Burning the Mule

I work in a small office building. It's a six story deal with about 4 medium sized suites on each floor. My office is on the first floor and all four suites share the same bathroom located in the lobby. Since the entry and exit vestibules are also on the first floor, the lobby is actually quite large. We recently acquired a new neighbor a few months ago, in the form of a General Practice Medical Office.

Having pretty much spent my entire working career in offices, I have grown with my experiences to develop my own methods of handling the #2 during office hours. When I first started out from college, I did make some newbie mistakes like dropping anchor in the "decorative" bathroom located next to the cubicles. It really was there for looks and the occasional hand washing, but it was not by no means a service duty unit. Taking care of business should have been done in the "working" bathroom, which all the labor employees used, located on the factory floor. It was dirty, noisy and ugly, but dammit, it could handle it.

My second job took me to a technology office, where I worked surrounded by engineers and other highly educated people. To my chagrin, I would often find nose buggers wiped on the wall next to the urinal. The two things that always puzzled me was: 1) Why does someone have one one hand on their doodle and the other shoved up their nose? 2) Why is a grown man with supposedly a higher education find that the only resort of getting rid of a bugger is to wipe it on the wall?

What I did find kind of funny about the technology office thing was that the office was sort of split between two sides by an invisible psychological barrier. I think what made the dividing line was the office had two sets of bathrooms on each side of the building. What determined what "side" of the building you were on was determined by your proximity to the nearest bathroom. When we first moved into the building, we filled up only one side. People, including myself, would make the trip to the relatively vacant "other side" bathroom to drop the log. What was hilarious about this was, as the office started to fill up, people would come from the other side to use our bathroom, just like how we would migrate to their side to use theirs. Both sides really were just as crowded, but there was something about not pooping around people knew you.

So in my current office situation, I usually migrate up a few floors to one of the vacant office centers, using my coveted "skeleton" key I got from one of the previous maintenance guys, to restock the brown trout. I've even gone as far to have my own supply personal toiletry wipes because the TP here is no better than emery cloth. There's no better heaven like having a hidden work toilet to call your own.

Yesterday, I was about to head out with Meredith to go get some food. My first stop was to wash the hands because I'm a germ freak and the keyboard is the dirtiest thing in your office. As I step out into the lobby, something does not smell right, in fact it smells downright awful. I ask Meredith, "What is that smell?". As I open the door to the bathroom, I'm greeted with an eye-watering blast of stench that could only be described as burning mule. Meredith, who was probably 5ft behind me when I opened the door, screams out "Holy Shit!! That stinks like Hell!"

I in turn hurl a bunch of epitaphs about the smell too. Instead of just turning around and walking away, my idiotic-one-track-germ-freakish mind makes me enter this room of stench to wash my hands. Someone did not burn the mule, they tied poor mule to a stake and SCORCHED it. As I held my breath, getting the hands wet, I noticed a bathroom key lying on the sink. The guy is still in here. I glace down and see two feet with clenched toes around the base of the toilet. DAMN! I walk out and whisper to Meredith "The guy is still in there!" She responds loudly (and before the door actually closes) "He's still in there? He's marinating in his own stench!"

Poor bastard. Probably a visitor of the medical office and had no where else to unleash his army of darkness, but damn, eat something healthier!!!

ps. I walked into the bathroom this morning at 7am. Considering that this happened at 1pm yesterday, I was still impressed/disgusted at the fact that I could still smell a faint odor of the scorched mule.