O.K. I’ve got this courier job. I couri.
I work from my car. It’s got a CD player but no bathroom. Since I, like many people I’ve met, urinate from time to time, I gotta use a bathroom when I’m near one. This means using the bathrooms in the office buildings from which I pick up or at which I drop off the various packages I spend my day couriing.
I don’t feel that the various clients our company serves needs to know when I have to use the bathroom. I’d just prefer to step off the elevator, peak down the hallway, find the men’s room a have a quick pee before making a pick-up- while my hands are free.
Seven times out of ten, I find the door locked. I have to then find the client’s office and ask the receptionist for a key.
First reason why I hate this:
It just really feels like an actor breaking the fourth wall. I’m supposed to swoop in with a smile and drop off or pick up a package, maybe a quick friendly “How was your weekend? Can you believe this weather?” when stopping at one of the regular client’s. When I gotta ask for a bathroom key, it just ruins the image.
Second reson why I hate this:
Ick! I mean, I know I wash my hands after using the bathroom but what about every other guy who works in that office, or that office’s visitors and clients. This key has been to the bathroom with scores, if not, hundreds of total strangers and now I’m supposed to touch it!
And what about the poor receptionist who has to keep it at his/her desk and hand it out everytime someone’s bladder is full? “Hey, Sandy, nature is calling.” “One moment while I conect you.”
But if they didn’t lock the bathrooms, who knows what unauthorized people would would be pissing on the walls?
Ooh! I know this one! I know this one!
Nobody!
Nobody other than the people who use it on a daily basis!
Maybe, if these office buildings had lobby restrooms, maybe there’d be the odd passerby who just couldn’t hold it any longer and had to stop in to relieve himself. But is that odd passerby going to get onto the elevator and go up to the 22nd floor looking for a restroom?
Suppose there is an odd passerby who happens to be odder than most and he thinks “I have a brilliant plan! If I were to go into McDonalds and ask to use the restroom, they’d tell me that the restroom is for customers only! Why? Because they have people trying to use their restroom all the time. But, if I were to stroll into that highrise across the street, take the elevator up to the 22nd floor, why, it’d be the last thing they’d expect! I’ll beat the system!”
Uh, no.
Not going to happen. In many of the office buildings I have to enter as a courier (100% of the buildings if we’re talking Downtown L.A., Miracle Mile, or Century City), the business tenants and employees all have passes they must show to even get past the lobby. Visitors and couriers all have to sign in at the security desk.
Then after checking in with security, in many cases the guard must either give you an elevator card or otherwise walk you to the elevator himself and swipe his elevator card so that you can go to the 22nd floor. So, even if that particularly odd passerby manages to sneak past security, when he gets in the elevator and presses floor#22, nothing will happen. That elevator ain’t taking him nowhere because he doesn’t have an elevator access card!
So let’s stop with the bathroom key business, can we? I promise you will not show up to work on Monday to find homeless people sleeping in the bathroom.