Toilets (part 3: gender ratio)

At my workplace, we occupy two floors of an office building. On each floor there is one bathroom for men, and one for women. In the men's room, there is one toilet and two urinals, in the women's room, there are three toilets. Now this seems reasonable... the problem is, our office (as with many offices in our industry) is populated with mostly men. I don't know the exact numbers, but my guess would be that in total, we have about 40 men (maybe 50) and 6 women. So, as you can see, each woman at our company, has her own personalize toilet stall (I've never been in the women's washroom... but I wouldn't be surprised if they had name plates on the doors to the stalls).

It has gotten to the point where when the men's stall are full, there are guys who have availed themselves of the facilities in the women's washroom... and were caught by our HR person... who happens to be a woman.

We have suggested that perhaps on one of the two floors we could swap the signs on the doors so that the men's washroom has three stalls on that floor and the women's washroom had urinals, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. For the most part, it's just a minor nuisance but there are times where it moves up to a minor pain when one of the (two) mens' stalls has a problem, so now we are down to 40 men, 1 toilet.

I do realize that a similar but opposite problem happens at sporting complexes all over the world, but unless you are going to a hockey game every night, it probably doesn't effect you as often!

-KDH

Toilets (part 2: due diligence)

Lately the toilet at my work place has not been in as clean a state as I would like. The issue is not really the cleanliness of the seat itself, or really any part of the apparatus that I find myself coming into contact with, rather, it is the results of an incomplete flush. To be sure, they are flushing (likely) once, but it is not completely clearing the bowl of their refuse. I am not complaining of the "streaks" on the porcelain that are difficult to clean short of a toilet brush... we have no toilet brush.

Whoever it is must not be taking responsibility for ensuring that the next user has no clues as to what the perpetrator had for lunch. Personally, when I flush, I take some amount of responsibility for the next person's experience: I will wait around to ensure that I get a complete flush... especially with a toilet like ours at work that does not have a tank to refill. You can flush over and over and over with no hold off period.

As a side note, I've also found that our urinals are often filled with yellow water... I don't think people are flushing properly there either (we don't have automatic flushers)

-kdh

Toilets (part 1: I'm a nerd)

Lately at work, when I find myself on the toilet I have been, to pass the time (no pun intended), picking random five digit numbers and factoring them in my head and then multiplying the factors back together to make sure I was right. Yes.... I'm a nerd. I find I just need something to occupy my mind, and at home I've usually got some sort of reading material... but at work it's a little more difficult to be discreet about it.

The first number I picked, I got lucky and it didn't have any factors higher than 17, so it really wasn't very difficult... the next one though had 1987 as a factor... that was much more work.

Am I alone in this past time? There are several other nerds out there who read this... am I the only one who indulges in this derivation of elementary (and in this case alimentary) components?

-kdh

Happy new year (redux)

Happy Lunar new year! Welcome to the year of the rat, the winner of that lengendary race.

I think the chinese zodiac is really just a trick to help you find out how old people are... there are some people who could trick you into thinking they are 12 years younger or older than they are, but for most people it just gives it away. My brother-in-law is a rat! I mean in the chinese zodiac he's a rat... really. But it got me thinking... I'm going to be 33 this year... I can't pretend that I'm just barely out of my 20s anymore, let alone that I'm not really an adult.

Oh well, at least I'll always be younger than Susanna (okay, so it's only 16 days)

-kdh