James Andrews

I am sitting in the little room that the company I am working for has herded us contractors into until we can get cubes. One of the other developers returns from the men’s room, and says to me “I have something that tops your men’s room experience.”. He states, “I wake in the men’s room and there’s a guy at the urinal. His phone rings, and he picks it up, and answers it and says. ‘Hey, can I call you back? I’m in the men’s room brushing my teeth.’. Sure enough he was standing at the urinal taking a wiz, and brushing his teeth?”

What is wrong with this world? Why couldn’t he have just returned the call afterwards. Are we so connected we can’t even use the bathroom without being plugged in. There’s something wrong here. And, brushing your teeth while taking a leak… In the words of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. “Ew…”.

It’s a little before 1pm, people are returning from lunch. Like many people after lunch it is a necessity to do natures business. Today I walk into the men’s room on my office floor, and turn to use the urinal (it only has one urinal but 4 stalls, I don’t understand that). The urinal is occupied by a co-worker I don’t know, who is doing his best to balance his cellphone in his left ear while trying to relieve himself. All the while other co-workers are walking in and out of the bathroom, using the stalls and flushing the toilets.

There are a couple things I don’t understand here. First is, it should be quite obvious to the person on the other end that the person they are speaking to is in the bathroom. Why don’t they speak up and put this person in their rightful place. The second is if you have to go to the men’s (or lady’s) room so badly why can’t you ask the person on the other line if you can call them back. Is it so important of an issue that you can’t ask for a pee break? Also, how unprofessional is that? I mean I am not sure he was on a work related call or a personal call, but either way. You look like a total ass, stratling the urinal, or taking from a stall.

The moral of the story is, if you are at work or out in public, put the phone down, do your business and call the person back, or wait until you are done your conversation. You aren’t a 4 year old who doesn’t know any better.