File Under: Ew!

Public toilets have always been an issue for me.

I have one rule: Rule #1: #1 only.

At work, each floor has two gender-specific bathrooms and each bathroom has two stalls. Unfortunately, sometimes people have to use the bathroom the same time I do. Yeah, I know! What kind of bullshit is that?

Normally, I’ll go out of my way to avoid being in the bathroom with another person. For example, if I’m walking down the hall towards the bathroom and I see some other lady going in there, I’ll pretend like I forgot something, do a quick 360 and go right back to the office until I deem it’s safe to give it another try. Sometimes, this can take hours.

If I really need to go or just need to get some exercise, I’ll pop into the stairwell, walk up to the fourth floor and go about my business there. It’s taken me two years of scientific study, but I’ve now hypothesized that there are maybe two women who work on the fourth floor, hence making the bathroom up there the Mecca of peeing sanctuaries. And in the off chance that I do end up in the bathroom with a fourth floor worker, I know that they probably won’t remember me anyway and vice versa, since our meetings are so few and far between. (I thought bras fell into a strange subculture, but when the guys at work told me that the seventh floor bathrooms had marble floors and sinks, I knew I was dealing with something special.)

However, despite all my planning and plotting, there are occasions where I find myself in the bathroom with another lady. Different stalls, of course, but still, gross. In the case that I do find myself in such a predicament, I’ll normally just wait for the other person to finish their business and get out before I even attempt to begin mine. Or like last week, when me and a co-worker found ourselves walking down the hall towards the bathroom together, we agreed to leave the sink running as we went and neither of us uttered a single word. The way it should be!

But something really disturbing happened this Tuesday afternoon.

With the hallway clear, I unlocked the door and walked into the bathroom. Unfortunately, the good stall (the little one, not the cold and airy handicapped one) was taken by some lady with brown heels. From where I was standing, I could see that her pants were around her ankles and that she had clearly made herself comfortable.

In keeping with the status quo, I walked into the other stall and stood in the corner in an attempt to wait her out. But about a minute later, I heard a voice. I figured, better to hear a voice than other noises, but still.

The lady in the stall next to me with the brown heels was actually recording her fucking outgoing cell phone message! Ew!

The most bizzaro part of the experience was that she was so unhappy with her first message, that she actually re-recorded it again! And then a third time! And just when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, she actually laughed; which of course made me want to laugh but in a “wow, you’re really fucked up” sort of way.

I really wanted to tell her, “Um, hey lady, when people hear your weird ass echo-y message, they’ll know EXACTLY where you were!” But I declined.

So if anyone out there ends up calling a Ms. Atkins, please note that she recorded her outgoing voice mail message while on the toilet of a third floor building in Sherman Oaks sitting a mere five feet away from yours truly. Good times.