There Once was This Really Dirty Bathroom..

At this time, I'd like to say a few words about the state of affairs in the men's bathroom at the office in which I once worked. I am not going to flirt around the fringes of this issue. I am not going to pander to the poor mouth managers who insisted that it was being addressed. I will be bold, audacious, and sarcastic, for that it what daily visits to this cesspool led me to.

It matters not the name of the employer. Suffice to say if I told you, you would picture some powerful, professional beauracracy, oft maligned and yet noble minded. But the actuality, as behind stall doors, is that we're all a bunch of poopers. Some of us just do it cleaner than others.

Anyways, this bathroom consisted of two urinals, plus another urinal that was only about a foot and a half off the ground. This made aiming interesting. One's stream should never half to travel over three feet to reach its destination. The splash results are devastating. It's like when you use your hose without a nozzle; your thumb is wedged in there as if you're trying to plug a leak in a dike... Water just spews everywhere.

There also were three customary stalls and one extremely oversized handicap stall. Now I understand that a person with special needs requires a bit more maneuvering room, but you could drive a school bus through there. There was less real estate in my cubicle then there was in that foyer of a room. I don't think you could even call that vast area a stall; it certainly was more spacious than any other stall, be it the bathroom or horse variety. They should have called it an arena. A huge forum for dumps. The Parthenon of Poop.

But it was the cleanliness of the bathrooms that I'd like to draw your attention to. Or the lack there of. Each urinal was graced with numerous, squiggly hairs. It looked like a third shift barber was moonlighting in there, snipping and casting hairs about with passionate enthusiasm. What is it exactly that makes displaced pubes so offensive? Does anyone know this?

The hairs blended nicely with the hardened yellow drops that had affixed the hairs to the white porcelain. Evidently, most of the male employees there had not yet learned the fine art of "tapping." If you permit me to go back to a garden hose analogy: It's the same as that last squeeze of the nozzle after the water has been turned off, which makes certain that everything's out. Or that last press of the gas pump, after you have turned it off, which ensures that you do not drip fossil fuel on your loafers.

Urinal rims were covered with drip mistakes, as well as the floor. There's nothing like having to stand in another male's brine of salty discharge when you have to relieve yourself. When I walked out, my shoes made this suction sound that reminded me of a theater floor. I can let it go when the source of the sound is a smashed JuJi Fruit. Pee? I'm sorry. But what could I do? If I didn't sidle up to the thing, my stream would have fallen short, and we've already discussed that.

The toilets were worse. These heinous commodes were a menace to anyone who dared park themselves. They were low to the ground, broken, and moldy. The hinges that hold the seats on had rusted away, which became a balance issue. I would cover the seat with more paper than the Wall Street Journal, and then I had to concentrate so as not to shift too suddenly.

The floor surrounding them was dirty and sticky. The toilets clogged with regularity. And the backs of the stall doors, if you can believe this, were adorned with boogers. I started to circle them with the pen that I sometimes used when I sat in there and did my crossword. Don't ask my why I did that.

Once, as I was occupying the stall, the adjoining toilet started to overflow. I didn't know if I should cut my business short and risk losing the opportunity at hand, or try to remain steady and finish up with my feet in the air. It's not like I had an ottoman in there. Maybe they should install those footrest loops like on gynecologist's gurney. The water kept coming. Now I know how those outside the Ark felt.

They did provide us with those wafer thin, paper cookie cut outs of the toilet seat to lay down prior to sitting. I used three. The problem with them was that you had to rip out the center part before you sit down. The last thing I needed to be faced with when I'm about to expel an imminent build-up is the challenge of trying to fiddle around with a paper seat cover. But then if you forgot to remove the center, the results would have been devastating. You'd basically be relieving yourself on a trampoline. "Back log" would take on a whole new meaning.

And a brief not on the toilet paper, if you could have called it that. This paper must have been logged from the coarsest, harshest trees in the deciduous forests of Alaska, and then specially sliced thinner than prosciutto at a deli counter. I've never experienced a TP so thin and yet so harsh. I believe it was double ply, but that really means nothing. Double chafe really. And most of the paper got jammed on its way out and tore, leaving you with a square or two max. That just doesn't cut it.

Perhaps for this reason, there was always a naked roll or two sitting outside the dispenser. But I couldn't bring myself to use it. I want to see paper come out of some device that at least, in my mind, partially hides the roll from airborne bacteria. I don't want to feel like some G.I. in the woods trying to make do with a little naked roll and the base of an elm tree.

Of course, the sinks were there for the employees to do their little pretend wash ups. For those of you who think that baptizing your soap-less hands under a few sprinkles of cold water somehow cleanses them, then I feel that it's my public duty, as a clean person, to tell you otherwise.

In order to do so, let me borrow a little info from Wikipedia, which nicely explains the science behind soap.

"Soaps are useful for cleaning because soap molecules attach readily to both nonpolar molecules (such as grease or oil) and polar molecules (such as water). Although grease will normally adhere to skin or clothing, the soap molecules can attach to it as a "handle" and make it easier to rinse away. Applied to a soiled surface, soapy water effectively holds particles in suspension so the whole of it can be rinsed off with clean water."

Thus:

(fatty end): CH₃-(CH₂)_n - CONa: (water soluble end)

"The hydrocarbon ('fatty') portion dissolves dirt and oils, while the ionic end makes it soluble in water. Therefore, it allows water to remove normally-insoluble matter by emulsification."

Don't understand that? That's OK. Please just wash your dirty little digits with soap & hot water and be done with it. I've seen more piggys leave public bathrooms without washing than I care to.

Water flow, of course, was constantly monitored and under the care and keeping of one of those timed, shut off nozzles. The kind that make you rejoice to receive a few droplets of water. As Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out, are employers afraid that employees will simply crank the water on full blast, run out, yell to their co-workers and push each other into the bushes like a bunch of pre-teen pranksters? Can we not be trusted with shutting off water spigots?

Finally, as a bathroom companion, let me tell you about how lucky we were to share our most intimate moments with little, black sewer flies. Yes, SEWER flies. Flies that are born and live in, and around, sewers. Having such a fly in the area is a gauge of cleanliness. A clean bathroom would equal zero flies. And the opposite holds true.

So when I would use the toilet, I would sit on a 3-inch manuscript, with my feet in the air, one hand out to the side to steady myself, and the other holding a can of Raid and trying to establish a perimeter defense around my privates from kamikaze sewer flies.

And management wondered why my breaks were so long.