The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 8 office in Denver dealt with much worse problems than employees pooping in the hallway, according to internal documents obtained by Greenwire.
Following a Freedom of Information Act request, the publication revealed that the agency had to boost security following several disturbing bathroom incidents. Region 8 employees were sent a memo in February asking them to report any further incidents after an employee placed "feces in the hallway."
According to the report:
The memo's call for more information flushed out a large number of strange complaints from employees. Feces were not Region 8's only problem.
The day after the memo went out, one EPA official said, "One of my employees refused to come into the office today because she is terrified after hearing a story on the train home last night."
"A male supervisor ... told her that management knows that it is a female on the [redacted] floor who has been wiping feces and menstrual blood on the walls (I'm really sorry, this is beyond gross) and that they are worried that her behavior is escalating," the official said in an email.
Region 8 has been battling bathroom incidents since December 2013, when someone urinated "on the toilet seat and the floor." The next month a "trail of poop leading out in hallway" was found outside the men’s bathroom.
"They passed shame on the turnpike of life some time ago," said Joel Dvoskin, a psychologist at the University of Arizona. "That was an expression of rage, an act of extreme disrespect against management."
"Whatever else is going on with that person, they are probably pretty angry," he said.
One employee named two suspects in an email, including a person who defecated outside "under the context of emergency" after they were not allowed into the building before 5:30 a.m. Another suspect was an employee who was carrying ammunition and "had been observed kicking the front door."
According to Greenwire, the "poop bandit" may still be at large. "It's not clear whether that person has been found yet by EPA managers," the article said.