Pippin' Myself to the Potty Post

POP QUIZ: When you go into the bathroom at your office, what do you spend most of your time in there doing?

Me, I like to use potty time for Purposeful Dancing and Soap Dispenser Fights. You might very well read that and say, "I neither dance nor fight with soap dispensers in public bathrooms!" And to that I say, "SHENANIGANS! How can you avoid these things?" But maybe your bathroom just isn't as hysterically awesome as mine. Let's find out. Here's what makes my office bathroom fun:

Purposeful Dances (2 Kinds):

1. Lights on! Our bathrooms have motion sensors on the lights, so when I'm working late or a lot of people are out of town, I sometimes walk into a pitch black potty environment. When this happens, I could get the lights to turn on by simply turning the corner toward the sinks 'n stalls. But I could also get the lights to turn on by ROCKING THE HELL OUT around the corner toward the sinks 'n stalls! Which would you do? Exactly. I've experimented with different styles here, and while disco is pretty fun, I'd have to give my highest recommendation to the sudden leap around the corner with arms stretched to the sky and index fingers pointed like guns. I call it "Let There Be Light".

2. The Mirror Vogue. (This is the least purposeful of the dances, but it gives you something to do while you wash your hands.) Mirrors are for dancing in front of - any ballerina will tell you that. But in a workplace environment, it's best to restrict mirror-dancing to a simple series of Vogues, so if anyone walks in, you can plausibly pretend to have been fixing your hair, yanking a stray eyelash, etc. I mean, you can get completely jiggy with it and cabbage patch your way to dry hands; I just don't recommend it. And since you're at work and need to stay sharp, I also recommend challenging yourself to Vogue to a song other than "Vogue". Try Men At Work's "Down Under" instead!

Speaking of washing your hands, if you were to use our bathrooms, you might find yourself engaged in a long and losing battle with a soap dispenser, as I did this very afternoon! Our soap dispensers, like our lights, have recently been connected to motion sensors, presumably because the effort of pressing down on a little circle was more than we could be expected to do. Actually, that may very well be the reasoning, since such a disturbing number of my coworkers are usually multitasking their way through a phone call while they are in the bathroom (Note to anyone who talks on the phone in a public bathroom: NO! *slaps your hand* BAD! *takes your phone away* NO!) Anyway, the soap dispenser at the far end of the sinks is not quite right. You put your hand under it, and nothing happens. You get impatient, pull your hand away...and it vomits up a little line of soap, which lands on the edge of the sink.

I encountered this for the first time today, and thought, "Oh well, I guess I'll just use a different sink. But I should clean up all that soap first." This is how you know I'm an idiot, because in order to wipe the soap off, I had to move my hand beneath the soap dispenser. Which triggered it to vomit out more soap. As soon as my hand moved out from underneath it. Like so:
ME: *wipes sink*
SOAP DISPENSER: *vomits*
ME: *wipes sink*
SOAP DISPENSER: *vomits*
...
After the third try, I reassessed the location of the sensor and twisted my wrist around so I could clean the sink without triggering the further dispensation of soap. And then, riding high on my triumph, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, grinning like a damn idiot, with a handful of soap-soiled paper towels, basking in the glory of my ONE triumph today: the defeat of a malfunctioning motion sensor.

And then I laughed really hard. Because I'm an idiot.

So yeah. Today I laughed at a soap dispenser until there were tears streaming down my face, and then I told the whole world about it. This is what I'm doing with my life now.