I stopped at McDonald’s for coffee on the way home from work today, if that tells you anything about my day.

You may recall this post about my issues with the bathrooms at my current place of business.  If not, I recommend reading it; it’s funny, in a terrible godawful why did you tell us that sort of way.  If not, allow me to quote myself, if I may:

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.

It is my prep period.  I am in my office frantically trying to get some of my own job done before I have to go do someone else’s for a while.  I have, as it happens, already had a cup of coffee this morning.  Now, for most people, coffee is a diuretic.  For me, it has rather more… substantial effects, if you know what I mean and I hope you do.

…

Coffee makes me shit, is what I’m trying to say here.

So, yeah.  As it works out, both of the other men in the office are not currently in the office, meaning that I can basically do whatever I want in My Other Office with no worries.  I become aware of Impending Pressure and head off to do my business.

Meanwhile: the assistant principal is next door.  We have recently had a very serious bullying issue on one of our buses that she’s been straightening out, and she’s been using varying levels of severity depending on the level of insistence of the various children involved that they had nothing to do with it.  As it turns out, there is video.  Fairly a lot of video.  So each and every one of these lil’ motherfuckers is busted; it’s just a matter of how long they’re gonna lie before a hammer gets dropped on their heads.  The kid currently in her office is being very insistent that he’s done nothing and said nothing and at the moment the AP is simply sitting there calmly categorizing his lies for use later.

This will, as it turns out, not go well for him.

So, back to me: I’m doing my business.  I’m doing quite a lot of my business, as it turns out, and it occurs to me partway through that I ought to be really glad that there’s no chance anybody else is gonna be trying to get in here anytime soon.

I finish.  I wash my hands.

Thank God I washed my hands.

Because when I open the door, my assistant principal is standing immediately outside the bathroom, with the student, who has clearly spent my entire time in there bawling his eyes out.  I do not know how long they have been waiting.

“Go on in there and clean yourself up,” she says to him.

I have two choices at this point.  This bathroom ain’t fit for human habitation, and there is  no escaping the fact that I am the one who has ruined it.  I can either admit it and suggest that the boy use the ladies’ bathroom (which, much like ours, is a locking one-seater) or I can just shrug and let this boy enter into the bowels (see what I did there?) of Hell, where the sulfur in the air will surely blind him before he’s able to wash the tears from his face.

Instead of doing either of those things, I just died of shame on the spot.  This will be my final post; it is being typed by my spirit, which will remain bound to that bathroom for all eternity once I hit “Publish” on this post.

You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes, y’know?