CBL EP#144 Waffle Stomping: The Dirty Truth Cleaners Need to Know

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In this jaw-dropping episode of Cleaning Business Life, Shannon Miller and Jamie Runco tackle one of the most taboo (and surprisingly common) cleaning confessions: waffle stomping. Yep, we said it — and yes, it’s a real thing.

From ancient hygiene history to modern internet trends, this episode explores what happens when bathroom boundaries get crossed and why every cleaner should understand the health, safety, and professionalism behind this conversation. You’ll learn why footwear policies matter, how to protect yourself and your crew from unseen biohazards, and the right way to set firm but respectful boundaries with clients.

What You’ll Learn:

• What “waffle stomping” is — and why cleaners should care.
• Real health risks and how to safeguard your team.
• OSHA and insurance rules on footwear and gloves.
• How to talk with clients who request barefoot cleaning.
• When to document, escalate, or fire a client.
• Professional pricing and boundary strategies.
• Cultural hygiene insights that’ll surprise you.

If you’ve ever cleaned a shower and thought, “What is that smell?” — this one’s for you. It’s equal parts cringe, comedy, and career-saving education.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Big news from the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy. Starting October 2nd, we're giving away a full scholarship to the SSB CBA. It's a tongue twister program. Your chance to finally build, grow, and scale the cleaning business you've been dreaming of. No strings, no gimmicks, just real opportunity to change your future. I do this as a way of giving back to my community. Entries open on October 2nd. The winner will be announced on Black Friday of 2025. Don't miss this. Your next level starts now. Apply and acclaim your shot at success. Today on Cleaning Business Life podcast, we're diving into one of the most uncomfortable yet oddly common bathroom confessions on the internet. You guessed it. Waffle stomping. If you've never heard of it, it's the act of someone trying to force, well, human waste, down a shower drain with their foot. Gross? Absolutely. But as cleaning professionals, we've seen it all. This episode isn't just about shock value, it's about hygiene, respect for one's shared spaces, and the kind of real talk that helps raise cleaning industry standards. Let's get to it. Welcome everyone, Jamie Longtime No C. I haven't, I don't think I've seen you hardly at all this week.

SPEAKER_01: 2:45

No, but I always am in your inbox, like especially about what we're getting ready to talk about today. And we're about ready to blow the audience's mind because I bet you didn't see this one coming, you guys. What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_00: 3:01

It's this is why I'm wearing a tiara because um it's it's stuff of of royalty and how we've transitioned over the years when we deal with poop. And I will preface with this we are going to talk about poop extensively. So if this is a topic that grosses you out or you are offended, bow out gracefully because we're probably going to use curse words along with the words that go with poop and explicit, right? So that you understand, and I was I was actually shocked, but let me preface this when we had kings and queens, they actually did not take care of their own wiping of their tushy tush, they had an actual person who did that for them, and I nobody wanted that lowly job. My gosh, I thought I turned off both of these phones, didn't even hear it. Okay, good. Only you heard it. Okay, perfect. So when we started to go through the evolution of not being nomads, we started to look for depositories, is what I call them, to put things that were not so handlied available or want willing to address, right? We all we all it really does come down to we all eat and we all poop, right? Everybody poops, everybody. When you they had kings and queens, there was actually a designated individual who took a rag or a sponge. Even the Romans had sponges back in the bathhouses, they had public bathrooms. So we've come a long way, and we still have a long ways to go. So that's why, and I was just telling Jamie this when you go to a third world country and you happen to be left-handed, when you go to reach out for a handshake, a formal greeting, you do not want to wave the left hand out there first because and Jamie's waving. Left hand is out because what is you're doing is you're subconsciously telling them you're gonna deal with my shit because right hand is for eating, left hand is for wiping. Not everyone has running water like we do here in America. We're actually really spoiled. If you do any international travel, especially the third world countries, you'll realize how fortunate we are to have toilet paper in Asian countries in the circle of fire, you get, I think, two pieces of TP, and you better hope it's not messy because that's all you're getting. And in most European countries, don't even have toilet paper, it's a bidet. That's one ply, right?

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

And not this special two ply Charmin with the squishy bears. We're not happening. So, what we're talking about today, where what Shannon is telling us is that do not shake someone's left hand in a third world, or don't extend your left hand in a third world country. It's a show sign of disrespect, right? But there is a phenomenon that's going on in the internet, and then the real premise behind what we're talking about. Yes, this is what's behind what we're calling, it's called waffle stomping. Yes, so what basically what happens is people will shit in their showers and then stomp it down the drain. Now, why is that important for us as well? We're cleaners, we're cleaners. Um, so there people won't talk about this. This is the taboo, the the elephant in the room, and you can you're just like what elephant? Well, the elephant that I can smell that obviously I know needs to be cleaned. And I would love to know if you guys out there that are listening to this, have you ever came across somebody doing a waffle stomp? And that's what the new terminology is of it now, and it's it just has lit the internet on fire lately. And not I I don't know that anybody would admit that they do that. I mean, I wouldn't want to know. I wouldn't want to know, but as a cleaning business owner that has employees and some of our elders, you know, they can't hold it, you know, so they stomp it down the drain. This is a total thing that's going that's that is happening, not that, but there's also you know, the bougie people that you would never suspect in a million years that are living alone that are just doing this. And it's like I don't know how I feel about right.

SPEAKER_00: 7:59

It waffle stumping is a direct correlation and a reference to the actual drain cap in the shower. It looks like a waffle, so it's referring to the term of using one's foot to push feces through the shower drain grate, that's the metal grid, usually, and it's a slang term popularized online forums such as Reddit and Urban Dictionary, especially throughout the 2010s. I am not allowed to be on Reddit unsupervised. I go down the rabbit hole and then I'm horrified over every time I'm on there about what I have seen. I'm like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 8:34

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Shannon showed this to me, and I was just it was like watching a train. I couldn't watch look away. And and a very popular person whom I would love to have on the show actually is the one that came up. No, that's a different person, and we're live right now. We're alive right now, but Shannon did send me something, and I was just I I was like a train wreck watching it, and I had to keep watching it. And I was like, Shannon, I I she she just said that this has got to be a show, and I was like, absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

And I actually didn't even know this was a thing until another cleaning business owner, thank you, Jennifer, who said, Hey, have you ever seen this before? And I was like, What the fuck? Yeah, I didn't believe I'm like, this cannot be real. This is urban legend, right? But in reality, doing some digging around, there is some trace attributes of this happening. And the reason why I wanted to bring this to your attention is because we've talked about to shoe or not to shoe, where you wear your shoes in the house, not in the house, whether you wear booties, sandals, crocs, whatever it is that you're doing, there still is a small segment of the cleaning industry where you have the homeowner who wants you to clean barefooted. And the reason why I'm bringing this to your attention is because you don't know if that small segment is waffle stomping or not. I don't care if they're old or young, it it's it's fecal matter and it can sort of biohazard. So you're you could legitimately be stepping on poop and not know it, even if they rinsed it out or didn't rinse it out. There's this whole dynamic because your skin is your largest organ. So whatever you're putting on your skin, you're going to absorb and filter in through your system. So if you're stepping in someone's shower after they waffle stomped and they have some sort of infectious whatever, and you have direct contact with your skin on your feet, you could catch whatever it was that they had. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:50

Well, I mean, imagine uh, you know, and and the they do other things in the shower too, right? So uh, you know, OSHA. We won't talk about any of that. According to OSHA, we have to have shower or we have to wear shoes uh according to my insurance, right? And if you guys follow me on Facebook, you know how important it is. I just went and raised my insurance, how much we're we're covered by, right? But you seen me, and that's so important, but in there in really small letters down probably on the 45th page somewhere, it states that I must have shoes, and so should my employees and you we glove up. I you know this is a reason why we should uh you know, some some people just hate wearing gloves, but this just goes back to why we should in the bathrooms, especially. I get it, it's hard for me to fill around. But there's some things that I've seen. I I who knows if I've come across waffle stuff, I've come across some really stinky, like hmm you know, showers and and just bathrooms in general, like and you don't know if that person has done a waffle stomp.

SPEAKER_00: 12:27

Right. So we just wanted to make you aware. You can Google this, it's not top secret FBI stuff, just type in waffle stomping. There's several people who have come out and said, you know, I witnessed this, I did that. It's not satire. I think that there is some legitimacy with a small segment of our society. So I just wanted to bring it to your attention that it exists, especially if you have someone who frequently requests that you clean their house barefoot because no dirt comes in, but yet they're doing stuff like this. And it it's there, I think that one in 30 people has done this at one point. I'm not talking about little kids having an accident. We've all been there. I have kids, James. Oh, yeah. Where you know, you're in the turbulent cycle. Oh, it's just floating. You're like, whoa, dude, you gotta go on the toilet, right? Oh my god, we're talking about the actual use of a shower as a toilet, and there's some dynamic to that because if you think about my husband's a plumber, the shower drain is two inches wide, toilets are three and a half to four inches across, so there's a big difference in expandability, and then there's like, what if what if you clogged it up and you had to send a plumber in there and all he pulls out is your shit?

SPEAKER_01: 13:44

Yeah, yeah. You will be the next laughing stock. Well, you know, I don't know if you'd be the laughing stock, but you definitely get big eyes. I, you know, definitely charging more because let's face it, uh as professional house cleaners, that's what we, you know, give me all the dirty toilets in the world. I know what we're charging. So, but let me tell you, if you're waffle stomping, we're getting a little extra. Well, gonna get a lot extra.

SPEAKER_00: 14:16

And they they say, well, you know, why do people do it? Well, some people say it's convenient, sometimes we've run out of toilet paper, but it's perceived deficiency. I'm like, I don't I don't know. I don't think so. I'm I'm still gonna go over to the toilet in my old methods.

SPEAKER_01: 15:23

I'm not gonna take care of two things at one time shower and a waffle stomp.

SPEAKER_00: 15:28

And then it says privacy, um, using the shower to mask out the noise or the odor, which is absolutely disgusting because we all take hot showers, so that's gonna just float in mist in the air in the shower, which is gonna make me gag right now.

SPEAKER_01: 15:42

Yeah, I just feel like I'm that emoji of green right now, right?

SPEAKER_00: 15:47

And I'm red, right? Because this is like not a comfortable conversation for Sunday Tierra or with your with my tiara, and then there's shock value, it's part of the internet meme culture, and I I haven't seen any memes. I did not look for them, but I'm sure if you wanted to drop one my way.

SPEAKER_01: 16:04

Oh, we could definitely, I'm sure if you put in hashtag waffle stomp, let's see what comes what would come up on the internet.

SPEAKER_00: 16:14

So it can also cause there's bacteria, there's regular exposure, there's infection risks. And it's it's just hygiene. So just be hygiene. It just be cautious if you have someone who says, I need you to clean barefoot. I've done it in the past, not knowing any difference, because I had and what made me mad, and I've mentioned this before, this particular person had some OCD issues. Like she wrote, she ruined her rotator cuff. I'm not gonna name her name. She actually is still alive, still in my in my town. I still see her every once in a while. And she would always want the whole house cleaned barefoot. She was the seam cleaning lady. You might have heard me mention her a couple times, but she always wanted you to clean the bathrooms barefoot, and but she wouldn't let you clean the master bath first, which took the longest. And her house was all white, white on white on white.

SPEAKER_01: 17:08

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

Hated that house. Oh my god, kill me now. And she would always be in the shower, in the tub, taking a tub, bathing it up, bubbling, you know, getting one last dirty in before it had to be cleaned. And it was monthly, right? So if you back to those moments, there they're there are telltale signs that people are telling you that you're just not picking on because you haven't been made aware that these types of things happen. Just like when Jennifer said, Hey, have you ever heard of this? And I was like, Oh my gosh! Yeah, yeah. So just be very careful. I would not recommend that you clean barefoot. Do say what Jamie says. Unfortunately, my insurance does not cover me should I clean barefoot or any of my crew crew, these are tongue twisters, any of my crew cleans barefoot because they won't be covered if something were to happen. They could slip and fall. I mean, there's all kinds of other workmen's comp related stuff, too, from cleaning barefoot. And then you could have someone go, Well, I'll just give you booties. Well, that's permeable. So if there happens to be poop that you can't see on the floor and you you're cleaning barefoot, but you have a booty on, it's not gonna really protect you. It's like running. We've all had it sucks through.

SPEAKER_01: 18:25

It sucks through the the yeah, like running through wet grass, right?

SPEAKER_00: 18:30

That's exactly what it is. It's like when you go to get a manny petty and your petties, you have the little chippy, chippy flip-flops in an air, it gets really hot. So you're out there across the asphalt walking really fast because you forgot your other flip-flops. Right, and you're like, This is really hot. So it does soak through. So use caution should you have someone because you just don't know if they've waffle stomps or not. And there's some actual real life online accounts, you'll have to Google them. I'm not providing any links. This is really gross and it makes me gaggy even talking about it. Um, it says my wife poops in the shower and stomps it down the drain. What? Yeah. And you've witnessed this. I'm like, ew. Um, you know, I have to go, I'll just waffle stomp it down. And like, you're like, what I'm literally bathing there. That's just disgusting. It just go ahead and shit in the shower. It's fine, just waffle stomp it. You're already there. Again, I'm turning red. So I mean, and some of these quotes will reveal like curiosity, disgust, and the normalization of taboo humor. I don't necessarily think that it's funny at all from my point of view. I wanted to make you guys aware that this stuff goes on. Another thing that we're not gonna discuss because it's not PC at all, and that also involves poop and procreation. Not gonna talk about it, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:02

But it happens, you just and it happens most of the time, you know. As cleaners, we've all come across something like vegetables and you know, glove up, right? Glove up when you're taking out the trash, yeah. You know, it just you don't know. I let me tell you, I've come across you would never have guessed it, like drugs you would have never hidden in the bathroom, and it's like, well, I you knew I was coming. Why didn't you like why didn't my crew's coming to clean your bathroom? I'm sorry that your mother-in-law paid for this, and and as a nice gift, and you're a nurse in town, like hide your stuff, scandalous, scandalous, yeah. But they do some people just was like I sometimes I wonder if it's like they they do it on purpose to see what kind of reaction like, are you into waffle stomping too? You know, and then no, no, not no, so I put on my blinders, put on our shoes, wear our gloves, and that this just solidifies everything that my insurance says of why this is it's unsafe. I mean, uh there's so many reasons of why we should wear shoes. And I know, you know, I might get a little backlash on this, but this is also, you know, why we wear shoes. I don't know. It's professional.

SPEAKER_00: 21:45

So protect yourself, protect your cleaning checks, and you don't want anyone to slip and fall or trip or injuries from wet floors. I mean, I have a couple houses that have travertine or traditional marble. That shit is slick. Oh, even with shoes, even with shoes, let alone barefoot.

SPEAKER_01: 22:04

You accidentally the okay, the dog drool by the water bowls, yeah. That's I almost I biffed it almost one time and it all threw my back out. But yeah, you gotta be so you know, I could only imagine if you were barefoot.

SPEAKER_00: 22:25

And so obviously, if you were to come across this, there would be the very hard conversation that you would need to have, and and there are circumstances. I we've had a couple of people who've had MS over the years and they just didn't make it, but that's around the toilet, and they're totally upfront. Like, hey, I didn't make this, I obviously, in my condition, cannot get it. My character's my my poor heart, like my poor heart. Yeah, that's different than what we're discussing. If you were to come across someone who just left it there for you, and we saw a case the other day, and that's not waffle stomping, but we saw a teenagers are the worst. We're gonna have to have a whole episode on this. We saw a used tampon in the shower that a teenager left for the cleaner to pick up, even after politely the cleaner had the hard conversation, right?

SPEAKER_01: 23:19

They had the hard conversation with the parent, and the parent was just like, whatever, it's no big deal. Yeah, and it's like well, I'm shouldn't be as your cleaner helping you raise your child, you know, teaching them how to properly dispose of things so that your your cleaning tech don't come through. Like, what is going on? But yeah, these are hard conversations that you do have to, you know, you have to have. I I finally named my chat GPT, which is Esther. And Esther, I I can just the throw it in chat GPT of a hard conversation whenever if if you ever were to come across something like this. Um I would love to hear if any of you guys have come across any of this. I would love to hear, you know, leave us a message down in after in the show notes, or not in the show notes, just leave a comment. This goes up on YouTube. So definitely. I'm looking down Chat GPT right now of a hard conversation of what to do. Yeah, yeah. The ChatGPT is and I pay for the premium version. I do not use for I'm gonna tell you guys for the first uh six months. I probably rarely used it. Everybody kept saying something like, oh you I pay for this premium version for six months and did not know how to utilize it. I have finally has finally taken off, and I thought, well, look at I named her Esther. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 25:08

It says right here when cleaners need to speak up. Many cleaning pros don't speak up because they fear being labeled rude or unprofessional, but part of leadership, especially in the cleaning and hospitality industry, which is where we're at, is setting boundaries. So you could say something like, I respect your home and privacy, but I also have to protect my team and my equipment. We've run into a few sanitation issues that will need to be addressed before our next visit. And then I would just I wouldn't shout it from the rafters, but I would say, you know, we found find this. And if you're not obviously cleaning, then you would have to have a photo, have your your cleaning text and do the photo, and then you can send it over to the customer. Sometimes it is a teenager thing, they go and try all kinds of bizarre things. Sometimes it's just an openly defiant thing. I mean, there's so there's psychology behind why you would want to do that to begin with, and and especially if you know that a cleaning, a cleaning professional is coming, speaks volumes on how we are not respected in those homes. Yeah, it might be time to let them go.

SPEAKER_01: 26:17

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and give them a price crease so high that they, you know, either you're laughing your way to the bank and happily taking it like all day long. I will 500 bucks, I'm there. But or you're you're gonna, you know, let them like phase their theirselves out. Never never allow yourself to be a disrespectful. I see it a lot, and I just see some of some of you guys coming out of your shell and and really uh grasping setting boundaries for yourself, and it's so hard. It is it is hard, those are hard conversations. Again, I highly recommend not just the free version, maybe try it out, but chat GPT is uh the new thing of helping with some of this, not all of it, and you put your own spin on it, you know, of of it's a tool to use takeover. Yeah, it's definitely a great tool, especially in our and in almost any industry, but really in our industry, it helped me do a playbook basically for my company. And yeah, I I so much more professional, like oh, and then I just kind of send it on over to Sarah, and then Sarah does whatever with it, and then she runs it and then sends me proofs, and I write up, I check off on them, and oh yep, that looks great. That's how I wanted it. She she's good at capturing, but so is Esther. Esther's great at capturing how I want to run my business. So whenever it comes to waffle stomping, somewhere in the fine, fine print, you need to say I my company must be have shoes and gloves at all times inside your home for those ones that don't want shoes inside their house, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 28:38

Right. And you can switch out. We've talked about this before, I believe, in the podcast. You can, if you have a person who is uh really picky because of whatever reason, um, because it's always a surprise when they want you to go barefoot or you know, not wear your shoes, right? Bring a pair of shoes that you can leave on site, uh, a pair of crocs. We see a lot. Amber does it.

SPEAKER_01: 29:02

Amber, I was just going to say her little crocs with her little separation.

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

Uh-huh. There's a lot of them. Bring shoes for that house. If make the homeowner pay for the shoes, you can just leave them at the house and use at your leisure. And then leave them there in the closet. So, white when you walk in, you open up their coat closet, put on the shoes, and be done. There it is. That's an easy workaround, but don't by all means, especially now that I know all about waffle stuffing, don't we had to let you guys know.

SPEAKER_01: 29:30

Yeah, we had to bring this to your guys' attention because it is the one thing I don't think well, you hardly hear about it until until you start looking around. Start looking around. I mean, every you know how the algorithm works. Now, next thing you know, so if you want to search, go for it. I didn't want my algorithm messed up. I love where it's at right now. But this had to be talked about. And it's not just like it's for safety, insurance, all the good stuff that running a professional and then what we come across as professional house clean cleaners, as owners, you know. I've I we have stories. We all have stories, every one of us, of things that we've seen. This, I've just now I'm curious. I'm like, hmm. I wonder out of the hundred and plus clients that I have, does any of these guys do this? Well, they can't do that. I yeah. So maybe maybe a little 1%. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 30:45

And so if if you have how many do you have? 120? I uh we're up in the 130s now. Okay, so 130 divided by 30, because we know I can't do math in my head while I'm like this. So 4.33 of your clients.

SPEAKER_01: 31:02

Yeah, no. I just you know, I I I wouldn't put it past it. I deal with a lot of teenagers, a lot of kids, you know. I well, there's accidents and then there's intention. So uh say that. Oh gosh, I'm we're gonna have a talk with my son Bodhi tonight. Make sure that we never you never do that, especially whenever our cleaner's coming over.

SPEAKER_00: 31:26

Right. And I would talk to your cleaning crew about this. Say, hey, I was just made aware of this. I just want to, you know, educate you on what this is in case you were to come across it. And I pray it's I it's just say I pray and I hope you never come across it. It's like when you go through security to get checked into a big sport. Arena, you have to show your bag, and you're like, you're like, so what are you looking for? Well, I hope I never find what I'm looking for. You know, it's just like one of those things. It just just being we all know they're looking for things, but we don't, you know, we don't really necessarily want to be told.

SPEAKER_01: 31:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:59

You're looking for fruit, right? Fruit. You're looking for illegal fruit. Right. So that's that's what we had to share with waffle stomping. Obviously, if you have something to say about this, we'd love to hear from you. We hope that you enjoyed this very short podcast about waffle stomping. Any questions, reach out and Jamie?

SPEAKER_01: 32:21

Yeah, no, I want to tell everybody just comment on whenever this goes out. Give us a five-star review so that we can reach more cleaners like you and get them started on their journey. And let's grow all of us together.

SPEAKER_00: 32:38

Definitely. And be sure to share. If you if you have someone who you think might benefit from this information, share our podcast with them. Yes, please. We love it. Okay, we'll talk soon, guys.

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

Bye. Oh, I gotta find the button.