The Fartening

A local Wal-Mart break room was rocked last week when the unthinkable happened. It was partially full of employees resting their weary bodies and minds in the early afternoon. Olivia Sutton—a two-year employee of the chain superstore—recalls that afternoon and the events that would reshape her life.

“I remember going back there as always,” Olivia explained. “I got my microwaved noodles and Wal-Mart brand cola out with eleven minutes to spare on the one fifteen minute break they allowed me when it all went down.”

While she ate her unhealthy yet affordable “meal”, Scott Johnson entered the break room, looking to sit down after juggling dual responsibilities of helping customers with large items to their cars and collecting carts in the parking lot.

“No one pays Scott any mind at all,” Laura Tilton—a cashier who witnessed the event—told us. “He’s, like, super gross, and he’s always talking about some show with robots or some stuff.”

The content of whatever show Scott enjoys wasn’t what he’d be remembered for. He sat in one of the plastic and metal chairs, opened his phone, and sat in the middle of the break room.

“He was right there in front of me,” Olivia recalled. “Well, not at my table. Close enough where I can see the dandruff in his curly hair. No one else might’ve seen how he shifted his weight, leaning to the left. I saw it, though.”

What she heard, however, would floor her.

“I almost expected an emergency alert to pop up on my phone,” Simon—another employee—said. “I figured a volcano had to have erupted down the street or something. Maybe a dirty bomb had been set off or a gas truck exploded in the parking lot. Either way, I did not expect that kind of sound to ever come from a human being.”

Yes. As you may have guessed, Scott had farted.

“It was more than a fart,” Olivia said with tears swimming in her eyes. “I swear the walls shook and it lifted him a couple inches off his chair. They must’ve heard it all the way in the front of the store. Needless to say, I couldn’t finish my noodles and cola.”

“It smelled worse than that time Alex microwaved leftover fish,” Simon added. “I thought for sure it would’ve set off the fire alarm and the sprinklers. Ever smell something so horrid you could swear it was solid and not just a gaseous cloud of fecal particles in the air? That’s what this was like.”

Scott’s horrific fart cleared out the break room, bringing an early end to the breaks of those unfortunate enough to have been in there when he let loose the mother of all anal emissions.

“I was worried about Scott at first,” Laura said. “I thought he’d shat his pants, but then I started to wonder if he’d dumped his intestines into his tighty whities. With as long and as loud as that fart was, I’m surprised his skull hadn’t caved in.”

Olivia, who’d been closest to ground zero, had a more visceral reaction to Scott’s ass blast.

“There’s no way I could’ve avoided it. It was hands-down the worst fart I’d ever witnessed, and I grew up with four brothers, two dads, and an uncle who’s won multiple hotdog eating contests. If I ever get cancer, it’ll be from being in the vicinity of that fart.”

We reached out to Scott to ask about what has been dubbed by store employees as “The Fartening”, but he refused to answer. He still works at the Wal-Mart, though he’s been banned from having his break in the break room, being relegated to spend his breaks on the bench outside the store where his farts can be carried away on the breeze to offend the ozone instead of the store’s employees.

The memory—along with some of the stench—remains with Scott’s fellow employees, though.

“You can still smell it on hot and humid days,” Simon said. “It’s like the fart was so bad it refuses to leave us.”

Olivia Sutton sees a therapist once a week due to the trauma of Scott’s war crime of a fart. She hopes to someday put it in her past, but that day may be a long way off.