Warning: Potty humor ahead

I have just done something I absolutely hate doing. Something that disgusts me more than an image of Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton making the beast with two backs. I crapped. In the john at work. I loathe myself now.

Lest you think I'm overreacting here, there are several reasons for this disgust with birthing a stink pickle at my place of employment. First and foremost, the mens' room here has an extremely odiferous reputation. This is due to exceptionally poor ventilation and the contributions of "The Morning Regulars". Our many requests for better ventilation have resulted in a stand-alone HEPA air filter. Despite early misgivings this has actually helped quite a bit but nothing can cope with the depradations of the "Sunrise Commandos". These are a handful of gentlemen that descend upon the mens' room stalls shortly after arriving in the morning. They are armed with newspapers, magazines and enough collective colonic problems to put a gastroenterologist into a shiny new Lexus. Annually. Our bathroom is rectangular with a door on each end. It is not at all unusual for a person to walk into one door, see the stalls closed, and sprint to the other door in asphyxiated horror. For those with an especially refined disgust of olfactory scatagrams this can be a very painful time. The odor is so foul that I have seriously considered a ruptured bladder to be preferable to suffering through a urinal session while surrounded by the clouds of doom. It takes the air filter anwhere from a quarter hour to forty-five minutes to get rid of the fecal aroma depending on what was for dinner but this seldom happens. Remember that the "AM Crew" is comprised of a not inconsiderable number of gastrically challenged individuals. What normally happens is that they arrive in staggered formation and sentence the blighted restroom to consecutive punishments. It is sometimes noon before it is completely safe to enter.

So there is the general problem of not having a facility that allows me to breath normally while doing my business. That by itself is quite a deterrent. My second reason for not wishing to practice the fecal arts at work is of a more personal nature. It's freakin' gross! Crap at home! Don't bring that nastiness to your place of business! It's one thing to peal porcelain in the comfort of your own bathroom, it's quite another to use a public throne and then wonder just who the heck knows that you are the source of that curious combination of rotten cabbage, fouled eggs and sulphur. And foreign asses have been on that seat! Asses not related to you by blood or marriage. Bare skinned asses belonging to persons of the same sex as well as heterosexual orientation (as far as you know). Your only protection against ass cooties and pooples (butt pimples from seat nastiness) is that paper ass gasget. A microthin sheet of wax paper that cannot possibly be a barrier to any significant contaminant and that you just know is going to wick potty water up onto the seat from that part that dangles in the bowl.

Shudder. Shudder.

The final warning flag against corporate crapping is the toilet paper. Is this toilet paper? I use toilet paper at home all the time and this just doesn't resemble it except superficially by shape. It is resistant to tearing. It has no quilting. It is not two ply. It is not absorbent. In texture this work TP is more like the roll of message paper next to the phone. It fails the most important goal of toilet papers, that all important function that is the one thing it must succeed at. Specifically, it is not capable of getting shit out of your ass crack. You end up with fistful after fistful trying vainly for a feeling of cleanliness but you shall never succeed. It is like trying to clean spilt latex paint off of linoleum using only newspaper. Every wipe gets some more but there is always more on the next wipe. By the time you can no longer see dookie streaks on the paper (and you DO look at it, don't lie to me) your anus has been sanded to a bloody remnant of its former glory.

The horror. Oh, the humanity.

So for these reasons I avoid making a lincoln log cabin at work but occasionally, like this morning, there is no other recourse. I blame the Taco Loco I had for lunch yesterday for the way I feel right now. I sit here typing, hoping ever so much that the feeling between my cheeks is just nervous perspiration. Or maybe blood. I'd go in for a secondary wipe right now but one of the "Magnificent Seven" just headed in there with the morning paper.

I want my own toilet. I want my own TP. I want a freaking baby wipe.