IT’S A PIG STY IN HERE, SAY ANGRY FIREFIGHTERS
HAMMOND, Louisiana — Local firefighters were left scrubbing up muddy footprints off the concrete floor at Hammond Fire Station #3 as polls closed Tuesday evening after a rainy day in which voters failed to wipe their feet upon entry into the polling center.
“We’ve never had a problem using this fire station for elections,” said Mayor Mayson Foster, “but I think this time around voters were a little insensitive and bad-mannered.”
The firefighters say they intend to implement a new policy in which voters will have to take off their shoes—regardless of the weather—before entry in into the station.
“From now on, I don’t care how clean or dry your shoes are. Take them off before you enter,” said Assistant Chief John Abagublio, who revealed that throughout the day he constantly had to ask curious voters lingering around the station not to touch things that didn’t belong to them.
Abagublio said the city will have to cover the replacement cost of at least four plastic tables because volunteers failed to use coasters for their drinks. As for the folding chairs the volunteers negligently used as foot stools, “they can be recovered,” Abagublio asserted with optimism.
The volunteers, mostly senior citizens, have denied the claims made by the Assistant Fire Chief, but Mayor Foster reluctantly admitted that even he had witnessed a number of volunteers smoking inside the station, using a voter registration card as an ashtray, and flicking cigarette butts into a small pile behind one of the voting machines.
1 year ago