We’ve heard our fair share of porta potty horror stories in our day, but we’ve been mostly lucky to not have to deal with too many things that would give us nightmares. Then again, we do deal with portapotties all the time, so you know we’ve seen and heard some doozies. From our personal archives as well as other stories we’ve collected, we bring you the 11 worst things that could happen to a portapotty as well as inside of them.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are stories all over the internet about people getting stuck inside of portapotties and then getting tipped over. This in itself is nightmare-inducing. We are in this business and we understand the horror of being covered in this business. So we wouldn’t be doing you any favors if we didn’t immediately point this one out. Here are a few stories:
“At Burning Man 1999 a wind storm blew over a dozen toilets onto their doors. There were people trapped inside up to their elbows in blue fluid.” -Lucky it was just the blue fluid.
“I was at the music festival Enchanted Forest inside a portapotty when I hear this loud thud following a man screaming "Oh God no! Why!?" Upon walking out of the portapotty, I witnessed a flipped over portapotty with you guessed it, a man still inside! He put his hands on the side and hoisted it up to reveal that not only was he pantsless, there was a toxic sludge of human waste all over him! That dude was covered! Sickest story of my entire life :/” - Poor guy.
“The woman said she suddenly felt the wind move the porta-potty a bit, and as soon as she was trying to sit down, the whole thing went on its back with the door facing downwards.” -Poor lady.
Another one we hear frequently about is people getting the great idea of setting a portapotty on fire. Why? Why would anyone want to do this? Do they not know how much of a terrible idea this is? We mean, these things already have a certain smell, why would anyone want to make it worse? Well, they do. Frequently enough that it should definitely be on this list. Here are a few of those kinds of horror stories:
In Pennsylvania, a man was charged with setting multiple (7) portapotties on fire. When police came to the scene, he was sitting on a ledge and told them he didn’t start the fire on purpose. Not sure we believe him.
Up in Canada, a radio show talked with a man that set a portapotty on fire with a fire extinguisher inside so when the thing got hot enough, it blew up the extinguisher and put out the fire. Lucky for him something worse didn’t happen!
There have been many people that have slipped and fell or tripped and fallen into a portapotty or into something inside of the portapotty. You may be one of them.
Someone we know opened the door to a portapotty once and tripped just before she managed to step inside. She landed with her knees on the doorway, and just before her face landed in the hole of the potty, she managed to stop herself. She was only inches away from a face inside of the bowl! Lucky woman.
Have you ever lost something or dropped something into a portapotty? It’s another one of those things that seem to happen quite often as people use the facilities and have to maneuver in the smaller space. Here is a story about someone losing something in a portapotty:
At Rocklahoma we have over 900 portapotties. Every time the lovely folks at the “Lost and Found Booth” see us coming with a bag full of “goodies” they immediately put their latex gloves on. Phones, wallets, purses - you name it, we’ve found it out there.
Sometimes, people are so desperate to use the bathroom that even when a portapotty is full, they will “do the hover” and use it anyway. Unfortunately, that means that other people get stuck opening the door on some very awful sights.
“During basic training for the U.S. Army we were out on a 5 day FTX (field training exercise). By day three they were overflowing with mountains of sh**. Like people were just hovering and letting it rip, it's the only logical way they could have gotten that full. I opened the door to this monstrous sight and slammed it shut.”
Besides flies, other bugs can and do get inside of portapotties from time to time, especially if they are left outside for longer periods of time. While there are ways to help keep their numbers down, it’s nearly inevitable. Besides a fly landing on you while you’re trying to take care of business, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Let us share:
“one of my worst fears is that a bug will crawl on my butt or leg while I'm doing my business in a portapotty”
“Pretty much the last thing you want to see crouched in the corner of your Porta Potty...It was nearly 2 inches long, carrying a ball of babies...”
We heard of this going around the internet and while it’s not the worst thing on our list, it is certainly not one of the most intelligent thing for someone to do in a portapotty. Because of the pure strangeness of it, we added it to this article. We’ll let you be the judge.
Kids participating in cross country at their schools have come up with a way to entertain themselves in a new way that they call the #PortaPottyChallenge.This challenge requires the teenagers to fill up a portapotty with as many of their friends as they can, and then count how many people leave the portapotty and post it to social media. Kids will be kids.. We guess.
So now that we’ve haunted your dreams and given you nightmares, we hope you never have to run into any of the above scenarios yourself. And when you need a professional portapotty provider, give us a call (918-272-0568). We can assure you that our portable toilets, urinals, and other options will be clean, sanitary, and useable without fear!
