The Horrifying Secret March of Human Corruption (and Poo)

The tiny communist on my shoulder has been at me for quite some time to do a post. Okay, to be honest, I don’t know he’s a communist for sure, but he has a hammer and a goatee, so what am I supposed to think?

Anyway, I’ve mostly been listening to the fat guy with the PS3 controller on the other shoulder, but he’s fallen asleep for the moment, so I thought I’d write something just to shut little Lenin up.   

Also, because my topic today has to do with bathrooms, and I’m about one post away from having to rename this blog “Astounding Tales of Toilet Terror,” I was biding my time to see if something less fecal came up, but alas, not the case.

So. Any of you poor souls who have read this blog for any length of time know that I have long considered public restrooms a haven for The Mad. It’s as if the communal waste disposal depot is such an incomprehensible horror that people who enter into it are instantly driven insane, embarking on behavior that would otherwise get them exiled from human civilization. And I’m talking about the men’s bathroom here, folks, though I imagine the repositories of the fairer sex have their own brand of madness and woe. I’ll let my wife do a post about that.
In any case, a review of my top complaints:

1. Urinating anywhere but in the proper receptacle. I have seen way too much splash during my nearly 30 years in civil society. WAY too much. If your quizzical biology somehow renders a single directed stream impossible, sit on the toilet. Do not stand and hope for the best. Sitting to pee does not make you a girl, unless it is one of the 17 toilets situated directly on a ley line.
2. Failing to clean up after yourself. If you leave hair, feces, strange ashy particulate matter (I’ve seen this several times and have no idea what it is), or visible bum-grease on the toilet seat, wipe it off before leaving. I know you can’t remove the bacteria and viruses you’ve undoubtedly also left behind, but please, make an effort.
3. Spitting. Don’t do it. Just...don’t. Yes, I’d prefer you do it in the bathroom to doing it in the hallway, but please. Spitting in the urinal is retarded. Really, it’s proto-human behavior. And the sink? Come on now, we wash our hands there. If you’ve got that much of an excess of snot and phlegm, see a healthcare professional. Or blow your nose. Using tissue paper.
4. Chatting. While sitting on the toilet to pee won’t necessarily turn you into a girl, catching up with your buddies on the sports scores at the urinal most definitely will. Going to the bathroom is not meant to be a social activity any more than sleeping or vomiting is. If the public bathroom is the only place you are able to comfortably connect with humanity, you need to see a therapist. Now.

And, of course, washing your hands. Even if you did sit to pee, and are quite sure nothing moist got on your hands, and are in a devil of a hurry, you *were* in the Realm of the Unclean, so just wash those suckers. It doesn’t take long. If you have a skin condition that causes you to break out in boils when water touches you, wear disposable gloves. And dispose of them. I can’t count how many times I see people walking around the office with dirty disposable gloves on.

*--tangent - I’m eating mixed nuts while I write this, and I just ate what I think was a peanut that looked like a tiny bison skull. It was delicious.--*

Okay, so I bring all this up because I’m in the bathroom the other day, wrapping things up in the stall, when I hear someone stomp in to the bathroom and sidle up to a urinal. There is an overloud sigh, a nasty hacking noise, and some spit. Then someone else comes in.

“Randy!” shouts the man we will soon discover is named
“Dave! We must be on the same watering schedule, brah!” Randy shouts.
“I downed like two gallons of Dew during the call this morning, and now I’m paying for it,” Dave says.
“I know what you mean,” says Randy. It sounds like he’s nodding or shaking his head or something. “I’ve got a keg of agua, a keg! under my desk. Feels like I’m here every half hour!”
*more spitting*
*watery noises I try to ignore*
“You sell that boat?” asks Dave.
“Last week,” says Randy, still sort of shaking or something. “And I made a mint!”
*water noise changes pitch*
“Woah, shoulda worn my waders!” shouts Dave.
*Someone else comes comes in*
“Hey!” says the unnamed someone, who I will call Chester. “Standing room only, huh guys?”
*Chester enters the stall next to mine, leaves the door open *
“You guys on the call this morning?” Chester shouts, way too loud. Something wet speckles the floor near the divider at my feet.
“I was,” says Dave, and a urinal flushes. He does not walk to the sink area, but instead hovers somewhere outside Chester’s stall.
“What did you think about that whole Roger thing?” Chester asks. The speckles under the divider are forming a small pool.
“Eh, not my problem,” says Dave.
Randy’s urinal flushes just as Chester flushes the toilet loudly, possibly using his foot.
“Cha-ching!” shouts Randy. “Owe me a coke!”
“Riiiight,” Chester says. “You owe me A WHISKEY!”
*Uproarious laughter*
At this point, they all tromp off together, giggling, one of them muttering “gotta pay to play, man, gotta pay to play.” Right out the door. Which is to say, no washing of any kind.

So, clearly, I’m traumatized. For therapy, I made a flyer, and hung it up in the workplace bathroom. Here it is: