TTC worker heroically guards escalator that somebody pooped on

You never really know what you're going to encounter when riding public transit in Toronto (or any other large city, for that matter): Sometimes it's an adorable forest creature, or a dude playing Despacito on the accordion, or even two drunk people engaged in the physical act of love...

And sometimes it's human feces.

"Someone literally took a shit right on the escalator," says a TTC passenger who filmed the aftermath of that act at Runnymede Station on Tuesday afternoon.  

"I thought I'd seen it all on the TTC," says Twitter user Mr. Stars in the video, which he later published online, zooming out to show a TTC employee guarding the mess.

The worker can be seen heroically alerting passengers to the poop as they walk by, urging them to watch their steps and to go around the lump of brown.

Who took a dump on the escalator? 🤦🏽‍♂️ #ttc #toronto pic.twitter.com/0XsOLfNnzO

— Mr. Stars ✨ (@Mr_Stars511) December 7, 2021

The transit commission could not confirm the exact nature of the obstruction, which involved both a pile at the bottom of the escalator and a long streak running down from the handrail.

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green says that the agency was advised of the "unsanitary condition" at Runnymede around 3 p.m. on Tuesday and that crews were sent to clean it up.

"Appears to be something was tracked into the station," he told blogTO. "As you can see, an alert TTC employee was redirecting customers around the unsanitary condition."

Green didn't say how the mess was tracked in, meaning that it very well could have been through someone's butt. Nor could the TTC confirm which species produced the skidmarks in question, or even that it was actually poop.

Mr. Stars, however, was confident based on what the station smelled like at the time that the streaks weren't chocolate sauce.