’They Were All In The Bathroom,” How An Epic Diarrhea Storm Ended This Year’s Saab Owners Convention

Every year for the past 42 years, the Saab Club of North America has gathered to celebrate all things Saab. This year’s owners’ convention was supposed to be no different. Hundreds of cars traveled thousands of miles—sometimes crossing international borders—to be at this year’s venue, a Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey. In all, over 800 people are estimated to have attended.

The four-day festival, which took place July 16-20, seemed to go off without a hitch. On the first day, drivers took their cars to Pocono Raceway for a Saab-only HPDE event. Then on Thursday, owners convoyed to Liberty Park, New Jersey to hop on a ferry to Ellis Island for some sightseeing. On Friday and Saturday, the Saab faithful got down to business, buying and selling rare parts through vendors and attending “SAABinars,” where experts coached curious minds on the ins and outs of various repairs and upgrades. Sounds like a place where I’d thrive, and I don’t even own a Saab.

It was only on Sunday morning, when organizers began packing things up, that anyone noticed something wrong. Shelly Baxter, president of the Saab Club of North America, told The Autopian, “On Sunday, [there were] a lot of young [adults] coming up going, ‘Shelly, I don’t feel good. And my response was, ‘Did you drink enough water in between the alcohol? How late did you stay up? Did you eat enough food?'” 

There was a good reason to ask these questions. The night before was the awards banquet, a three-and-a-half-hour-long food-and-drink party where awards had been handed out. Baxter simply assumed some of the younger crowd continued to party into the night and was feeling the after-effects. Except there was something far more sinister afoot.

“The heat was pretty bad, so I played mama bear, not realizing they’re genuinely sick. By about the fifth kid that came up to me, I realized we had a problem. By about the 20th person that reached out to me, I realized we had a real problem. By the end of it, over 200 people had gotten sick.”

The Smell Must’ve Been Revolting

“Sick,” in this case, meant diarrhea. Lots of it. The scene Baxter describes sounds like something out of a horror movie (or comedy sketch, depending on your type of humor). She told The Autopian that plans to pack up the convention and head home were delayed by hours simply because no one could leave the toilet:

When we went to close down on Sunday, not a single one of my board members could be found. They were all in the bathroom.

The hotel ran out of toilet paper on Sunday in the men’s restroom.

Normally, we would have left around 1 o’clock on Sunday. We did not leave the facility until 6 o’clock, and there were tons of people that were staying overnight because they could not leave.

It was one of our best conventions in recent history, and it will forever be remembered as Poopsippany.

Baxter says several attendees missed flights and had to call out sick to work. Later that Sunday, on the way home, she and two of her employees stopped for dinner. According to her, they were too traumatized to order a normal meal.

We went and we sat down at Longhorn Steakhouse, with my young guys that worked for me. They didn’t order real food. One got a bowl of soup, and one got a hamburger—at a steak joint. I was like, ‘What the heck?’ He was like, ‘I’m terrified.’

So What Exactly Happened Here?

Let’s get this straight: I’m no medical expert. But I know when a bunch of people get similarly ill while doing the same things in the same area, it’s usually because some sort of outbreak has occurred. Thankfully, the Parsippany Health Department and the New Jersey Department of Health have already done the heavy lifting.

They’ve been on this case since the incident occurred, going as far as to work with Baxter to send a survey to all 591 pre-registered attendees. If you were on this list, you received the following email:

Hello SCNA,

I never expected to send an email like this to all of you. The health and safety of our members is our priority. We are cooperating with a health investigation into the unforeseen, unfortunate illness that occurred at the Parsippany Sheraton during SOC42.

You may have received an email from the New Jersey Department of Health asking for information. It is up to you if you want to share. Many of those who attended have not received an email so I’m sharing the link below.

The best way to ensure everyone who attended has access to the link is to reach you here. If you did not attend SOC42 you are not being asked to do anything. If you attended (with symptoms or not) please share your information.

Sharing your information will help the investigation. As we find out more facts we will let you all know. This was a part we did not anticipate. We appreciate all the heartfelt thank-you notes, the memes, but our only concern at the moment is the health of our members.

Keep on Saabin – Shelly

And here’s what the health department found out:

Of the 306 individuals who responded, 152 reported illness. Most of the illnesses were diarrheal and typically lasted days. There were no reported hospitalizations.

Testing revealed Clostridium perfringens bacteria collected from one attendee. It is likely that this bacteria was the cause of the outbreak. Clostridium perfringens bacteria are a common cause of food poisoning in the United States and most often associated with foods cooked in large batches held at unsafe temperatures. No subsequent illnesses tied to any other events held at the hotel have been reported to date.

There you have it. Going by the department’s findings and the timing of everyone’s extended bathroom breaks, it’s likely the contamination occurred around the time of the awards banquet. It’s also worth pointing out that more people likely got sick than the department reports, since about 200 more people showed up on top of those that were pre-registered, according to Baxter.

Who’s At Fault For This Literal Shitstorm?

In my conversation with Baxter, she avoided blaming the Sheraton in Parsippany for the outbreak, despite also revealing that every group meal consumed during the convention was served by the hotel. She mentioned that both the local and state health departments told her they absolved the Sheraton of any wrongdoing. I’ve reached out to both departments for confirmation.

Despite that decision, Baxter is still fighting the hotel for compensation on behalf of the club and its affected members. She’s retained legal representation and hopes something can be resolved that makes up for what happened. “We’ve gotten other people involved to try to help us make it right with our members. That’s my goal,” she says.

A spokesperson for the Sheraton / Marriott hotel group did not immediately respond when reached for comment via email. When I called the hotel itself, a representative told me the general manager was “out for the day,” and declined to comment on the incident.

A Common Love for Saabs Saves the Day

As Baxter mentioned, the diarrhea-induced delays set off a cascade of scheduling issues for members. But instead of making a big stink of things (sorry), attendees made the best of the situation, sharing jokes and helping out fellow members in need. While on the phone with me, she recounted a selection of clever messages sent from members while they were fighting for their lives on the toilet:

Hello Shelly, you always do a great job. Unfortunately, the toilet paper didn’t.

I’m sorry you had to deal with this shitty situation at the Sheraton—SSS instead of SOS.

I can’t leave, and my wife’s expecting me home in two hours, and I can’t get up. If I try to stand up, I’m just going to have to sit right back down!

On a more serious note, Baxter told me about one younger member who missed his flight back home over the enshitification of the night, and couldn’t afford to rebook. But because Saab people are so nice, another member swooped in and laid down the cash.

He had scraped together every dime he had to be able to show up at the convention. So somebody had to step in to help him—another Saab owner. So somebody paid for his hotel room and bought him plane tickets home, because he missed his plane.

Baxter hopes to reimburse that heroic Saab enthusiast after things are settled with the hotel. She also hopes this toilet-filled debacle won’t leave a lasting stain (sorry, again) on the Club’s reputation going forward.

“To have our national convention end on such a sad note—I hope that’s not what we’re remembered for,” Baxter told me. “I think I would like for people to remember all the good stuff, you know?”

Lead Illustration: Jason Torchinsky