The office I've been spending most of my time at lately is about five minutes from campus, a mid-seventies research park owned by Stanford that is in sore need of updates (or of a "tear it down and start over again" update, let's be honest). One of the biggest bugbears with the space is that the bathroom on the floor I work on is a two-stall situation - one with the toilet and sink and all right in the stall, and one where you wash your hands outside the stall itself - this is relevant, I promise!
The key issue is that my workgroup is heavily dominated by females - a circumstance I definitely need to discuss further here at some point, because it's the first time in my professional life that that's ever been the case. And for a group that is at least 85% female, a two-stall situation just isn't enough. Especially when colleagues of mine take up one stall doing the weirdest things. All of these situations have happened in the nine months I've worked here, and it's gotten so hilarious and left me so incredulous that I had to document it just for shits (hahaha bathroom humor!) and giggles:
- Giving oneself a full blowout, complete with curling iron action
- Doing a series of sun salutations, yogic breathing and all
- Having a parent-teacher conference - flipping frequently back and forth between Mandarin and English - about one's son's poor reading performance
- Listening to a "Bachelor" podcast, without headphones, while (I presume) doing one's business
- Facetiming one's dog and dog-walker to supervise the afternoon walk of said dog
- Trying on tops that were delivered to the office rather than one's home
- Having heated debates across the two stalls about the methodology used to value digicurrency
- Painting one's nails - with a fast-drying polish, which apparently makes workplace manicures acceptable
Writing all of this down - and I'm sure I've missed a few things just out of forgetfulness - has me giggling to myself in my cube...highly necessary as I stare down the barrel of a migraine and a workday that I was convinced was Friday! Alas! Happy Thursday, campers!