There Is Nothing Restful About the "Rest"room

I conquered my fear of awkward bathroom encounters early on when working in my new office. Two years later, not only am I able to go to the bathroom alone, but I can also participate in bathroom conversation without it being completely and totally awkward.

All this progress will soon be undone.

Why, you may ask?

New office neighbors.

Here are some quick office stats of people to bathroom ratios:

Prior to office construction:
Amount of women on my office floor: 20
Amount of women’s bathrooms: 1.
Total women’s stalls: 4
Women to stalls= 5:1

During office construction:
Amount of people on my office floor: 15
Amount of women’s bathrooms: 1.
Total women’s stalls: 4
Women to stalls= 3.75:1

After office construction:
Amount of people on my office floor: 75
Amount of women’s bathrooms: 1.
Total women’s stalls: 4
Women to stalls= 18.75:1

Lets pause and reflect on those numbers for a moment. There will be four times as many women using the same number of bathroom stalls.

First of all, that is absolutely repulsive. I could be sharing a stall with 18.75 women, if not more, when I was sharing with a maximum of five prior to their move in? Insert germaphobic, “do they make personal anti-bacterial toilet spray that I can prior to my every use?” anxiety here.

Secondly, I will never be alone in the bathroom again, meaning stage fright will be in full effect. If you are a girl, you know what I am talking about.

Lastly, this completely undoes all of the work I have done in order to avoid awkward bathroom conversations. Now there will be new people, and lots of them. There is no way to avoid 50 new women prancing around our office floor. Hopefully they will learn office bathroom etiquette as follows: you are new, I am not, this is my stall, please pick another one, okaythanksnicetomeetyou. I am hoping my soon-to-be new neighbors learn this rule relatively quickly so that all will be harmonious in the 3rd floor women’s bathroom.

Another easy solution would be for them to simply use the rest room on the fourth floor, completely alleviating any problems for us diligent workers on the third floor.

Ultimately, I will end up retreating to the vacant second floor, where I can pee, wash my hands, adjust and stare at my blemishes in the mirror without worrying about Nancy, the new administrative assistant, watching me. Here is to me making life even more difficult for myself, even after conquering the initial fear. Sigh.