Loony in the Loo

The office building I work in has a public restroom on every floor. I say "public" because there are no locks on them, so anyone has access to them if they want to.

This never used to be a problem until the Social Security office moved into our building. Not just any Social Security office, it's the Hearing and Review Board office of Social Security. So when someone's Social Security benefits application is denied, they come to our building to appeal the decision. You can imagine that we get lots of different types of people now visiting our building, riding our elevators, and using our restrooms - especially the restroom on the first floor, which is the floor where I work.

I went to this restroom around 8:30 this morning and noticed that of the four stalls in there, all were being used except for one. So I went into the one that was available and as I'm sitting there doing my thing I happened to look down at the shoes showing under the stall next to mine. They were generic light brown suede shoes. I didn't think much of it at the time and just finished what I was doing and then washed my hands and left.

An hour later I had to go again (you know old people go to the bathroom every five minutes) so I went back to the same restroom and it looked exactly the same as it had the first time I had been there: The same stall was available and the same shoes were peeking out from the second stall next to the available one. This time I got suspicious so I stood back from the stalls against the wall and peered under the doors and saw that there were no feet under any of them except for the one set of generic light brown suede shoes.

I went up to one of the closed stalls (away from Suede Shoes) and attempted to open it but it was locked. So I went to the other one and attempted to open it and it was locked too. Locked stalls with no one inside. Hmmm.

I was thinking to myself that this meant that Suede Shoes went into the stall and locked the door and then crawled on the floor to get out and then did the same thing to the other stall - purposefully leaving the stall next to them open and available. That's just downright freaky and weird.

I left and immediately reported the strange person to the bathroom-maintenance lady, which turned out to be a pointless endeavor because she doesn't speak English.

So I told my boss, who called our HR lady, who sent out an email that no one was to use the first floor restroom until further notice.

A few hours later we got an email saying that it was now ok to use the first floor restroom again. Our boss came around and said, "Yeah, it's ok now, he was caught."

Um, did you just say "he"?

All I could think about is that he purposefully wanted someone to come into the stall next to him. And I did exactly what he wanted. Gross!

I'm glad he was caught, but now every time I see someone in the halls I will be looking at their feet, looking for Suede Shoes.

Hopefully we'll have card-readers on our first floor restroom soon, so the vagrants can use someone else's restroom.