On the morning of November 7, the Monday before Election Day, employees of the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder's office were greeted at their City Hall quarters by "debris and suspected fecal matter," the Examiner reports. More habituated to assessing and recording property records, the shocking and gross discovery has led to serious cleanup efforts and an investigation into the incident, which involved a break-in.

As carpets are shampooed and marble floors and staircases sanitized, the Public Health Department has also tested debris left by the intruder or intruders for E. coli. “The sample was analyzed in two ways," that department wrote yesterday, per the Examiner, "it was analyzed microscopically to determine the components and it was tested for fecal coliforms and E. coli, as there were concerns that it was ‘manure’ or pure fecal material."

The good news: "We are informed, based on the results, that it appears the material was soil which contained very low concentrations of fecal material. Thus exposure to this material would be similar to working with soil, which often has small amounts of fecal contamination."

TL;DR version — someone was trying to start a garden in the Assessor-Recorder's office?

As Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu wrote in another email, “While it cannot be ruled out that the sample contained some fecal matter, the concentration of fecal matter would be very low.”

Shortly after the incident, on November 10, Chu wrote that “It has been a tough week for many” adding that “we also understand that staff may feel unsettled when incidents like this happen.” She noted that "The Sheriff’s Department has been conducting walk-throughs of our office after hours. In their walk-through, they have brought to our attention that a number of our first floor windows have been left unclosed and unlocked.”

City Hall is typically closed over the weekends, open only to municipal workers. However, in anticipation of Election Day, with early voting at City Hall, the building was also accessible to poll workers and the public. Anyone entering the building would nonetheless be subject to security screenings and bag searches, as is the typical protocol.

In any case, following those test results from the Public Health Department, we can definitively conclude that the week of the election was real shitty.

Related: Interactive Map: Syringes And Poop Have Spiked On SF Streets, Says Annual City Report