I once had a female coworker who was complaining about how she had walked in on a male coworker using the single-occupancy bathroom (peeing, his back was turned to the door), that him not locking the door was somehow inappropriate of him.
Somebody put a poll up on a white board with the scenario, with question “who behaved inappropriately” with the choices “the person entering the bathroom without knocking” “the person using the bathroom without locking it” “they are both wrong” and “we’re all adults here, get the fuck over it.”
The tallies were overwhelmingly in the “get the fuck over it” column. But I feel the poll was missing something important: the door had a tendency when locked to stick and leave the person locked inside. We were in a quick-response duty status (as in running to the aircraft), so the person already in should absolutely not have locked it (he was the runner).
You see a closed door to a room (of relative privacy) that might be occupied, you knock. Simple as.
I think in that case it makes sense to knock but in most cases if I see a single use bathrooms with the little occupied in red or vacant in green lock indicator on it I’m just gonna assume it’s free if it’s not locked and open it. I haven’t been burned by that yet because in most situations people will lock them when using them.
Are there single occupancy bathrooms that don’t have a lock on the door? Any office I’ve worked at you just try the handle and if it’s locked you just go do something else until the person in there is done lol
Polite thing to do is to wait and start a friendly conversation.
And ask them about the difficulty of their poop, and to give it a rating between 3 and 13.
Ken M still at it
We had a new intern with zero social skills at my company a few years ago. He reminded me of a much younger version of Milton from Office Space.
Well, when he would go to the bathroom, either the single occupant ones or even ones that had multiple stalls: If it was occupied he would stand outside the door (or even a stall) like an inch away from it not moving just frozen waiting for the person to leave.
Was the craziest thing anyone had ever seen.
