Retail workers learn to handle all kinds of messes, but some go beyond the call of duty.

One night, one employee discovered something so nasty in the dressing room that it haunted her for years afterward.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Bathing suits and Bio-hazards

Back in 2014-2015, I was the closing manager at this store.

I was always the one locking up, closing cashes, helping my co-workers tidy change rooms, and refolding clothes at the end of the night.

One night at work, I gave the girls the green light to start closing duties 45 minutes early.

There was a snowstorm going on at the time, and the store had been pretty dead all evening.

She thought she would get out of there early last night, but of course, things didn’t go as planned.

I decided I’d take the change rooms and worked away at cleaning the mirrors, rehanging things — the usual.

Time flies back there, and now it’s 10 minutes to close. Change rooms are spotless, everything’s ready to go.

All of a sudden, a girl my age (I was 22 or 23 at the time) rushes in because she needs a bathing suit for her resort vacation in two weeks… in the middle of a snowstorm.

Figuring she wouldn’t make too much of a mess, the manager allowed this.

I didn’t mind — everything was ready to go. How bad a mess could she leave in the dressing room? Shouldn’t be a long fix; it’s just her.

She took her time picking out an armful of easily tangled string bathing suits and then took her dear sweet time trying them on.

She finally left about 20 minutes after we closed, with none of the bathing suits she took into the change room.

(Store policy wouldn’t allow us to make customers leave if they were in the store before we closed.)

The employees were relieved she had finally left, but what they didn’t know is that there was a pretty big surprise waiting for them.

The girls and I breathed a sigh of relief that she was gone and headed to the change room to tackle the tangled pile of bathing suits she surely left on the floor.

We found a huge heap of tangled bathing suits on the floor, yes — but we also found something much worse.

I guess she thought her used, smelly, bloody pad was cramping her style and wasn’t giving her an accurate fitting… because she peeled it off and stuck it to the wall of the dressing room.

This brought with it an unsavory smell.

It stank — it really stank. There were no gloves to be found, so I had to wrap my hands in what must have been six or seven shopping bags and peel it off the wall.

We saw one bright yellow bathing suit in the pile on the floor with a skid mark, so we didn’t even touch them. We just wrote off the whole pile and trashed it.

This incident stuck with the retail worker for a long time.

I still think about this often. She was the only one in the store — did she think we wouldn’t know it was her?

I don’t think any of us will ever forget her face. I live in a small community and have actually passed her in public since this incident.

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

What did Reddit think?

This wasn’t just annoying — it was lowkey traumatic.

This fellow retail worker is appalled at this customer’s audacity.

Why not drop a little hint for this customer?

This was most definitely above this cashier’s pay grade.

She still can’t believe someone thought that was okay to do, especially when they were the only one in the store.

Even years later, she would still recognize that customer’s face anywhere.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.