We have a woman here that weighs a quarter ton, and the summer months are so unbearable that she has a fan set up under her desk aimed directly at her crotch.

seriously.

So get this, before reading this post, I got some junk email from a female co-worker who thought this was funny enough to pass along... needless to say, I didn't laugh very much. I trashed it after reading the first 2 paragraphs. (as a compete aside, this woman is in a horrible marriage situation, is a fervent Bushie/Republican, and has a severely depressed son who dropped out of highschool... explain to me again why she felt the need to send this to me?? Are we friends?)

TOILET-SQUATTING EXERCISE CLASS

My mother was a fanatic about public toilets.

As a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she'd instruct, "Never, never sit on a public toilet seat."

And she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But by this time, I'd have wet down my leg. And we'd go home.

That was a long time ago. Even now in our more mature years, The Stance is excruciatingly difficult to maintain when one's bladder is especially full. When you have to "go" in a public bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there. So, you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling politely. And you finally get closer. You check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is occupied.

Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. You hang your purse on the door hook, yank down your pants and assume "The Stance." Relief. More relief.

Then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold The Stance as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale.

To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. The toilet paper dispenser is empty. Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on that's in your purse. It would have to do. You crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.

Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work and your purse whams you in the head. "Occupied!" you scream as you reach out for the door, dropping your tissue in a puddle and falling backward, directly onto the toilet seat.

You get up quickly, but it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had enough time to. And your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly,
"You don't know what kind of diseases you could get."

And by this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged to China. At that point, you give up. You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a Chicklet wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.

You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point. One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River!

You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly, "Here. You might need this."

At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited his bathroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you. "What took you so long?" he asks, annoyed.

This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.

This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public toilet.

And it finally explains to all you men what takes us so long.

Geezus. Kill this thread.

That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever actually read all the way through.

You owe me five minutes of my life back.

Thanks to you, I was able to avoid actually reading it.

And jesus, D, why would she send you that?! Ugh. There needs to be a good term for people who propogate wack-ass chainmails.

I make my visits into our bathrooms here as brief as possible. Unless it's an emergency, never before lunch. If I'm 3/4 through the day I'll just freakin' hold it.

Steve

Too bad my Mom would probably fall victim this term. She sends me stupid shit through email all the fucking time. But rather than get all pissed off about it and tell her to stop, I just delete em and move on.

But she never sends me shit this stupid.

I love the fact that as a man I can

1. pee standing up
2. hold it through an entire workday till i get to the comfort of my own home
3. f*ck

yeah, #3 doesn't really have alot to do with being a guy, but it makes me happy all the same.

It's not a life-threatening issue, but it sucks when that's ALL they send you, ala e. lowe. You're right, dude never responds to actual emails, but sends wacky fart jokes every other week.

It is good to pee standing up!

My pet peeve: dawdlers. Yes, get to the bottom of the escalator and then roam around like no-one else has to get passed you. I'll run your ass over.

We have 2 sets of bathrooms at my work. There are separate men's and women's rooms downstairs with one toilet each and then upstairs there's a woman's room (one toilet) and a men's room (3 urinals, 3 toilets). My pet peeve is when someone takes a shit in the bathroom downstairs. Can't you fucking walk upstairs and do that? Now everyone that wants to just take a piss has to smell what was in your fucking stank-ass.

Also, there's some dude with the worst b.o. ever that goes in the downstairs bathroom before he goes home every day and he's in there for like 15 minutes. I really want to install a camera in there and find out what the stinky fucker is doing all that time.