Get Professional Help!

WHEN IT COMES TO PUBLIC RESTROOMS, you just never know what you'll find inside them. Even if that restroom is contained in the offices of a big corporation. While working a little freelance job recently, I stepped out for a moment to use the restroom. Not the one on the floor I work on, but the third floor bathroom: much cleaner, quieter, less trafficked, far less stinky. And when I closed the door to the stall, I saw this sign taped to the back of the stall door.

Notice the exclamation points. Notice how thoroughly the note is taped to the stall. If you look closely, you can see that it is fully covered in wide, clear packing tape, as if laminated to the stainless steel of the stall door. While I cannot in good conscience take the side of the toilet stuffer, I find it hard to get fully behind the person who wrote the note either. He seems to have a completely different set of compulsions. Not that I'm convinced that either of the participants in this little dance are actually mentally ill, but they just don't seem like they'd be cool to hang out with.

One should also keep in mind some of the weird characters at this particular job. Like the executive assistant on the fourth floor who puts paper towels on her hands to touch almost anything. This same executive assistant also cleaned up a co-worker's messy desk while the messy co-worker was out of town. The messy desk in question was around the corner and completely out of sight. It's not like she had to stare at it. It's more like she could hear the mess calling to her from down the hall and around the corner and couldn't resist going to clean it up.

I feel I should also pass on a story a female co-worker, let's call her Vera, told me. Vera walked into the women's bathroom in this same building and saw that some woman had brought her tray of food straight from the commissary and left it sitting on the counter by the sinks. She was stunned and stared at the tray for a moment until the owner of the tray came out of her stall and said, jovially, "I see you staring at my food! You can't have any." To which Vera replied, "I don't want any of your bathroom food."

Finally, I must add that I once saw a male co-worker (in the unpleasant second floor bathroom) standing at the stall, urinating. While eating an apple.

Mmmm, bathroom apples! Delicious!