A Square to Spare

If you're a Seinfeld fan you must remember the square spare episode and if you've never watched it but are a woman you know the story of public bathrooms. There's always a line for the women. And how many times have you not checked for toilet paper in the stall and then end up like Elaine in Seinfeld asking someone for a square to spare.

In my Jersey Shore days I used to joke that I was going to write a book about which bars "down the Shore" had the best ladies room. I mean after all these years of lines outside the women's bathrooms and men walking in and out of theirs why don't bars make bigger bathrooms for the women? Why can't they just have one little room for the men and have them wait on line, see how they like it!

There have been many times me and my friends commandeered the mens bathrooms, we would stand watch outside the door and take turns using it and keep lots of guys waiting. And yes I have left many a girl hanging after leaving the mens room and being the last woman on watch, again it was usually the same person I played all my practical jokes on. And though I have never done it, almost have, but I know lots of women and men who have walked into the wrong bathroom, some realizing right away, others not realizing until they meet someone of the opposite sex while walking out of the stall.

I started working in the city in 1978 and after a few years there came to be locks on the bathroom doors which were usually located outside the office suites in a public area so that clients and guests could use them. Unfortunately the locks were added because a woman had been raped in a bathroom in an office building somewhere in Manhattan.

Everyone would get the key from the receptionist, so many people leaving the key in the bathroom, when meanwhile it was on a big heavy block so as not to lose it or forget it, but everyone did. But that's the way it was. I've worked at some firms where security was so tight, especially after 9/11 there was no way anyone was getting in my buildings or the bathrooms without being checked in at security, on camera, very safe.

Now I work in Jersey and though I work for a really great company the one bad thing is that the bathrooms are located outside the locked office suites and open to the public. No locks. I work from 2pm to 9pm and a lot of nights it's just me and a few other people in the building. My co worker and I stand watch outside the bathroom after 6pm or so because there's not too many people around and by 8 or so the security guard starts shutting down all the lights in the building. He's not the greatest security, though I love him dearly, he will turn off all the lights on us girls sitting in our office and when we walk out of the office to the hallway we're in the dark. If an attorney is on the floor he leaves all the lights on? I mean come on? He turns the lights out on women, again except the women attorneys, but leaves us in the dark. I've delivered some of my work to attorneys on different floors late at night and when I come through the locked doors I will always hear a women yell out, don't turn out the lights! It's crazy. And if you do use the ladies room at night by yourself, he'll just turn the lights off when you're sitting in the stall, I can't tell you how many times he's done that to me.

Well we recently had the bathrooms redone on our floor and they are doing two floors at a time until they are all done. For the past month me and my co workers have had to run upstairs or downstairs to use the ladies room, usually trying to find a floor where there's more people working there. One good thing is that I talk to everyone. I know all the night workers, all the cleaning staff, the guy that comes to take care of all the plants in the building, they are co workers to me more than the people I work a few hours with at the beginning of my shift. I feel safe with them around, they are my security guards.

I don't know if you've ever seen this, in all my years of working in the city I never did, but when I started working at my current job when walking into the ladies room I would notice toilet paper hanging on a stall door, it means there is no toilet paper in the stall, of course I learned that the hard way, needing to get a square to spare.

It's been a pain running up and down, you know how you wait sometimes, you're busy and then you just gotta go! Well yesterday the bathrooms on my floor were completed and it was great. The only thing that is not better in the new ladies room is that the toilet paper holder used to be huge, with four rolls that would fall down after the one before it was used. Now they have a smaller holder with only two rolls. Last night, while working alone I ran into the ladies room and every stall had a paper towel hanging on the door, not even a square to spare for hanging on the door. So I then ran up the stairs to the 10th floor only to find that they were now redoing the 10th floor, I didn't know where to go next, which floor? I got on the elevator and went to the 5th floor and you know that's the other floor they are working on! Back on the elevator to the 8th floor and thank goodness no warning flags of toilet paper hanging on any of the doors, the lights were on and one of my cleaning staff buddies was mopping the floor, heaven!

From now on I will have a square to spare in my pocket!