Whoever made the floor plan of our office surely doesn’t face untimely bowel movements. My office has a sitting capacity of over 100 and being a technology engineering company we have a male to female ratio of 90:10 (No gender bias intended).
We have one commode among almost a 100 men, and the food at the canteen doesn’t really help the situation. Fortunately we have half a dozen standing urinals, else the office would had tested both bladder capacity and bowel movements of the employees. With the wide nature of people in office, the way they react to the perennial situation of facing the locked bathroom door is funny. Some research had suggested that a person’s character can be judged by the way they sneeze, I suppose it can be better judged by the way they react when the loo is occupied and they can’t hold the pressure anymore.
The loud and extrovert kinds usually don’t care who’s inside the loo. They would bang on the door every 10 seconds, and ensure the guy who’s sitting inside would come out half way through his task. One of them once mentioned “Andar baithke shayri likh raha hai kya?”.
The humble kinds usually wait outside the door with a lot of patience. When they bump into other people visiting the loo just to pee, they would smile. The smile doesn’t usually express any happiness, but just shows his helplessness while he is almost turning blue. They still smile at the person when they vacant the loo, even though they feel like kick him in the groin.
The shy kinds usually don’t bother waiting outside the door. They walk in, check the lock state of the door and immediately rush out. They don’t like to be noticed as one of the person in the que, its like a secret call of nature that people shouldn’t know about. They usually hang around in the canteen and keep a watch on every person getting in and out of the men’s room.
Finally the best part is the conversations that people have while waiting in the que. As it’s a product company, the most innovative ideas around this issue comes while waiting in the que. There have been regular suggestions to the admin, like put a waiting couch, or integrate one of the aircraft loo indicators, etc. One of them once suggested that we have a camera on the door to check the status which can be directly streamed into the local intranet site. People could log on to the intranet, check the availability and head towards the loo. In case its occupied, they can book the next slot, and they would receive an alert on the phone when the loo gets empty. One of them even suggested a simpler integration with the flush, every press would mean the person is done and the loo could be empty in the next 1 min.
With the desperate situation of people, I think one of the engineers would actually work on the solution after a diarrhea attack at office. And I am sure he would get that months star performer award from the HR!
