Potty Talk
You know how, if you work in a building where you are forced to use the public bathroom in your corner of the institution, you find yourself bumping into some of the same people who share your "pee schedule?"
I'm thinking, usually after you have been at work for an hour or so, after your coffee kicks in and makes itself at home in your system, you naturally find yourself on a somewhat consistently timed pee schedule- therefore excusing yourself to go to the restroom around the same times every day. Of course, other people existing in your little daily grind ecosystem from throughout the general area of the building will experience the same, and it is inevitable that your schedules will coincide from time to time.
Enter...the "pee buddy."
I'm not one for small talk in the bathroom with strangers- I try not to acknowledge strangers in the restroom with anything more than an inadvertent polite nod or holding the door open for them if eye contact should be made or the situation calls for it.
Honestly, I hate having pee buddies. I find it to be very awkward. It's not like it wouldn't be weird to introduce yourself and establish some kind of off-the-wall camaraderie with one another after two or more encounters, unless something came up to force you to cross the stranger boundary (such as an emergency tampon request, which I have done before. That equals instant friends for life).
It's so quiet in small public restrooms. It's especially stale when you and your pee buddy find yourself going in one right after the other and no one else is in there. All of the timing is so in sync that simultaneous fly unzipping and pin drop silence being broken by pee streams are both almost too funny and unnerving for me to handle.
Then there's the unintentional pee race. Who's going to finish first? This is one situation where I personally don't care to win. In fact, I try to time it to where, unless they are obviously camping out in there, I finish last so we don't leave the stalls at the same time. This way they are already finished and have washed their hands and left by the time I need to emerge to wash my hands and check the mirror. I prefer to do the mirror check when no one else is around. I'm sure most of you would agree.
Also, what is one supposed to do exactly when confronted with a pee schedule "buddy" outside of the bathroom? I was put in the awkward situation of going to Payroll one day not long ago, only to find a former pee buddy of mine working the front desk.
Shit. Of course you don't verbally recognize this fact, you instead just do the odd, "knowing" tight-lipped sheepish smile thing and pretend like you've never seen one another in your life.
This particular pee buddy had farted one day when we were in there (very explosively too I might add, not just a frog ribbit) and all I could think about when she was explaining to me how my contract writing would be reflected on my paycheck was the fact that I had one time heard her rip one with reckless abandon.
It was AWFUL. The whole situation was AWFUL. I was mortified for both of us and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I never saw her in that bathroom again. I think she started using the one downstairs and I am thankful for that.
Since women always seem to want to flock to bathrooms with their girlfriends for social time in their out of work lives, why is it so difficult to make friendly with unfamiliar women who all but become your surrogate bathroom girlfriends in the workplace?
Maybe I'm just really unfriendly and the reality is really that most women out there have no problem with making small talk in the bathroom with Jill Jane Jones from down the hall. I'm imagining your more bubbly sorority girl types have the gift up gab that stretches all the way into the loo.
Not I.
