A salon owner in Iowa says her dreams of running a successful business are being clipped by a mystery man who keeps stopping by her parking lot to vomit.
Marissa King says a “parking lot puker” has been showing up outside her Maven hair studio in Urbandale, Iowa, since June, and she still doesn’t know why. The man pulls up in a white sedan, opens his door, vomits on the pavement and drives away, she says.
“This is by far one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever experienced,” King told local news station WHOTV. “Never did I think with opening a business that I would have something quite like this to deal with.”
King spent several years working in other salons before opening her own business in 2018. Now she worries that her serial spewer is creating too much upheaval for her customers.
“He started to come around to where our clients enter and exit their vehicles, and a lot of them started to take notice,” King said. “A lot of them thought that somebody actually dropped a pizza.”
The barfing bandit appears to have left several circular stains on the pavement outside King’s salon.
King doesn’t know who he is or why he’s targeting her salon, but she’s seen him several times now.
“It was starting to get excessive, multiple days in a row,” she said.
King set up a security camera to record the vomiting vandal’s behaviour. The footage shows a man pulling up in a white sedan, opening his car door and vomiting beside the car. He then closes his door and leaves.
Urbandale police say the man could face criminal mischief or trespassing charges if King chooses to pursue legal action.
“I sympathize if he has any sort of medical condition,” she said. “I don’t want him to get in trouble, but I have to look out for my business and our customers, and it just needs to stop.”
King shared a lengthy Facebook post about her struggles last week, in which she wrote a letter to her “Parking Lot Puker” asking him one friendly question: “WHY?”
“I feel like we’ve connected somehow, yet I don’t know anything about you except that you eat and drink on the weekends,” she wrote. “I also thoroughly enjoy cheeseburgers, pizza, beans and rice.”
King used the post to suggest a few other potential puking sites, including a grassy area across the street and a car wash next door.
“You’re obviously not traditional, so I won’t even mention the obvious such as driving to your house and vomiting in your own toilet,” she wrote. “How boring!”