Monday 16 February 2009

territorial pissings....

If you'll pardon the lowering of the tone (and there are very few places where what I'm about to say wouldn't lower the tone, and I'm pretty sure that the ones where it doesn't are not really places that people like you or I would tend to frequent)..... it never fails to amaze me quite how disgusting the gents toilets can be.

I'm not talking about those dank squat affairs that you still occasionally find in places like rural France, South America or Africa. Oh no. When you're travelling somewhere remote, a disgusting toilet is pretty much par for the course. After all, hard though it may be to believe, there are still many toilets in the world which aren't systematically cleaned on an annual basis, nevermind on a twice daily basis, and one or two don't have access to fresh running water. I know! No, I'm talking here about the toilets in the head office building of a large, very well known and, you'd imagine, pretty cleanly company. People around here don't generally wear flip-flops and sarongs and have large back packs and horrible dirty white man's dreadlocks; they have neatly cut hair and tend to wear stiff-collared shirts, smart trousers and, more often than not, a tie. There isn't a shortage of clean, running water here. In fact, we have hot and cold running water on demand, and all of the toilets around here are connected to the sewage main and have flushes and everything. There's soap too, and occasionally those little pineapple cubes of bleachy freshness.

So how come they're so disgusting? And they are, let me tell you, utterly revolting. What does it say about the men who work here that we allow these toilets to get into such a state, even when they are all cleaned twice a day? I can understand that, how to put this, sometimes things can come out at an unexpected angle, but I fail to see how that would mean that you might miss a urinal entirely and spray the products of your mecturation all over the wall tiles and the floor. And why spit your chewing gum out into the drain? And am I the only man who doesn't feel the urge to pick my nose whilst standing at the urinal? Is there some kind of unspoken rule that the product of this nasal exploration should be smeared onto the wall next to where you stand?

It's even worse in the cubicles. Is it too hard to lift the toilet seat up before having a piss, or is it no big deal to spray your mark all across the seat and the floor? Is it really? And if you are planning a, shall we say, longer stay, is it really asking too much that you might consider flushing, or even that you might pay a bit of attention to where you are leaving your deposit (no, trust me, the seat is not the right place)? Is it wrong of me to expect that anyone leaving a cubicle might pause to wash their hands with the soap provided before heading back out into the office where they presumably then smear their microscopic particles of shit across everything that they touch? Or that, actually, a small smattering of water sprinkled on your hands after pissing is not really the same thing as spending an extra ten seconds doing the whole thing properly and using a dash of soap? Hell, when the people who do wash their hands throw their used hand towels onto the floor rather than into the bin, perhaps I should be grateful that more people don't wash their hands, else I might not be able to open the door to get inside in the first place.

Quite how people feel able to wash their coffee mugs in here, I really don't know.

Ick.

8 comments:

  1. I didn't realise we worked in the same office!

    We too have a nose-picker and the cubicles are a dangerous place to visit.

    I'll confess I don't use soap when I wash my hands, mainly because the stuff they have here tends to strip the skin from my fingers (awww, I'm sensitive, shut up) but I do thoroughly wash them with roasting hot water (another office 'trick' that one, where the hot water appears to have come direct FROM THE FIRES OF HELL!).

    I won't even start on the state of our office kitchen. Ohh look, you say, some had noodles, and someone else cut a tomato and someone... GAHHHH CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES!!!

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  2. Be grateful they're not still p*ssing in the sinks!

    Des

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  3. Des - well, a couple of the plugholes are surprisingly coppery....

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  4. Your post made me think of a sign in a German restaurant out here in the bathroom...

    http://www.peotonebierstube.com/images/BathroomSign.jpg

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  5. You'd think women's toilets might be better, but in my workplace at least, they're not. I'm always amazed to see women come out of the loo, put their lippy on, and then swish off without washing their hands. Urgh. I'm possibly the other extreme, and am rarely to be found without a small bottle of hand sanitiser about my person somewhere...

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  6. ...contact lense wearer though Cat. Regular eye infections will do that to you, eh?

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  7. One aspect of the work lavvy habits I loathe is having to do a number two while seperated by a mere 10mm of melamine. You sit there thinking "dare I make a noise?" while the other co-dumper does his business and finally FKS OFF so you can poo in peace. And you're right, usually they don't even wash their hands, damn dirty apes.

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