Better Bathroom Strategies in the Workplace

Today's topic is the bathroom, or loo, for my UK guests.

More specifically, it's the continuing circus that seems to have set itself up around the bathrooms where I work. Being the Twilight Zone, it simply couldn't be normal.

I'm going to take it on faith that the greater majority of bathrooms in the greater majority of workplaces are managed reasonably well, and by that I mean the fixtures are generally adhered to the walls and one doesn't have to swim to the urinal.

You probably think I'm kidding.

Work has introduced yet another great move forward in Bathroom Husbandry this week with its brand new Temperature Initiative.  If you were to go into the bathroom, you would notice that the heat was sufficient, that is to say it's so hot and dry there that you could hang laundry.  As most of the employees do not do laundry at work (one of the few things they don't do, in fact), the heat is somewhat of a puzzle.

At first I suspected Manglement wanted to make the area so inhospitable that mortals wouldn't want to spend any time there, thus cutting down bathroom breaks.  This was until someone reminded me of what the bathrooms are like normally.  Ok, there's one theory shot.

The remaining theory is that the bathroom is just getting all of the heat that's missing from other unimportant areas of the building, like employees' desks.

Then there's the continuing saga of Business Lake.   There is no official lake by that name but it is the name I've chosen to give to the lake in the bathroom.  It's a body of water that just seems to be there, on the floor, regardless of what else is happening.  We thought it might be the result of a stall overflowing or the urinal that drenches its user, but no.

Recently the lake disappeared, triggering a visit from the Bureau of Land Management as well as Clean Water Act volunteers.  Homeland Security can't be far behind but we're lower on their priorities as there's simply nothing to grope.

We had a urinal.

Ok, to be fair, we have a urinal.  As mentioned previously, it had a tendency to splash water up on whoever was using it.  Perhaps for that reason (but by no means definitely), it was removed from service.  The sign and the plastic bag over it did nothing to dissuade the hardcore bathroom enthusiasts from using the urinal.  Perhaps as a result (but by no means definitely), the urinal was removed.  From the wall and the bathroom.

For a month.

I want to qualify my statements: I have absolutely no knowledge of plumbing.  That said, this must have been some urinal replacement.   When I need something done in the bathroom, I call the local expert (my wife).  When the job exceeds my wife's expertise, we do what everyone else does and call the plumber.  The plumber does what he does to everyone else and doesn't call us back.

We have what appears to be a fully-staffed maintenance department so it shakes the foundation of my being to imagine the urinal issue that could not have been solved in under thirty days.  My head is starting to throb, so I'll drop this line of inquiry immediately.

And I'll head right over to the stall.  The stall holds within its walls a standard-issue toilet (or so it would seem).  It was fairly prone to flooding, which led us to believe that it fed Business Lake.  So at some point, the ubiquitous They closed the stall.  The stall didn't work but the lake was still there.

The stall, much like the urinal, stayed closed for close to thirty days.  We actually got a call from In Search Of, who wanted to do a show on the errant toilet.  Eventually, without ceremony, it reopened.

BUT - GERMS!

I work with an incredibly large population of germphobes.  I noticed antibacterial waterless soap dispensers appearing all over the building with frightening frequency.  It was only after I asked for some desk cleaner and my neighbor brought out this eighteen inch tall can of aerosol antibacterial spray that I knew what was happening: the building is full of people with undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Naturally it wasn't long before the bathroom soap dispensers were replaced.  Not only was the soap antibacterial, the dispensers were automatic.  You only had to put your hand under them to get a premeasured dosage of that lovely and comforting antibacterial goodness.

And when you are done with all this antibacterial madness, you can dry your hands on the paper towels.  You know, the paper towels provided by the automatic paper towel dispenser.  Just put your wet hands under the dispenser and you get a premeasured (for your convenience and safety) piece of paper towel.  There is no word on whether the towel is antibacterial or not.

The white paper towels were ok but in order to save money, they went to the brown paper towels.  Shortly after this point it was discovered that the automatic paper towel dispensers weren't all that automatic.  The towels would get shorter and shorter.  You had to `swipe' repeatedly to get enough towel to dry your antibacterial hands.  Shortly thereafter the dispensers simply stopped working entirely, with an unsatisfying BEEP.

While we were waiting for the paper towel dispensers to be put back into service (hopefully under the thirty day minimum), the antibacterial soap dispensers ran out of soap.

For three days.

So to sum things up, we have urinals and stalls out of service for thirty days and now there are dispensers that require daily maintenance or refilling.  How successful do you think this program is going to be?  Perhaps the evil plot is to stop everyone from using the bathrooms in the first place, in which case Manglement is in for a rather rude surprise.

But don't worry - even if you have to wipe your hands on your pants, you can walk out the bathroom door and use the antibacterial waterless soap on the post outside the door.  And again halfway down the hall.

Breast Pump Baby, it's a Gas Gas Gas

Yes, I work in the Twilight Zone<tm>, where gravity is merely a suggestion; right at the intersection of the yellow brick road and the duck pond.

It was a light and chilly morning.  I was kinda tired and not at the top of my game.  To prevent falling asleep at my desk, I decided to take a walk.  I am beginning to suspect I work in the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder center of Philadelphia, where hand-washing is not only mandatory, it's constant.  And after everyone is done washing their hands, they can feel free to hit the antibacterial soap dispenser and rub their hands some more.  I am looking for some helpful pamphlets on germphobia and hand-washing to put under the dispensers.

So I stumbled out to the kitchen to splash some water on my face and stood behind a coworker.  In my semi-awake state I noticed a bunch of plastic parts on the drying rack.  While washing my own hands, it suddenly occurred to me: those plastic parts look like a breast pump.  This lady was washing out her breast pump in the kitchen sink.

To be dreadfully honest, I have never seen a breast pump in person, but this had somewhat of a genuine appearance.  It was definitely not at the top of the list of things I thought I was going to see this morning.

Guitar Videos and Cat Excrement

It's been a long weekend...  haven't been terribly motivated plus my wife and I seem to be playing ping pong with some sort of flu.  In her, it travels from her head to her chest (lucky flu).  In me, I just seem to feel off (moreso).

So it eventually became about nine o'clock Sunday night when I saw the handy link sent by a fellow guitar player.  This bunch is a surprising lot from all over the world, which meets whenever on the Yahoogroups' Stratlist - a list for guitar players of the Stratocaster variety; but moreso an excuse for six-stringers to chat, share tonal tips, and your mother jokes.

The link was for the angriest guitarist in the world.

I passed.

The next link was for the fifty heaviest songs before Black Sabbath.

I bit.

I don't spend much time on YouTube.  In fact, I only recently bothered to watch a video or two, when I was bored and wanted to play Stump YouTube.  This is a game wherein I think about really obscure guitar players I like and look them up.  I found, much to my delight and dismay, that YouTube really does have a great inventory of guitar players, famous and not.  Unfortunately it tends to take me into the depths of YouTube Oblivion<tm>, where I can dwell for hours.  I showed it to my wife, who was bored one day, and it literally sucked up most of the rest of her day.

It was a dark, but not a stormy evening.... 

It became apparent to me at nine pm that my wife wasn't going to join me for dinner.  Some would say I learn slowly.  Others would say I keep strange hours.  The rest of you who eat dinner at nine or ten would notice nothing out of the ordinary.

The cat (Satan, aka Ren) has been a bit clingy lately.   He's got this whole sibling rivalry going with the dog (Marshall, aka Muppet Paws).  If one of them gets something, the other wants it, regardless of whether he really likes it or not  If you call one, both come.  If you scratch one's ears, you had better be scratching the other's ears.  It has gotten so bad that if a mouse makes it into the house, Ren will chase it and then Marshall will all of the sudden develop a taste for rodent (simply because Ren has it).  I'm not entirely sure what a cocker spaniel can do with a mouse but fortunately the cat's much faster.

When the little monsters were younger, we noticed the house starting to smell like cat urine for the first time.  After a quick trip to the vet, Ren was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection.  The vet explained that Ren was peeing on the carpet because he associated the pain of peeing with his litterbox.  Ok, so much for Feline Logic<tm>.  While we were waiting for the antibiotics to kick in, the vet recommended her foolproof way to keep a cat from peeing on the carpet: lay down a covering of aluminum foil.  Cats hate aluminum foil and wouldn't pee there.  Remembering back twenty years of so, I was at a friend's house, who liked to show me his cat's tricks.  He'd get out a roll of aluminum foil, crinkle a piece, and the cat would literally disappear.  For a week or so.

Sounded as reasonable as anything else, so we, only having owned one cat before, laid the foil over his preferred spot by the door.  The next time we walked through the door, we spotted Ren rolling all over the foil and putting tiny claw holes through it.

Foolproof.

What does this have to do with guitar videos?  I'll tell you....

After having recovered from the Great Urinary Scare, the little bugger developed diabetes. This cost a few grand in insulin (yes, they use the same stuff) and Cat Darts (I had to take a prescription into the pharmacy for syringes).  The good news is that he actually became cured (no need for insulin) but requires special food.

Guitars??????

I'm getting there- hold your horses.

So recently the house started smelling like cat urine again.  My solutions always run along the lines of Feline Aviation.  Being of longer memory, the wife suggested UTI treatment.  As we know, it's sometimes best to let her win, so antibiotics it was.

While you're treating with antibiotics, it is recommended to put up a second litter box.  And poof, Ren started using the box immediately, which was good news.  You're supposed to move it toward the original until it gets close enough to use the original again.  The bad news was that the box was in front of the tv in the living room.  The badder news was that it's cold, so we closed the windows and there's little ventilation.

The worst news is that I'm sitting here, with my solo dinner, and the little bugger has just made use of the facilities.  Normally I wouldn't notice this, as the box is in the back room.  Because the box is in the same room with me now, dinner took on a completely new aroma.

I also got to observe the Bathroom Ritual<tm>, which is beyond fascinating in many ways.  I'm discovering that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder have absolutely nothing on cats.  He can't simply go in the box, no sir.  It must be accompanied by so many rituals I lost count.  First there's the walking around the box.  Then there's the whole burying and obscuring thing (instinct?).  Then there's more walking around, followed by exiting the box.  After the Grand Exit, there's strange walking and extending of the paws, as if they're suddenly straight as a rod and incapable of flexing.  Finally there's shredding of newspaper, which is the bit that put me over the edge.  I can drift during all of the above phases except shredding.  It drove me NUTS. 

He shredded an entire Sunday paper before I exploded.  He simply looked up, as if to say `you talkin to me?' and stopped the shredding activities.  He almost looked embarrassed, if that is even possible for a cat.  It sure as hell is for a dog, especially when people dress them up.  When I become president, I will impose the death penalty on people who dress up their dogs (except for the cold).

So dinner has taken on a new and less exciting complexion, yet somehow I managed.

Between bites and after, I finally got around to viewing the 50 heaviest.... etc.  While somewhat interesting, it linked to much more amusing folly, namely the 50 Fastest Guitarists of All Time.  Now this is something all guitarists can relate to.  Guitar players tend to enjoy speed, even more than long hair, hats, equipment, and possibly women.  The only thing more important to a guitar player than speed is Guitar Faces.  Nothing is a greater sign to the universe that you're serious about your instrument than your Guitar Faces.  If you don't believe me, search YouTube for Robin Trower. 

Told you so.

I strongly suspect many singers today of being closet guitar players.  For example, Mariah Carey can and does sing a million notes a minute, oversinging just like a guitarist overplays.  I understand the classical term for this is melisma, knighting her Melisma Carey.  Best to watch her videos with the sound down.

The problem with rating guitarists for speed is that there's no scientific basis for this.  Recognizing this conundrum, Guitar World went for alphabetical order, a truly wise move.  If they had used any other criteria, the letters to the editor emails would burn up their internet connection.  Guitar players are a rather stubborn, religious lot and you don't mess with their opinions (which they take as fact).

Going through Guitar World's list from fifty to one was truly an interesting experience.  It was done via YouTube videos, with a bit of biographical information thrown in. 

My problem with this exercise is that you get some real speed demons in the list, many of whom I know by name only.  While they truly live up to their inclusion in the list, the `music' is so abhorrent that I can't sit through it long enough to enjoy their playing.  I'm speaking mostly of the thrash and death-metal genres.  I give them points for staying true to their vision but more people would appreciate their talents if they lent them to something more.. ummm... musical(?).

The list included people from before I was born to some of today's hottest shredders.  Truly worth a listen and watch.  Good luck trying to get through some of the less tonally appealing pieces.  One high point was Steve Vai's live performance with an orchestra.  And hate him though you may, I still can't play the stuff Yngwie Malmsteen plays.  And although I don't think Johnny Winter belongs on this list, you have to admire the way the quasi-blind guy gets around in 70's high heels.

And here I am, hours later, wondering what's for dessert and why the place still stinks of cat excrement.   

Perhaps I need an additional job to keep my mind occupied and out of the house.  You will notice that the dog doesn't do this stuff.