The Hierarchy of Toilets

This is hardly a post about An Important Topic, but I was thinking about something the other day when I was sitting at the computer in our "chit-chat room". This is the large outer office between the hallway and my PI's office, which is also pretty big and has two huge windows. It contains three desktop computers and our administrative assistant's cubicle. Next door is the other big-ass office on the floor, which is similar to ours (but not as nice and typically with less snackage). The office area is at the opposite end of the floor from my lab space, the kitchen, conference room, and communal sunny area.

Down at the pleb end of the floor, where I work, there are two single-person bathrooms. One has got a shower, which is useful if you happen to stay over night and want to not smell before group meeting. These are just marked "Restroom".

But over here at the posh end of the floor, where the big tenured dudes live, the two single-person bathrooms are labeled "Men" and "Women". What, I have always wondered, is the point of designating as male or female a bathroom which is only intended for use by one human at a time? There are no urinals or mysterious feminie hygeine product disposal units in any of these facilities. The only explanation I can think of for the bathroom segregation is this:

So that the naked ass cheeks of the (male) tenured professors do not have to rub against the same plastic toilet seats as the naked ass cheeks of the (female) administrative assistants.

Think about it, though. How can we expect to maintain professional distinctions if we're all pissing in, literally, the same pot?

Even my gut reaction is blanche at the notion of our den-mother administrator's private bits sharing the same urine-scented air as my PI's. But if our PI were a person of the peeing seated variety, it might not even occur to me ...

There are several junior faculty women in the smaller offices down the hall. So I was thinking, isn't it a problem that the smooth PhD tuchases of the lady faculty members must make proximal contact with hienies of the secretarial class? Sex trumps snobbery, I guess.

Of course, this wanton comingling of butt-sweat obviously isn't an issue for the impoverished grunts at the benches down my end. We're not cool enough to have the Sex-Selected Hierarchy of Toilets. In the pecking order of the floor, the low-status, officeless males are equivalent to females of any rank.

I'm not sure what about this toilet situation is the most creepy.

In any case, I'll be damned if I go all the way around the hallway to the "Ladies'" toilet when I'm sitting about ten steps away from the "Mens'".

God, I'm such a freakin' iconoclast, aren't I? Not so much. The other day I actually did slink around the corner to the pissoir de les femmes when I saw the dude PIs standing nearby. So embrassing . . .

Never again. Liberte, egalite, fraternite! Toilets of the world, unite! Take that! Ha ha! Sit in my ass sweat, tenured folks!

Anyway. That is all.