I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

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I'm at work and I really need to use the toilet, but I can't muster up the will to go because a gigantic fat man who works in my office just went in there and I worry that he has created a foul stench within. (He is a systems administrator of dubious personal hygene.) I am considering walking down a few flights of stairs to use the bathroom on a separate floor.

I'm just wondering if I'm the only one who has this kind of anxiety. Often I'll specifically avoid using the bathroom any time after certain people have used it, simply based on potentially ill-founded assumptions about their bodily health and hygene practices. This seems like something that must occur frequently within the corporate world.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:28 (twenty-one years ago)

No, I'm quite the same. I also have trouble pooping if I know other people are just in the room, washing their hands or whatever, since I know that the sound of turd-hitting-water is really repulsive if it's not your own.

― x j e r e m y (x Jeremy), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha, yes.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I am the same also. I quite often use the loos on IT's floor because hardly any women work there so in my perception (if not in reality) they are highly likely to be (a) unused since they were last cleaned and (b) deserted. I like to believe that the toilet seats are up from the last time they were cleaned, not because male IT boffins are sneaking in there because they're too lazy to go to the men's on the other side of the building. it's true dammit!

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, sure enough I went down there and found that the guy not only left a terrible smell but the toilet unflushed also. Of course, I can't be sure it was him but I'm fairly confident this is the case. (such things have only started happening since he came to work here a couple of weeks ago)

I had to go down two floors to the nearest other male toilet. Bah.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:37 (twenty-one years ago)

what joy it was to find out the floor above my office was vacant, but the janitorial staff still cleaned and stocked the bathrooms up there, and left everything unlocked. this became my person bathroom until one day when I walked in on someone taking a foul dump. that was the end of that.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I have crapped in many toilets around the land, and if your gas was the color green then you would faint from the horror. Clouds of gas!

Have you ever lit a fart?

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Also I figured out the location of the cleanest male toilet in Melbourne using similar logic to yours, Gem. It's in middle of the Lingerie department of a large department store. Every time I've been there it's been spotless.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

(and no I'm not telling you which store, Melbourne ilxors)

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Some turds are like C4. I blew the hinge off a toilet stall once with a ball of my own crap.

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Since I've moved XC to Los Angeles I've had to make a huge number of corrections to my behavior, to more acceptable and local custom. Most notable of these is limiting my use of toilet paper and size of excrement to align with the crummy water-saver toilets they have out here.

― x j e r e m y (x Jeremy), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

fuck, this thread is sooooo timely. i just had a bad experience.

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I work on the bottom floor of someone's house, which is better and worse. Better because there are no fat guys to leave a stinky poo. Worse because if my poo stinks even a little bit abnormally, I'm awfully worried about what people will think.

― Tonight at ten (kenan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:41 (twenty-one years ago)

oh dear, poor gaz.

when i have executed my plan for world domination, i'm going to have an office with an ensuite that nobody will use except me. it'll be great!

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:41 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost - how do you define abnormality of poo stinkiness?

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Usually logs smell better than sprayed diarrhea.

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The usually is troubling.

― x j e r e m y (x Jeremy), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

i was at the trough...the TROUGH! nowhere near the stalls. and there was a feverish scratching sound in one of the stalls - like a couple of big rats having a fight. and there was a stench that...that...i couldn't finish. i staggered out and almost threw up.

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

...

― x j e r e m y (x Jeremy), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:46 (twenty-one years ago)

That's awesome!

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:47 (twenty-one years ago)

hahahaha rat's scratching? what?

i heard the DG's secretary (who is a nice gentile and quite elderly lady who wears court shoes) do an absolute cracker explosion of a fart one day when she followed me into the loos, louder than one of my dad's (unheard of). she wasn't the least bit embarrassed either, when she came out to wash her hands she asked me whether i thought the dockers would win on the weekend.

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm shit-shy, too - if I know someone is in there, I can't go in and do it.

Thankfully, the gross girl I mentioned on the poop and pee humor thread seems to have left the building, cementing my theory that it was the bitchy little filipina girl.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Once at work, I went to the toilet to piss, but as soon as I opened the door I choked from the stench.

I put my nose under my collar to survey the damage. Somebody dropped some serious ass!

There was a gargantuan log that was easily 8 inches in circumference. But the length was at least 14 inches!
I could not see one end of the turd! It rose from the water and was next to the lid where it was broken off!

There was no toilet tissue in the commode either!

My co-workers took photographs. It clogged up the toilet when flushed.

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 04:59 (twenty-one years ago)

You ahve GOT to be at least exaggurating.

― Tonight at ten (kenan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not! It's true! That's the largest turd(human) I've ever seen! But it is not at all the nastiest thing I've seen in a bathroom!

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Spare us.

― Tonight at ten (kenan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:05 (twenty-one years ago)

ewwww. imagine being the plumber that had to sort that out.

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Some part of me really wants to know, but can't bring myself to ask.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Everybody has "shitting at work" anxiety -- there are even "How to shit at work" joke emails that make the rounds once in a while.

Me, I wait until I'm alone in the bathroom before starting, and if another stall is already taken, I leave and find a different bathroom.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:06 (twenty-one years ago)

OK. This is the second-nastiest bathroom episode I have witnessed.

This was in Yosemite. At a gas station restroom.

I walked in a the smell was terrible. I pinched my nose because I needed to urinate very badly. I finished business at the urinal, but I had to see what I smelled, so I approached the stall.

There was a toilet with shit caked around the seat! At least an inch high all the way around! It was like a pad!

To top it off, someone wrapped Saran wrap around the seat to hold the "cake" together!

I nearly vomited! From disgust and laughter!

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:20 (twenty-one years ago)

dear god.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Were digital cameras not invented then? Damnit man, we need proof!

― Tonight at ten (kenan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:59 (twenty-one years ago)

noooooo..... i don't need proof of that

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 06:06 (twenty-one years ago)

it does sound kind of hilarious, though.

― Tonight at ten (kenan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 06:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I love threads like these.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Thursday, 9 September 2004 06:46 (twenty-one years ago)

it's a great equaliser, the poo joke, don't you think? everyone loves poo stories

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 9 September 2004 06:50 (twenty-one years ago)

There seems to be a lack of British ppl on this thread (until now). Is this coz we do not feel comfortable discussing this subject and are prudish about it, or just the timing of the thread? Hmmmm?

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Is there any chance that this thread could be erased completely?

Then I must go and kill myself.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Melodramatic response from Dr C.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:35 (twenty-one years ago)

The Gigantic fat man of the original problem was probably just as afraid to go to the bathroom for fear of leaving a godawful stench. But he got over that fear and dropped one.

Though the catch22 of public facilities is that I only use them when I REALLY have to because they are skank. Which I think is the same for a lot of people, and why the places are always SO Awful.

― Craig Gilchrist, Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I am ever so bashful when I go to the loo. If someone is already in there when I go, I have to walk out. And WTF is up with ppl sitting in the next stall in complete silence. I mean what are you doing in there???

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:43 (twenty-one years ago)

They're waiting for you to go away, so that they can let rip with a real flock of starlings, of course.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 9 September 2004 07:51 (twenty-one years ago)

either that or they are very constipated. Or they are skiving.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Why don't you ask them what they're up to? Maybe you should start chatting so you all feel a bit more relaxed.

― NickB (NickB), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:03 (twenty-one years ago)

ppl often use their mobiles in the loo here.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I work in a converted stately home, there are plenty of grounds to skive in & besides, it's a softare company, you can skive at your desk!!

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I work in a converted stately home

I am suddenly very jealous of PinXor. Working in a stately home sounds fun. Bet they have posh loos there tho, with gold taps on the basins and everything.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:12 (twenty-one years ago)

And a guy to dry your hands.

― Craig Gilchrist, Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah right! We do get to see a lot of wildlife here, which somehow makes the day better. Looking out the window & seeing a family of deer has that appeal for me! Still gold taps you say, f@#k off!

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Looking out the window & seeing a family of deer

I want your job. :-(

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Trust me dude, you don't!! :-)

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Robster has little fluffy bunnies and herons and things outside his office. All I have is students and junior doctors cluttering up the square. Grrr.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:26 (twenty-one years ago)

really? this excerpt

$dbh->do("delete from RADUSAGE where USERNAME='$username\@$domain' and TIME_STAMP='$unix_timestamp_start'") or $errorlog .= "Could not insert stop record for $username at $date\n";
$dbh->do("delete from RADUSAGE where USERNAME='$username\@$domain' and TIME_STAMP='$unix_timestamp_end'") or $errorlog .= "Could not insert stop record for $username at $date\n";

from a script written by someone else that I'm debugging says otherwise. :-(

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha, well if anyone is a software developer & wants to work in Cambridge, then I'll give you a referral sure. ~~not that I make money out of this or anything!~~

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:28 (twenty-one years ago)

students and junior doctors sound more interesting than cars, which is all there is outside this office.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but the gents and the ladies alternate sides on different floors in this building. So on the top floor where I used to work I had to turn right and now I have to turn left. Proof of how much I'm on auto pilot rather than looking at the signs comes from when I moved jobs and started to work on the first floor where several times in the first week I had my hand on the wrong door and on one occasion opened it a bit before realising my mistake. thankfully I never went in.

And if you think that I would know once I was inside then that's not necessarily true coz the gents here have just cubicles and no urinals.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 08:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I'd hate to have to use a urinal!!

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 09:19 (twenty-one years ago)

there is a restaurant here in Oxford which has urinals for women (it happens to be the closest restaurant to my house).

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 9 September 2004 09:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Glasto style!

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 9 September 2004 09:29 (twenty-one years ago)

At my last job I regularly used the elevator to go to the floors with fewer men on them whenever I needed a sit-down. Once on the fifth floor somebody spotted an empty, discarded bag of doritos or something in one of the toilet stalls, implying that somebody was having a little snack while they took care of business. DEAR GOD.

At this job I haven't figured out where those floors are but there has been at least one recorded incident of TURD ON FLOOR in the facilities nearest our office so I'll be finding out, quick.

Nice thing about this place, the urinals flush with a foot pedal.

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:13 (twenty-one years ago)

College students sometimes clean up after themselves. And sometimes they don't.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I hate using the work toilets on a Monday morning. All four cubicles are pretty much in solid (or a bit runny) use from 9am until lunchtime. I put this huge surge in usage down to every man in the building evacuating a weekend full of beer and kebabs. The smell is so bad you can't even go in for a piss.
I usually end up taking the lift up to one of the floors that has hardly any men working on it.
I freak out if a toilet seat is warm, that "someone else's bum was just here" thing is just too much.
I passed my boss once as I was leaving the toilet and he went into the cubicle I'd just left. This had me feeling queasy for hours.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Many do not flush shit because they want to show off their work.

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:50 (twenty-one years ago)

i have no work shit anxiety whatsoever...i have no anxiety about shitting anyplace and anytime. I am Captain Turds. I do hate it when you have to take one next to someone though, not for the anxiety but for the sounds and smells that waft from the stall.

― Velveteen Bingo (Chris V), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I've also noticed that on top of the urinal, ON TOP OF IT where you flush...there has been a enormous pile up of short and curlies collecting there which I find completely gross. Who pisses in this thing Sasquatch? Either that or the short and curlie monster has got the biggest bush in the world.

― Velveteen Bingo (Chris V), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Hahaha.

I bet I can outshit you, Velveteen Bingo, aka Captain Turds!

― Crap Bootie, Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

We're one hell of a bunch of great big girls about going to the loo (me included, shy bladder an' all).

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

'Girls'??????

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Drives me nuts when girlie-girls act like they don't crap. You know the type -- they get all squeamish and start shrieking at the suggestion of pooping. I want to grab them by the neck and scream "You shit and you know it!! YOU SHIT LOTS. AND YOU *LIKE* IT!!" (This may or may not be because I suffer from complex intestinal issues and can't stand it when people act like it's some kind of alien body function.)

― Je4nne ƒury (Jeanne Fury), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

For some reason I find talking about turds far more revolting than the things themselves (assuming they are not rubbed in my face or something).

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 9 September 2004 17:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Glad you laid out the assumptions there, Alba; I was getting worried.

― Dan Perry '08 (Dan Perry), Thursday, 9 September 2004 17:54 (twenty-one years ago)

just imagine if it was an alien body function though. what if you never had a shit in your entire life, and then one day it just happened. well you'd rightfully be pretty disgusted and probably want to kill yourself. it's all about perspective.

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 17:56 (twenty-one years ago)

i also do not suffer from any sort of this anxiety. i often shit at work, i like the big disabled peoples stalls the best because theres a lot of room to spread out and the seat is way high up. plus there's a railing to hold on to.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:20 (twenty-one years ago)

also, when i lived in my old apt, the bathroom at work was cleaner and less scary than mine at home, so it was actually a joy for me to shower and shit at work.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

The girls from downstairs will come up and use our second floor women's rest-room. I try to pretend that I don't see them for their privacy, but yesterday, the business manager paused with the door open and waved hello to me with her copy of USA Today.

I need to just shut the door to my office, right?

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm never sure about the walking in the door etiquette... (the restrooms on our floor are across the hall from one another). Do you speak to the person entering the restroom opposite the one you're entering, or do you just both put your heads down and close the door behind you as fast as you can? Mostly I don;t talk, but a couple times, the guys have stopped to talk to me, and it just feels a little awkward.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:27 (twenty-one years ago)

my boss is in a wheelchair and makes a mess of the restroom. the guy in the office
adjacent to mine drinks several coffees with whiskey in them every morning and when
he goes to the bathroom there is a succession of violent splatting noises. the other
office on this floor is occupied by a man who, whilst at work anyhow, eats only cheese
smothered french fries.
i'm not especially dainty but i mostly eat salads at work and often shit politely and with
no menace. this means going upstairs to a bathroom with thin walls where there is a gay
man in the office adjacent to the restroom whose opinion of me as a sexually desirable
person sinks nearly everyday as he knows what i'm doing. that's what i imagine anyway.
i'm not gay but for some reason it bothers me that he used to be sort of flirty with me
until i started shitting in his bathroom.
that bathroom is also used by a lawyer who has a closet full of computer keyboards
because he often throws them against the wall in frustration. i would imagine that
his bowels are in great disrepair.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:33 (twenty-one years ago)

often shit politely and with no menace

is my new favorite phrase.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

God, I want to mail the URL of this thread to Robert Fripp. He's such a fastidious little twat that he comments in his online diary about people who clear their throats in his presence.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

seven years pass...

Some people have a categorical fear of bathrooms in old high rises. I like those toilets in those old buildings with the old elevators - the ones that are tucked in a corner and are stocked with old fashioned products and smell like industrial cleaners.

No fear.

What's worth being afraid of is when you attend a party and the host's toilet decides to "crap" out on you when you use it. You start to wonder if you're cursed. Then you sneak into their basement for a plunger, etc.

― โตเกียวเหมียวเหมียว aka Bulgarian Tourist Chamber (Mount Cleaners), Wednesday, 18 April 2012 19:09 (fourteen years ago)

i'm taking your word for it on this one

― Aimless, Wednesday, 18 April 2012 19:12 (fourteen years ago)

One day in a mall bathroom I found a stall, the walls of which had been sprayed with feces. I can testify to the force of power diarrhea, but what sort of angle does it take to achieve that sort of distribution?

(Are there scientists who study the physics of crapping?)

― challoped potatoes (j.lu), Wednesday, 18 April 2012 19:18 (fourteen years ago)

Crapologists crap crapulously.

― Cheggers Plays Populous (snoball), Wednesday, 18 April 2012 20:09 (fourteen years ago)

five years pass...

I have moved from an office that was "one at a time" single use bathrooms to the sorrow of a building with urinals and stalls. I hate it. I hate peeing with a person next to me and the other function is even worse.

― Rabbit Control (Latham Green), Monday, 2 April 2018 19:40 (eight years ago)

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