One thing I won’t miss about the office is the bathroom situation. And it’s a situation.

Our new office is in a building with several consulates, so we have a lot of security. Our office could probably function with minimal security, like a lock on the door for the few hours in the middle of the night when even the die-hard workers need to sleep for 3 hours.

I tried to take a bike to the office the other day and no go. If you don’t have a photo id don’t even think about going in the lobby. That goes for bikes too.

There are a few other offices on our floor and we all share a bathroom. The men’s room has a few urinals, 3 stalls and a spacious sink area. I’m not taking anyone’s word for this. I checked it out myself. The women’s room has two stalls and an itty bitty sink area. Apparently it all harks back to when women weren’t allowed to work in the office, so no need to give them a bathroom.

There are at least 50 women working on our floor at any given time. It is not possible to enter and exit the bathroom without encountering at least one other if not 5 other women. The toilet paper holders can’t even hold enough toilet paper to get us through one day.

The other day, I exit the bathroom and a maintenance guy is waiting to enter and refill the TP. He’s waiting for a moment when no one is in there. Another woman walks up. He gestures for her to go in. I tell him,

“You might be waiting awhile.”

He nods and sighs. He probably does this everyday.

AND the bathroom is locked. You need a key to get in. Not only do you need a key, but the key for the bathroom is different from the key to our office. Plus our office only has 3 bathroom keys. Our building is so secure that even if you manage to slip your bike past security, it still can’t go to the bathroom.

Germ-wise not much grosses me out. Bathroom keys are cringe worthy. I make a point to leave the key by the sink, as do many of my colleagues. Although some people like the key so much they take it in the stall with them.

It’s one thing if that were their own personal key, but they’re going to pee/poop touch the key and then leave it at the front desk for the next lucky person.

I head to the bathroom for one of my final office bathroom visits. Might as well have been the finale. My coworker heads in before me. She takes the key in the stall.

A few minutes later she starts grunting and groaning. Then explosive bodily noises follow. More grunting. More explosions. Then when it seems like she couldn’t possibly moan anymore she erupts again and yells,

“F*CK!”

I wash my hands, head back to the office and try not to think about what’s going to be on that woman’s key now. I tell my friend at the front desk.

“So I was just in the bathroom with So-and-so.”

“I know what you’re going to tell me.”

“You know what I’m going to tell you? You don’t know what I’m going to tell you.”

“So-and-so was blowing up the bathroom?”

“YES! How’d you know?”

“She does it everyday and she’s not shy about it.”