Slippery Slope

So today I started reading in the bathroom at work. My boss was in a meeting, I had some time to kill and I was in a climactic moment in my book. My justification was that I spend countless hours reading articles online, why not a book? The bathroom is the only place no one would notice me. So then I faced a new dilemma: How to take the book into the bathroom as inconspicuously as possible. Because since I am in fact a woman, I don't take pride in bringing reading materials into the bathroom. I have guy friends who I see parading in with a newspaper. I actually asked someone "Why don't you just wear a sign that says I'm going to take a dump." But I guess they don't care. Unlike women. Women will play this cold war of waiting in order to avoid other women hearing them poop. Someone could really write a whole book on the subject.

So I eventually decided on the old interoffice mail envelope as a cover. So if I bring it into the bathroom, someone will just thinking I stopped in the bathroom on the way to the mailroom (even though geographically that really doesn't make sense). The causation of bringing it into the stall with me would be a little harder to explain but luckily nobody asked.

Okay, so now I'm in the stall when the next problem arises. Pants on or off? I really didn't like the idea of the toilet seat touching my clothes, the equivalent of someone else rubbing their butt on my pants. But on the other hand, I would feel quite odd sitting there with pants down for any extended period of time. Our bathrooms are pretty clean so eventually I went with pants up.

With a few problems behind me, I had 30 minutes of uninterrupted reading. Hey, it beats working. I'll probably do it again. I just hope I don't get a reputation. Everyone knows about the girl who doesn't wash her hands or the woman who must think the stalls are sound-proof booths considering the way she lets it rip as soon as she closes the door.

So in conclusion, I hate my job, would do anything to avoid it, and wish I was a man so I would spend less time worrying about bathroom etiquette.