TAL: Cambodian Garment Industry and Chain Store Defecation

Angela at Mommy Bytes pointed me toward a This American Life piece featuring the Cambodian garment industry. The reporter on the Cambodian portion of the piece, Rachel Louise Snyder, is also the author of “Fugitive Denim.” I stumbled upon Fugitive Denim online this spring and was tempted to order it, but I didn’t want to be influenced by it while writing WAIW? so I chose not to. Maybe I will now.

The best part of this particular This American Life show titled “David and Goliath” is David Sedaris on chain store defecation. Yes, that is not a mistype. While on a book tour someone informed David that the act of people defecating in dressing rooms, in the middle of circular racks of clothes, and in the corners of stores is quite common. Apparently, if you’ve worked in retail, you know this.

I’ve worked in retail and I didn’t know this. Of course, the stores I worked in were always fairly small privately-owned places that didn’t offer the quiet privacy that is surely required to defecate in public that the expansive box stores do.

Anybody ever heard of this?