I’ve worked in many different types of places, with many different types of restrooms throughout my career. A medium-sized office building with a shared restroom for the entire floor, an office condo with an over-sized and empty feeling restroom, a swanky downtown skyscraper office with a shared floor fancy restroom, a converted flower shop into an office random back-room restroom, a huge mansion with my own personal African safari themed restroom (best one yet – hands down), and now a large office building with yet another shared floor restroom.
In no particular order, here’s a list of the 10 things I hate about most office restrooms:
1) They are uncomfortably cold and/or stuffy. For some reason air circulation ceases to exist in office bathrooms making them feel, and unfortunately smell, like a hidden underground world.
2) The lighting is horrible. Good luck touching up your makeup or checking your teeth for pepper. You’ll also never see that horrible stain on the back of your leg. Are windows and bright lighting forbidden in office restrooms or something?
3) There are 0-1 electrical outlets available. So, you’re hungover and rushing to work…you plan on flat ironing your hair when you get to the restroom at work to save time. Or perhaps you are off to a date and need to curl your luscious locks before you leave. Well, good luck finding anywhere to plug your tools in!
4) No matter how nice the restroom, something always needs to be re-stocked. Need to dry your hands? Hope they aren’t out of paper towels. Got caught off guard this month? Hope the tampon machine actually has something in it. Don’t want to sit on a pee-dripped seat or have to hover and air-dry? Hope they have actually have some toilet paper.
5) The quality of the paper products is dangerous. Be careful not to scrape your skin off of your hands or any other body part (ooh!). Can you say cheap?
6) Something is always broken/empty. Drippy sinks, clogged toilets, light bulbs flickering (creepy!), trash overflowing, cracked tile, broken door latch (ugh!), empty soap dispenser, etc. Even in the nicest buildings I’ve experienced these problems. I suppose it might be because so many people are in and out of these restrooms. Who knows.
7) Weirdos hide in them. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve walked in a restroom, heard grunting and or heavy breathing (barf!) and then all of the sudden the noises stop as if they are holding their breath until I leave. Umm hellooooo I know you are in here I can see your ugly shoes. Do your crazy pooping at home please. Also, I’ve caught random women talking on their cell phones in a stall or hiding with their feet up, do they think I can’t hear them breathing? Creepy.
8) Lack of decor. Is it so hard to put some plants and/or flowers around? Not only would they make the restroom smell better, they might actually fool people into thinking it was a room they could spend some time in rather than hurrying away from and talking trash about. Or hey, how about a simple framed piece of art? A painted wall other than that weird standard restroom cream? Candles? Something? Come on!
9) There’s no place to personal items. Most ladies go to the restroom and have a purse, jacket, notebook, briefcase, drink, etc. with them. Are they supposed to juggle these items while peeing as if they are a weird circus act? Or perhaps you want them to put this stuff on the dirty floor that you say you clean daily…yeah right. One tiny, short coat hook on the back of the door that doesn’t stay shut is not enough. Oh, you want me to put it on the sink counter you say? You and I both know that the sink counter is ALWAYS wet!
10) The sink counter in ALWAYS wet! So, you’re in the restroom washing your hands and oops your tummy rubs up against the counter….well congratulations you now have a HUGE WET BLOB on your pretty shirt. Want to put your purse down so you can dig around to find your mascara? Oops now you have a soaking wet purse….but you won’t find out until you set it down somewhere like an important paper on your desk and all of the ink runs and stains your desk. Fabulous!
Now that I think about it, office restrooms are a lot like sharing your restroom at home with about 200, dirty, smelly boys and you’re too busy to clean it up.
