EggsOverEggs

Public Restrooms and Other Things That Bother Me

This post is intended mainly to be about things that annoy me.  From the title you might be able to tell that it will focus mostly on public restrooms and more specifically: my contempt for them.  That being said I would like to take a moment to follow up on my last post regarding Karma. I mentioned toward the end of the post that it had been kicking my ass and all that good stuff.  Well it still is but I don’t really care anymore because something amazing happened shortly after I published that post.  One of the acts I mentioned which may have had something to do with me being affected with bad luck was my interaction with a mentally challenged person on the telephone.  I won’t dive into the details again but I can assure you I feel sorry for what I did.  Well about two days later I got a call from another retard, working for the same newspaper.  I jumped all over the opportunity to redeem myself for my previous antics and was more than polite to this hard-working person in our telephone conversation.  I listened to everthing she had say and calmly and seriously told her that although we appreciate her call we have no need for the New Haven Register at this time.  I hung up the phone feeling downright proud of myself.  I had found my lost patience and social tolerance and summoned them at the proper time.  I exhibited maturity and control and felt all the better for it.  After all that, I couldn’t help but think about how odd the coincidence was of such a similar person calling from the same company just days after I wrote about how bad I felt about the first one.

I know if you didn’t read the previous post this doesn’t make much sense, but I felt as if I needed to share this bit of info with the casual reader nonetheless.  Now onto the topic at hand. 

There are some things in this life that just annoy me to no end.  The number one pet peeve of mine is public restrooms.  I don’t know if it was my upbringing as a child, my time spent in college where for four strait years I used only public restrooms (the ones in my dorms included), or the fact that I’ve become increasingly pee shy every year since I was six, but I have grown to absolutely despise public restrooms.  I know that shitting and pissing is a natural part of the lives of every single human being on the planet, but there is just something that grosses me out about it.  I don’t like to discuss it with other people, and I firmly believe that it’s something that should only be done in the privacy of one’s own home.  I’ll make an exception for urinating.  That’s OK to do in public.  But number 2 should simply be held in until you get home.

Every morning, around 11:30, I walk into my office bathroom to piss, and I am immediately hit in the face by a wall of stink caused by someone’s “hangover black” shit.   I’m not  saying that it’s just from one person in particular.  It very well may be, but more proabably it is a collective of a dozen or so very different very distinct shit odors.  The mens room in my office building is shared by four other offices with an estimated total of 50-100 males.  The mens room has five stalls and three urinals.  Invariably, no matter what time of day I walk in there, there is someone taking a shit.  I don’t know if it is poor ventillation or just the fact that these people are dying slowly from the inside out, but I have never smelled worse smelling shit anywhere on the face of the earth.  I’ve never been inside a two-weeks-dead camel, but the smell, I would image is comparable to or slightly less offensive than the smell on the inside of the men’s room in my office building.

Aside from the smell (which causes me to gag so frequently that my abominal muscles have been worked into a six-pack) I have never experienced such a poor display of bathroom etiquette.  There are certain rules of conduct which I feel should go without mentioning, but apparently there are some people who are so absorbed in themselves that they seem utterly incapable of observing even the simplest of the unspoken rules of the restroom.  For instance: there are three urinals in the restroom at work.  One of them is built lower to ground which is so necessary what with all the midgets and children who work in my office building.  It should go without saying that if I’m standing at the far right urinal and the other two are open, the far left urinal should always be the next one occupied not the middle.  This will create a sort of invisible barrier.  The separation of at least one urinal’s width is an easy way to protect one’s personal space or “comfort zone” which I feel is important especially when my hang is exposed to the world.  It is amazing to see just how many people are incapable of observing this rule.  On several occassions I have been the first to the bank of urinals and moments later someone will stand right next to me and use the middle one.  As long as the stream has already begun, I’m relatively ok with this, but if it hasn’t, and there is someone standing right next to me, it will never get started.  There have also been a few occasions in which I and another person will walk into the restroom at the same time and that other person, when faced with an empty row of urinals, will go directly for the middle one.  I find this rude, offensive, and downright unbelievable.  That’s like the guy saying “hey come stand right next to me.  If you’re lucky I’ll stare at your dick the whole time and maybe piss on your shoe.”  The same thing goes for the actual stalls in the restroom.  To me, there is just something not right about two guys taking a shit a foot away from each other.  It grosses me out and I don’t partake.  I don’t know maybe that’s just me being crazy, but I really don’t understand why that’s socially acceptable.  And my God the smell!!!

Aside from urinal/stall positioning and offensive odors, it is my opinion that restroom conversation and any chatter of any kind should be kept to a bare minimum.  When I am using the bathroom, be it for number 1 or number 2, I am focused on getting in and getting out as quickly as possible.  I cannot have a “stop and chat” at the urinal with the guy from accounting who clears his throat so loudly and frequently that the rest of the office knows him as “throat clearing guy”.  A simple exchange of pleasantries is as far as I’m willing to take a restroom convo.  Most of the time if I see someone I know in the bathroom I offer a nod of ancknowledgement and continue on my way.  A typical restroom conversation for me may go something like this:

Co-worker “hey Mike did you catch the end of the Sox game last night?”

Me “No.”

Co-worker “Papelbon’s right arm fell off at the shoulder and struck Derek Jeter in the mid-section.  The Sox subsequently lost the game 4-6.”

Me:  I don’t say anything.  I just finish drying my hands and leave.

If someone ran into the bathroom while I was taking a piss and said “If you don’t pull this needle out of my arm for me I will die in the next thrity seconds”, I would glare at them and continue urinating.  Bottom line?  Don’t talk to me in the bathroom.  Whatever you have to say can wait until we are done evacuating unusable waste products via various orifices of our bodies. 

I’m going to end this right there.  I know was supposed to mention various aspects of life that annoy me, but apparently all I wanted to do was touch on my disgust for public restrooms.  There will be plenty more opportunities for me to talk about all the other stuff that pisses me off.