The idea of having a separate, fancier “executive washroom” with an exclusive key to access it has been part of the humor on a few shows, such as the Simpsons episode where Homer gets promoted after growing some hair (“you’ve been given… the key”).
Yet only once in my life, long ago at my first real summer job for an advertising firm in an office in an old building in Manhattan (345 Hudson St.) back in 1990, have I seen an actual “Executive washroom”. Not the inside of it, peon that I was, but just the fact that there was a separate Mens’ room and Ladies’ Room door next to the publicly available one for everyone on the floor, kept under lock and key. Well now that I think of it, the “publicly available” one was also under lock and key, to keep people from just coming in off the street and using it; but that key was kept at the receptionist’s desk, while the key to the Executive washrooms were in the possession of the individual executives in question.
That was a long time ago. Do these things still exist in today’s workplace? I have worked at various well known major finanacial institutions for the past 15 years and have not seen one since that one job nearly 20 years ago. The very top executive at my firm has an office suite that, by rumor, includes a private full bathroom with a shower in it, so he can freshen up after arriving off an airplane or somesuch, but that’s not quite the same as an “Executive washroom” on every floor that with restricted access to people of a certain rank.
Does it count that in my high school, all of the bathrooms had separate bathrooms inside the bathrooms for teachers and staff to use? They all had keys for them.
So they had to go inside the normal bathroom, then inside the secondary bathroom. I’m not sure the specific reason, but I didn’t have a problem with it.
Once a teacher of mine came up and used the urinal next to me in the normal bathroom. Freaked me out.
I have seen a separate parking lot for higher ups in a company. I’ve also seen conference rooms that only certain people can use. But no bathrooms with special access.
Yes, the CEO as a special case is one thing, and I also remember the Teachers vs. Students bathrooms in school. Those were completely separate bathrooms though. I still remember the look of panicked surprise when a friend of mine got busted by a teacher coming into the “Boys’ Bathroom” one afternoon, a freak occurrence like wierdaaron’s scenario, just in time to bust him for writing something on the mirror with a magic marker. We never saw a teacher come into the student bathrooms before or after that… Just that one time.
I would consider myself a winner of life if I ever get to a position where I have an office with a shower and a few changes of clothes in a closet. Like in Casino.
Something about having changes of clothes whereever you are, and not in a suitcase, just screams awesome.
My mother, a VP for a major corp before she retired had a private bathroom in her office. (complete with shower)
I remember years ago when I first got my job where I work at now. The bathrooms on the floor that I worked on were your average run of the mill bathrooms complete with sandpaper/toilet paper.
One week maintenance had all the bathrooms on my floor shut off. The guy told me I had to go all the way up to the top floor and use those bathrooms. (The admin floor)
It wasn’t an executive bathroom as you didn’t need a key to access it. But Damn! It was way nicer than the ones on my floor!! It had cushioned toilet seats, toilet paper, that when you used it; you felt like your bum was being tickled by an angel. Newspapers and a flat screen TV (with CNN playing) were in there as well!!
Every once in a while when management pisses me off, I’ll go up there and take a big ol’ dump in one of their crappers. It’s so tempting to NOT flush the toilet after that. (sigh) but I always do.
I once went to the penthouse 40th floor of my corporate building, where the CEO had one half and the other half was a board room. The men’s lav was fairly basic, although roomier, and did have a shower in the third stall. And an actual small Lichtenstein painting worth a couple grand.
At my dad’s company, where I worked summers in high school, there weren’t locks and keys, but there were “areas of the building”, closed off by doors - the regular bathroom was a regular bathroom, blue-grey institutional tile. The nice bathroom was in the executive wing and had nice little soaps and wallpaper and such, just one stall. The boardroom (only available to executives, really) had a bathroom with a shower (and a naked lady calendar), a fridge, etc.
The casino I play at has a high limit slot area that anybody can enter (of course) but the bathroom therein is locked and accessible only with your player’s card, and only if its been specially encoded.
At a job interview I got to eat in the executive cafeteria - cloth napkins and upscale (but not superfancy or “frou frou” maybe nice supper club level) food.
Regular employees (including the position I was interviewing for) do not eat there.
About 10 years ago I had a temp assignment at a large company. I was secretary to a VP, but she was a second tier VP. We were on the 6th floor. The highest muckety muck had essentially half the first floor as his office. There was a general receptionist in the lobby, and a receptionist outside the door to his separate lobby/waiting area. We used to speculate wildly about what he had in there. A sauna and a bacarat table, maybe? Roller skating rink. On the second floor were the people who reported directly to him. They shared a bathroom with eachother which was reportedly swankier than the one on the 6th floor. I don’t recall now if their assistants got to use tha fancier one or had to head up to the 3rd floor.
My boss had a very large corner office but aspired to the second floor.
Interesting that this thread should come up. I hadn’t thought about that place in years. I was only there about 2 months. But yesterday I was thinking about it while I was watching something set in an office building (likely Mad Men) because in my own experience, literature, film and TV it seems that the more powerful the executive the higher up in the building the office is. I spent a lot of time wondering about it. Did he set it up that way so he could drive up to his offie door? Does he have a fear of heights or elevators? Did he just like to see the parade of wage slaves in at 8:45 and out at 5:00? Why??? That was Southern California. Do they keep their executives lower to the ground for when the earthquakes come? (Wouldn’t it be better to be at the top of the pile of rubble?)
I guess maybe I should ask my doctor about Ambien…
I went to a conference at the offices of a different Borough Council and the regular toilet facilities were out of order - we were told to use the member’s washroom.
Lots of marble, gold-plated (or at least gold-coloured) taps and fittings - definitely superior to ordinary corporate washrooms, but probably inferior to the airside toilets at Gatwick airport.
I was going to ask if you were in France or another area of Europe, where the lower floors are seen as superior. Maybe it was a European company that built the building originally.
In our building, the bathroom closest to the production floor is also the closest to the VP and Director office area, so the bigwigs and the operators use the same bathroom. I guess we’re pretty egalitarian.
My workplace (a national newspaper) has separate executive washrooms. I don’t think they are locked, though, just that normal folk wouldn’t dare go in.
The editor also has a separate lift (elevator) that opens directly outside his office. Again, there’s no key, it’s just known that this is the editor’s lift. One of my colleagues once used it without knowing (they’d only just started work) and when the doors opened, the editor was waiting to get in. Apparently he didn’t bawl her out, just asked her if she was new and quietly explained that this lift was his lift.
Between March and June of this year I was moved into the executive area at my office to work on a project. The area contains the four top executives, their secretaries, and me and another analyst (for two months). They gave us a key a to the washroom. It isn’t really that special, not any more luxurious than the regular employee restrooms. Though I’ll admit our office is nicer than the average workplace. It has a shower and some nice looking wooden lockers for clothes. Other than that, nothing special. The executive kitchen/break room on the other hand is awesome. Nicer than any kitchen at any home I’ve seen, fully stocked with gourmet food, top of the line appliances, a custom made oak and marble table that must have cost more than I make in ten years, etc. I felt kinda guilty using the executive washroom though, because the three secretaries who shared the area aren’t allowed to use it. They are made to walk downstairs and use the regular bathroom.
It was my job for a while to clean the restrooms in the office building of our factory. The restrooms there were nicer than the ones in the factory. Glazed ceramic tile up to chest level, and white china sinks. The ladies rooms had rows of sinks and mirrors all along two walls. The General Manager’s big office had its own restroom, and it looked like a bathroom in somebody’s house. No shower, though. There was no vent fan, so he never crapped in there. The smell would have pervaded his whole office.
Oddly enough, the fanciest one was in the lobby, where the salesmen had to wait. It had marble stall walls with two-panel dark wood doors. The ledges under the windows were marble, and everything else was glazed ceramic tile.
