Here Are All the Reasons You Would Piss in a Cup in Someone's Kitchen

He was called in to repair a leaky dishwasher. Instead, service technician and now former federal Conservative candidate Jerry Bance took a leak inside a coffee mug in a homeowner's kitchen, later dumping the contents into her sink.

The incident was caught on a 2012 episode of CBC's Marketplace and resurfaced this weekend. The Scarborough–Rouge Park candidate was quickly retired from the campaign soon afterwards.

Footage shows Bance performing a quick fix on some piping underneath the sink. While kneeling behind the dishwasher, he grabs a mug from inside the kitchen sink and pisses into it. He then calmly dumps the pee into the sink, gives the cup a frighteningly quick, likely insufficient rinse, and puts it back down where he found it.

In light of the fallout, inevitably known as #peegate, Bance dropped out of the race.

"The footage from that day does not reflect who I am as a professional or a person," he said in a statement. "I deeply regret my actions on that day.

Apology aside, Bance has yet to offer an explanation for his behaviour other than mentioning a vague "health situation" that required an "emergency decision," so VICE came up with a few reasons a grown man might piss into a mug in a stranger's kitchen.

Medical problem
Let's start with Bance's claim that the sudden urge to relieve himself was indeed the sign of a medical problem.

Jacqueline Cahill, executive director of the Canadian Continence Foundation, told VICE his actions could point to overactive bladder (OAB).

"If you need to go to the bathroom you have to go immediately, like within seconds or a minute."

But, Cahill, said most people with OAB would be very aware of their condition, and would likely be sporting "absorbent products."

"People with incontinence are aware of where the toilets are," she added. "And to blame his dirty behaviour on incontinence is tarnishing the condition and the people who have it."

Ain't Got Time to Pee
Long drives are the enemy of a full bladder, which is likely why touring musicians and truck drivers are known to relieve themselves in 2L bottles, milk jugs, Ziploc bags, etc.

There's even a song about it.

Washington State reportedly had a "trucker bomb" epidemic, with cleaning crews collecting thousands of jugs of urine along the roadside a year, prompting authorities to up fines for "littering."

Just as truck drivers and touring punk bands are pissing in containers to save time, maybe Bance is such a a sink-repairing machine and he has no time for regular people bullshit like using the toilet. You know what is not happening when you walk to a bathroom and pee in a toilet? Kitchen fixin'. If he charges by the hour, he's actually saving the homeowner money by not taking that long walk in the hallway.

Diss
Did Bance drop trou and unload in an act of passive aggression?

Stranger things have happened. An Ohio postal worker, who was reportedly jealous of his colleagues, was sentenced to six months in jail in 2006 and fined $1,200 for regularly pissing in his office coffee pot and watching others down the unsavoury brew.

And just last year, a Virginia man was ordered to pay $5,000 for pissing in the coffee pot of a co-worker he disliked.

"I done something I am very much ashamed of to a co-worker for [reasons, which are] stress-related [and] things going on in my life on and off the job," the latter, a waste water plant employee, told the court. "I am very much ashamed of my stupid and childlike behaviour."

You spend a day on your knees fixing other people's shit and try not to piss in their cup.

Plumbing trick
This theory is a little far-fetched (editor's note: Nah), but perhaps this was one of Bance's old plumbing tricks.

I mean, prior to making the repair, he asks the homeowner: "It doesn't drain? Does it leak or anything?"

So maybe, pouring a warm mug of urine down the drain was just his unconventional way of finding an answer to those questions.

Apparently, baking soda, boiled water and vinegar can be used as a DIY version of Drano. Who's to say pee doesn't work just as well?

When we called a plumber to ask this very question, he hung up, so it could be an industry secret.

Sleepwalking
A friend of mine is a well-known sleep-pisser, though only when he's wasted. One time, he woke up and peed all over a pile of his girlfriend's clothes thinking it was the toilet. Another friend ended one of her birthdays trying to collect her sleepwalking boyfriend's urine in a basin.

People can essentially do anything in their sleep—fuck, murder, or get into dangerous accidents.

Going by that scale, if Bance was actually asleep when the video was taken, he's actually kind of a hero for still managing to fix the drain.

Confusing layout
Did the homeowner not give him a tour of the place beforehand? Maybe this was one of those strange houses where there's no ground floor bathroom. Out of respect for the homeowner, maybe he did not want to intrude by going upstairs to use a bathroom there. The baby was sleeping or there was a scary dog up there, perhaps. The poor man may have been out of options.

The Long Con
After years of budget cuts at the hands of the Conservatives, who is to say that Bance wasn't actually a CBC double agent, and that they were saving the footage for a long weekend three years later so that people would have something to talk about when they were stuck in traffic on the way home from the cottage.

Can't you just picture Peter Mansbridge twirling his moustache (he has one when he's being evil) and saying, "You piss on the CBC, we piss on your campaign!"

We can.

MacGyver Move
He is so good at his job he turned a coffee mug into a toilet.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.