My Daily Extended Lunch Break

The time is nearly 2:00pm, Tuesday afternoon, a moment that immediately triggers a daily ritual for my work day. To be perfectly blunt with you, this is when I venture into the men's room. Not necessarily just to relieve myself, but to have a few moments where I can gather my thoughts with a Soduko puzzle, or perhaps a little shut-eye. This event can last 20 minutes, or even as long as an hour, but it has never been an in and out affair.

Well this day in particular happened to be special, a one time a year event that I had been planning for weeks in advance. You see, this day, the NFL schedules for the upcoming season had been announced. I rushed to the printer, threw the few sheets into a manilla folder, and began the brisk walk out of my IT office and into the public restroom on the second floor of my building. The bathroom on my floor is pretty standard with three stalls and two urinals and I proceed to the handicap stall on the far end...I enjoy the leg room.

I'm about fifteen minutes into sulking over the Redskins lack of nationally televised games and all of the sudden the goddam light goes off. It just so happens to be on a 15-20 minute motion sensor and no ones been in the bathroom since I entered. At this point I'm too 'involved' in what I am doing to put my pants back on, run over to the door, and activate the lights. When suddenly I get the genius idea of throwing something in the vicinity of the sensor, therefore turning the lights back on. Unfortunately there's not much to throw in your average bathroom stall, but I grab a bunch of toilet paper, pour water over it from my Nalgene bottle, and crumple it into a golf ball sized mound. I stand up, launch the soaked ammunition, and barely miss to the left of the target. So I try another one, and another, and another until I've thrown about six wet paper balls and nothing. Well I would give up and poop in the dark but I really wanted to read the NFL schedule, so I decide to try one more. And frankly it's become more of a challenge than anything to thwart this godforsaken motion sensor.

I'm about to take my final launch when the door of the bathroom flings open and I duck as quickly as possible. The light comes on after a few seconds and a gentleman strolls over to one of the urinals. Scared shitless (literally), I know he's wondering what the crumpled heaps of wet paper are doing sitting on the ground next to him, and is likely to be a bit confused. Meanwhile I'm being as quiet as I can because I don't want this guy (who probably works in my office since there's only two companies on our floor) to know that I've been in here long enough for the goddam lights to go off. He finishes his business and starts washing his hands when he suddenly stops and says, "Hello. Is there someone in there? Are you ok? HELLO!".

I realize I have to say something, so I disguise my voice into something that sounds like a mix between Scottish, South African, and just plain crazy. I then utter, "Yeah, I'm fine." Apparently my accents need a bit of work as the guy (who just happened to be Gene from accounting) recognizes me...

Gene: Steve, is that you?
Me: Yeah, it's me, I had a rough lunch and its catching up with me, I'll be fine. (complete lie, lunch was divine).
Gene: Ok, no problem. By the way there's wet paper all over the floor here.
Me: Oh really, that's interesting.
Gene: Yea. Ok, see you later.
Me: See ya.

This leads to Gene giving me the oddest look about five minutes later when I'm walking past his office. At first I expected, actually assumed, that HR would be calling me into their office for the following conversation...

HR: Steve, we have a problem. Are you sleeping in the toilet?
Me: If I said yes would I be in less trouble than if I told you what I was really doing in there?
HR: What are you really doing? It's not drugs is it???
Me: No, nothing like that. For the most part I'm going to the bathroom...but I'm also reading, doing crosswords, drawing sketches of things that I see (mainly the toilet paper roll, there's not much to work with in there).
HR: Well let's consider this a warning and try to focus on your job instead of Suduko in the dark, huh?
Me: I can't believe you didn't fire me just now.

That's my point though, in this country you really have to make some mistakes to lose your job. It's almost comical. Trust me, I know, I've done about all I can do to test the boundaries of our employment system. And I'll tell you something else, that new NFL schedule looks pretty damn good.