rat ran under the stall, climbed up her pant leg, and scurried across the inside of her underwear! She leapt off the toilet screaming while the rat went flying back under the stall and ran out to the shop floor. She immediately took off her underwear and threw them away.

We sat there in shock… We knew there was a rodent problem, but didn’t think the rats were brave enough to approach people. We sent her home for the day and approached management on how to resolve the rodent issue. Management wasn’t keen on bringing in a pest service as it would be a never-ending issue with the nature of our business.

A couple days later, I ended up bringing a pack of rat bait pellets to stash near the women’s bathroom (this sure as hell wasn’t going to happen to me!!). I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get in trouble. The pellets were to last 30 days… the box was emptied in 1 day! After that incident, using the restroom at that plant was never the same again.