The “can you spare a square?” edition

Due to coincidences of calendars this year, many of us have had some or all of the last two weeks off. I myself took 3 vacation days and managed to avoid the office for 12 whole days. I actually like my job and my main regret in going back to the office yesterday had nothing to do with my boss or waking up early – what I dread most is the bathroom.

I have always been obsessed with bathrooms. When I was a child we traveled a lot and the first thing I did upon arriving at a new hotel was check out the bathroom. I think I cared less about indoor/outdoor pools and game rooms than I did about timed orange heat lamps and parallel mirrors that turned my lone arm into a veritable kick line worthy of Radio City.

I have not outgrown this obsession, though I haven’t had much room to indulge it in my New York City apartments – but worse than any of my apartments is my office.

Oh, how I hate the office bathroom, let me count the ways:

(1) Going to the bathroom next to people you work with everyday is uncivilized. I liken it to having to live with someone you don’t know freshman year at college: manageable, but ripe with difficulties and at its worst, a little like SWF. There are certain people I am “on schedule with” – I run into them in the bathroom more than I should. It creeps me out.

I worked at an office once where you had to get a key to go to the bathroom at the end of the hall. This made it very easy to avoid peeing next to someone in your own office, instead you peed anonymously next to someone from another company. I liked that much better.

(2) It’s pretty difficult to soundproof a bathroom and nearly impossible to soundproof a stall. Our Business Office is right next to the bathroom – they play show tunes, pretty loudly, all day long. If you’re new at my company you think the business office is super cool, or pretty dorky, depending on how you feel about show tunes – it may take you a month or two to realize that they are just desperately trying to cover up the noise of their co-workers pooping.

(3) Automatic Flushing Toilets, need I say more? I mean, come on, what is up with these. Are we really that lazy? Can we really not be trusted to flush our own excrement? To make it worse, our auto-flush toilets have a mind of their own. Often they flush as you approach a stall and do not flush until a moment or two after you leave. Also, the water pressure in my office bathroom is enviable by New York City standards, however, if you approach a stall with a soiled toilet and it begins to flush you have to RUN out of the stall to avoid being sprayed with someone else’s urine or worse. The water pressure and random flushing also leaves the toilet seats wet on a regular basis – it’s vulgar, unsanitary and unpleasant.

(4) Cheap-Ass Toilet Paper. For all the money my company must have spent on state of the art self-flushing toilets, they are making up the savings with the toilet paper. I can’t even begin to explain how cheap it is, except to say I am almost nostalgic for the brown squares of newsprint that use to come out of the dispensers in middle school. While some of us bitch and moan about this in low murmured whispers, our toilet paper was officially called into question last month. One of my interns was in the bathroom washing her hands when she heard a frustration rattle coming from the first stall. She immediately recognized the sound as the familiar quest for toilet paper. She knew it well, as we all do – sometimes the roll wouldn’t turn at all, sometimes just a square would rip off at a time – frustration comes quick when you’re in such a compromised position. And then, as if in a dream she heard the voice of her childhood idol ask no one in particular, but my intern, by default, “Is the toilet paper in the place always so crappy?!” It seems Mary Tyler Moore needed a square.

While this simple interaction made my intern’s day, the crappy ass toilet paper, the overactive, auto-flush toilets and the proximity to my defecating colleagues ruins my day on a daily basis. I quit.

This may be a first in a series – if you want to hear more bathroom stories, let us know. If you have some of your own, please share. As I discussed my intention to write this article with someone at a party last week she said “make sure to put in a part about the after-coffee-purge period.” As I don’t drink morning coffee, I don’t know much about this phenomenon, but I’m sure some of you can help us fill in the gaps.

Signed truly, your servant, the girl who will talk about what other people won’t, Poopy McGee.