Tanning Bed Terrors

   People don't seem to get the truth about tanning beds. Just a way to make your skin darker; but I've worked in a tanning salon, and the truth is ugly. If you are truly determined not to stop tanning, you really might not want to read this. But regardless of whether you want to read this or not, I am going to wrtie it. And although you might be expecting another skin cancer rant, I am not even going to talk about that. I am going to talk about the deranged habits of some people, and the fact that if something can go wrong, it will. I am going to talk about piss, periods, and crabs. Happy reading; you've been warned.
   One thing that I hear often is the fact that you can't catch crabs from a tanning bed. Well, while it is true that the UV rays kills them, there are such things as technical malfunctions. Like, what happens if the tanning bed bulbs are not working right, and they do not emit those lusted after skin-darkening rays? Think it can't happen? It did. It has. It probably will again. And we had one pissed off customer and her pissed off husband, and a bed that was undeniably, indisputably infested. We had to take apart that bed and fumigate the entire thing. Personally, darker shin is not worth that to me, but we all know that I have an issue with creepy little crawly bugs that live in hair. I can't see myself surviving crabs. So that leaves tanning beds out for me because I wanna live.
   Okay, so now we have addressed that dread subject, and I am going to move on, because my skin is itching. Wanna know who else gets in tanning beds? Imagine having to go in to work and your main job at work is to wipe those beds down after people have used them. Now imagine that you walk into the room and the bed is covered in red. Guess what that is? Yeah, girls who don't plug it up on their monthly flow. I could never leave a bed like that, but some girls just have no shame. And since all beds are linked to a customer account, we can look at who used the bed last and figure out who left that nasty mess. Some tanning salons allow for walk in tans, and you don't have to have an account, but the place I worked at did not allow that. You had to have an account on file with us, and I think incidents like this were the reason. This woman was notified that if she left a bed in that condition again, we would suspend her account and not allow her to use our beds again, but can you imagine how awkward that conversation was? I'm just glad that I didn't have to be the one to deal with that. There are some places where you really do not want to be a manager, and a tanning salon is one of them.
  Now on to piss! Bet your loving this; this has got to be one of the most nasty blog posts that I have ever written. But working in a tanning salon is the nastiest job that I have ever had, hands down. We had this regular customer, and she would come in and tan and be all friendly, but for some reason, every time she left a tanning booth, that booth would smell like piss, and we couldn't figure out why. People have pissed in the beds before, but this was obviously not happening here. There were no puddles in her bed. I don't know why some people have the urge to piss in a tanning bed, but there are some freaky people out there, and they do this. She was not though, so we couldn't figure out why. For a while, we thought she just had an unfortunate body odor. But we went in and did a complete clean of the room, and we lifted the trash can that was in the room up, and underneath the trash can was a damp spot: a pee-smelling damp spot. She had lifted up the trash can, pissed on the floor, and then put the trash can down on top of it. Are you kidding me?!?!
   I mean, I could keep going. People get really nasty in tanning beds. I am not sure why because these are public places, and what you do in them is not as private as you might think. And these are the real reasons I am never going to get in a tanning bed. Forget cancer, although I don't want that either, the truth of my terror of tanning beds is working for a year in a tanning salon. Those places are nasty. And before you go thinking that I worked in a trashy little place: no. I worked in a nice salon, with the newest beds. These things happened in even an upscale little salon. Happy tanning.