I would like to complain about an aspect of my job, if you don’t mind.

I have certain issues with public bathrooms.  For example, I do not understand how anyone can talk to anyone else while… uh… performing in a stall.  It is literally the creepiest thing ever when people try to talk to me when I’m in a stall– particularly if they begin the conversation by making it clear that they don’t actually know who it is in there.  This is the one way in which I will declare as a broad statement that I don’t understand women; my understanding is that it’s a social hall in there and y’all go to the bathroom in packs.  Sometimes there are couches in your bathrooms?  Is this true?  I don’t get it.  It’s weird and y’all should stop being weird.

My dislike of communication in the bathroom extends to basically creating any sounds of any kind, honestly.  My preferred pooing atmosphere, if you will, is in a completely empty (other than the stall, which should be lockable even though there’s only one) and entirely soundproofed room.  I don’t mind people theoretically being able to hear me pee, but damn if my nethers don’t clamp up involuntarily upon someone else entering the bathroom.  I have to force myself to continue taking care of business if I know someone else is in there, even if that person is in another stall and actively making the noises that I’m trying not to make.

Yes, I know.  I’m messed up.  I admit it.

There are two adult bathrooms at my new place of business.  One of them is a one-seater and is effectively a private men’s room for the office.  That bathroom has two problems:  1) it is directly outside the principal’s office and 2) I am one of only three men who might ever use it, and one of the other two is frequently not in the office, so not only is there a theoretical chance that my boss might hear me in there but if I power bomb the place everyone is going to know it was me.  This cannot stand.

Allow me to continue.  The picture attached to this post is of the two stalls in the other staff men’s room in my building.  Take a look at it for a moment and see if you can see the problem.

Yes?  No?

Okay, let’s be more specific: look at how tall the doors are, and then look at how tall the partition between the stalls is.

I am five feet ten inches tall.  That puts me at just about exactly the average height for a white American male my age.  When I am standing up, which I will be doing when, uh, completing the process of the… uh… process, my entire head is above that partition.  And if there happens to be another man in the stall next to me, and that man finishes at the same time I do, we can look at each other and make eye contact.

There is nothing more horrifying in the entire universe, except for the possibility of an exceptionally tall person (they’d need about six to eight inches on me, I estimate) walking into that stall, because that person would be tall enough to see me just by looking down.  And that would cause horror enough to kill me on the spot and force me to haunt the bathroom for the rest of eternity.

There is nowhere safe to poo in this building.  I need to either massively adjust my diet or get a new job.