The Men's Room

'Why don't you change the baby? There's a changing station in the men's room.' she said. Evidently, she had never seen the inside of a men's room before. Certainly not a real men's room. Not a men's room like the one at the McDonalds off of I-5 that I would have had to change the baby in. 'No thanks. I'll just change him in the car' I say. 'Don't be stupid,' she continued editorial note: That is her favorite phrase, 'It's pouring outside, you'll get soaked...' 'I don't care.' I replied. And seeing the continued quizzical expression on her face, I had to break down and tell her. The real horrors that are the men's public restroom. This took roughly an hour to lay out for her, but I will attempt to keep it brief, since the rest of you have lives to get back to. I'll start with upscale men's rooms, and work my way down. I swear that all of this is real - there's not even a need to stretch the truth here. No pictures will be provided. You're welcome.

The Upscale Men's Room
Found in: Fancy restaurants, executive hotels, and anywhere there is a lot of money
You are sometimes ok venturing into the upscale men's room, especially if it's earlier in the day. These are cleaned frequently, have quality tile, and are monitored for the occasional no-no. In some upscale men's rooms they even have attendants to assist you with whatever you might need while peeing - you know, the little mint and towel guys in black tie. This can be both a good and bad thing, depending on whether you like encouragement while trying to accomplish your business:
'Come sir, let's have it then.'
'I shall alert the weather bureau that a flood shall be forthcoming.'
'Well struck sir. We shall have to re-tile after that thunderous contribution.'
You know. And this is not to say that an unattended upscale men's room will not deteriorate quickly when left alone for too long - quite the contrary. Men seem to be pigs, and it doesn't matter if they are in a suit or a wife beater, they can't squat, aim, or wash without making a mess. The only particularly dangerous thing about the upscale men's room is that the tile is well-sealed and high-quality, meaning that when it gets wet it will be extremely slick. Couple that with a nice pair of virtually tractionless dress shoes, such as you might wear in a fancy restaurant, and you can be in for some fun.

The Men's Room at Work
Found in: most workplaces
And here we begin to see a real breakdown of societal normalcy. If you've seen Lord of the Flies, then you understand what I'm getting at. Let's begin our tour at the stalls. The stalls are kind of like a game show, in that you're never quite sure what you'll find behind each door - or whether it's a good idea to try to trade up to see what's behind a different door. As a general rule, anything that doesn't have poo smeared all over the insides of the stall or throne is workable, though not necessarily desirable. The traditional method is the quick-peek through the cracked stall door during which you can make an informed decision about whether to venture into the stall any further. If someone just went wild with #1, then you might be able to clean up or even better do a hover-type manuver to avoid contact. Caution must be exercised with the hover though, as it tends to promote splashing, so sometimes you're better off trying still another stall door to see if you can find a relatively unmolested stall. Depends how many doors you have to choose from I guess. Allow me to summarize the typical stall findings:

Always: Toilet paper on the floor, liquid of one kind or another on the throne, bad smell.
Frequently: Toilet paper missing, previous hover-manuver gone awry - leading to collateral damage on throne, liquid surrounding throne - like a moat for your castle.
And Sometimes: Poo on throne, floor, or other, used toilet paper on floor or other, throne overflowing and has presents inside, and even 'my diet has gone horribly, horribly wrong' - leading to a total catastrophie.

Moving on, we have a special fixture for guys called a urinal. You pee in it. That's it. Most of the time. . . At my place of employment, someone has affixed a laminated (obviously) sign above the urinals which reads: 'Only Urine in the Urinals Please.' . . . This is a fortune-500 company, not some rinky-dink operation that employs transients to throw freight. And what's worse, I will tell you that there are exactly three things that are ever found in a urinal aside from urine. One is gum, but no one chews gum here. The second used to be cigarette butts, before they outlawed smoking inside. The third belongs in a stall, but for whatever reason it's apparently not getting to the stall sometimes. And for them to go to the trouble of making a sign about it tells me that this has happened more than once, right?

Let's dissect the urinal a little more though. I want to examine it from a time-of-day perspective, as most janitorial-type duties (how they do it, I'll never know) are performed at night. In the early early morning, the men's room at work is, for the most part, clean. This is your only shot at getting a stall in reasonable condition, and also your best shot at not getting your shoes wet if you need to use the urinal. Why, you ask? Well, as the urinal sees more and more use, there is more and more spillage on the ground, until a nice little lake forms in front of it. You choices at any point later in the day are to stand in the lake (but eww), or stand on the far side of the lake and pee across the distance. Most everyone chooses option #2, and as a result the lake continues to increase in size as the stream drop-offs continue to land on the floor. Occasionally the lake will build to such a size as to create and support a small town complete with a ferryman to take you across the lake in his little boat so that you may pee closer to the urinal. He will generally not be as nice as the little mint guy in the executive men's room, and you have to make sure that he doesn't head back to shore without you too. Tip well.

The Real Men's Room
Found in: Gas stations, fast food, airports, train stations, skating rinks, and especially Chucky Cheese.
Girls, think you've seen it all? Are you disgusted by that little drop of pee left on the seat, and the nerve of the person before you who left the toilet unflushed? HAHAHAHAHA!!!! You haven't seen shit, my friend. If the world descended into anarchy and people were expelling waste whenever, wherever, and however they pleased, then you still couldn't touch the absolute filthery (not a word, I checked) of the Real Men's Room. I call it that because you have to be a real man's man to even enter these god-forsaken shit holes. Most of us would rather pee out the car window, even with the risk of blow-back. The placement of thrones and urinals in the real men's room are taken mostly under advisement, with the final resting place of said waste pretty much being distributed randomly across whatever space is available in most cases. The only way you'd be able to prove that the throne or urinal was once used is that whatever contents were deposited in either one have not been flushed, ipso facto, someone managed to hit the target at least once - and let's be honest here, close counts in the real men's room.

Also, you do not wash your hands in the real men's room. Touching anything at all will just make you dirtier than when you came in. You go in, hold your breath, do whatever you need to do wherever you can find room to do it, and then if there is paper of some kind available, you use it, open the door with it, throw the paper on the floor, and get the hell out. 'And that's the reality of the situation' I said to her. . . 'Fine' she replied, 'I'll just change him in the women's restroom', and she stalked off kinda pissed.

And now I don't have to change the baby when we are on the road anymore!!! :)