Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Travel | Tags: adulthood, Bathrooms, concerts, entertainment, etiquette, health, manners, parenting, travel
We live in a society governed in part by laws of decency. They separate us from the animals and White Supremacists, and people should follow them to keep human grossness down to a tolerable level.
Which brings me to Port-O-John (POJ) etiquette.
Look, I get it – nobody wants to be in the Abyss of Nastiness, much less touch anything. I can remember having to take my kids in them and shrieking “DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!” This usually ended with me holding said kid by the armpits over the hole while they tried unsuccessfully to do their business in the most awkward way possible.
The other night I was at an outdoor concert, and bless her heart, somebody (I’ll call her Chicken Little – explanation below) just did not follow what I consider to be good POJ etiquette. After waiting in the ridiculously long line for the few POJs the women were using (the men were using a POJ trough that was infinitely faster), I finally got to the front of the line and opened the door.
Now Girls, I know our Mamas told us not to touch anything and to line the toilet seat with toilet paper so we wouldn’t get some God-awful disease, or worse, pregnant, but you can’t do that shit in a POJ in the dark. First and foremost, nobody can tell if you were merely being cautious (hooray for you – Mama would be proud), or if you’re covering up something nasty. Nobody coming in after you can afford to make any assumptions, especially at a concert where there are copious amounts of drunk Millennials.
When I opened the POJ door, Chicken Little had spread a lot of toilet paper haphazardly about. Maybe she had attempted to line the seat, and thought the seat was three feet around and crawled up the wall, but there was toilet paper on the floor, on the wall and stuck to the door handle. It looked like a bunch of used Civil War bandages had gotten caught in a time machine.
No way in Hell was I going to even attempt to hover near that mess.
When I brought this up to a couple of friends, there was a surprising variety of opinions about female POJ etiquette.
My friend, I’ll call her Laura, admitted to lining the seat, AND putting extra paper down the hole to prevent splash back. That was something I hadn’t even thought of…nor have I ever been in a POJ where the contents were so full as to have that issue. So, I deem shoving TP down the hole for that reason is acceptable. Note to self: don’t travel with Laura.
Another friend asked, “But what if you aren’t physically strong enough to squat?” Well, that’s why they make the Elvis Handles – you know, the places on the door in front of you where you grab on with your hands to help you balance. Note to self: keep working on squats at the gym.
So here are my Rules for Using the POJ:
- NEVER retrieve anything that fell in the hole – seriously, no phone is worth it. Besides, how awesome would it be to call it whenever someone’s in there? Even better, get an old phone and put a funny voicemail message on it.
- Leave your phone/drink/purse outside with a friend. You don’t want to use any of them after being in that Cave of Satan.
- If you forget and bring your beer in there with you, don’t leave the bottle/cup in the urinal. Somebody’s job is to reach in and get it – do your best impression of a man cleaning up dog poo: leave it on the floor and walk away.
- If you must line the seat because you can’t squat or you’re still scared your Mama will find out, it is up to you to put the toilet paper that lined it into the hole when you’re done. Again, that’s somebody’s job.
- Toilet paper is not a sticky note – it has no place on a wall or door handle.
- Feminine products: wrap ‘em up like a bad burrito. Nobody wants to look at that.
- Banging on the POJ while a friend is in there to scare the crap out of them is perfectly acceptable.
- Banging on the POJ when a stranger is in there is still hilarious but you’d better be able to out run them.
- Tipping someone over in a POJ is NEVER okay.
- Check your shoes for toilet paper – or tell someone if it’s stuck to them (unless it’s your friend and you’re laughing to hard.
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Posts, Travel | Tags: adulthood, air travel, airlines, airplanes, airport security, airports, Bathrooms, flying, humor, security, subourbonmom, travel
The day President Obama announced he was officially asking Congress for permission to actively combat ISIS, I was flying home from a work conference. The plane during the flight from Charlotte to home was one of those old, outsourced planes from Canada, or maybe some company called Metal-Tube-in-the-Sky Airline. There were two rows of seats (and those felt like the old plastic covered couches in Grandma’s house) with a very narrow aisle.
About halfway through the flight, the flight attendant came on the loud speaker and said, “Please do not form a line by the bathrooms. It is a security breach.”
A few of us glanced at each other and shrugged. There was some rustling, and I assumed people were returning to their seats. A couple of minutes later, the flight attendant spoke again, this time more urgently:
“It is a breach of security for passengers to congregate by the bathrooms. Please wait until there is no one in line before you come back to use the restrooms.”
Incredulous looks passed around the cabin. Security breach? At the bathrooms?
Here are a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind while I tried to decide how long I should wait before heading back there:
First of all, I’m pretty sure folks weren’t “congregating” around the airplane bathroom, just chatting each other up—after all, it’s not a bar.
Second, what happened to make someone think congregating by the plane’s bathroom could create a security situation so dire it must be forbidden? Have the FAA and Homeland Security folks ever used the bathroom on a modern plane? There’s barely room to get your pants down, much less withdraw a weapon; and, even if you did manage to extract some kind of weapon in the bathroom, having a line of people waiting outside would only hinder what you were trying to do.
If I were to have some kind of concealed weapon, I wouldn’t be getting it ready it at the back of the plane, far away from the two most important people on the plane, the pilot and co-pilot. There’s not much sense in drawing a gun, knife or explosive device and then having to charge down the aisle, tripping over someone’s feet the whole way.
If we follow the logic of the danger of congregating outside crowded bathroom areas to its logical conclusion, we would have to question every line at every sports and concert event ever. Good luck dispersing the six-pack-in throng around the port-a-pods at a Jimmy Buffet concert.
Perhaps someone at the FAA has gone back to the basics of physics—maybe they are worried that if you have enough people standing at the back of the plane, it could simply fall out of the sky. If you’ve ever flown on a tiny plane, you’ve been made aware of weight distribution. They put the luggage in the back, and people in the front and middle. Too much in any direction, and the plane is in danger of not taking off, or tumbling to the ground–like those GI Joe’s with the plastic parachutes we threw from 2nd-floor windows as a kid.
Really, a bathroom security breach sounds more like a blow-out after eating some highly-questionable tuna salad from the airport snack stand. So, to the FAA and Homeland Security, I salute your efforts to keep us safe in the skies—clearly there are dangers we haven’t even conceived of. Keep up the good work.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: adulthood, Bathrooms, children, human resources, humor, kids, office etiquette, office humor, preschool, subourbonmom, toilet paper, toilets, work
Working at my Big Girl’s job has brought to my attention the fact that preschool bathroom rules are not the same as Grown-Up Office Bathroom rules. While we recently moved offices and now have private bathrooms, our previously public bathrooms illuminated several differences (and some creepy similarities):
- In a Grown-Up Office Bathroom, you don’t need to worry about someone who is 3-feet-high squatting down, looking under the stall door and talking to you about her Hello Kitty Halloween costume.
- Grown-Up Office Bathrooms do not have step stools tucked under the sinks so you can reach the soap.
- It’s not cool in Grown-Up Office Bathrooms to chat with your co-workers while you pee; in preschool bathrooms, this is usually the ONLY time you can chat with your co-workers about what’s going on.
- Grown-Up Office Bathrooms do not have signs reminding you to sing the Happy Birthday Song the entire time you wash your hands—weirdly (and often incorrectly), it’s assumed people will wash their hands without reminders.
- In Grown-Up Office Bathrooms, it is assumed that everyone knows what the little wastebaskets on the side of womens’ stalls are for. In preschool bathrooms, many things can be found in these baskets: Legos, Tinker Toys, Barbie heads, and pretend cell phones, to name a few)…
- In Grown-Up Office Bathrooms, no one will ask you to help them wipe—if they do, it’s definitely time to get to know your HR Department.
- In Grown-Up Office Bathrooms it’s also not cool to take the stall immediately next door to the person who’s already in there—apparently not everyone is comfortable with the knowledge that the person next to them is probably evaluating how badly they had to go. (You can’t un-think it, can you? You’re always going to wonder now if that’s what they’re thinking as you let it go.) In preschool bathrooms, you rarely get to leave the room, so when you pee like you’re a miniature Niagra Falls, everybody knows why.
- Which leads me to similarities: all public bathrooms have the thinnest toilet paper on the planet, that breaks off square by square. After several frustrating tugs, you’re left holding what looks like handful of lottery tickets with the consistency of peeled skin, instead of a satisfying and reassuring wad of toilet paper.
- Sometimes, your body is kind enough to forewarn you that things are about to get pretty nasty. Most workplaces, whether it’s for adults or children, have at least one bathroom that is far enough away from the others that you can go (run) to when that unfortunate day happens; however, re-entering the world often involves a walk-of-shame, especially if the hidden bathroom had someone else waiting to use it.
- All women’s public bathrooms, no matter what the median age of the users, seem to have at least one toilet that all of the women use who can’t aim when they squat.
Whether you’re five or fifty-five, bathroom rules are simple:
Clean up your own mess (that includes the seat);
Give others their space; and
Provide and/or properly use the right tools for the job.
If we all do this, no one will have to put up signs like these:
Subourbon Mom 