bloodyrosemccoy | Ninjas of the Restroom (Reply)

Buy A Musical Instrument Day

Pet Peeve #478

When you go into a public bathroom and see that the other stall is occupied, or somebody enters another stall while you’re in there, and what follows is … dead silence. Not just the lack of bodily function noises, but the total absence of any sound, as though the feet you can see under the partition belong to a corpse.* There is no shuffling, no sounds of peeing, no toilet paper obtaining, no pad crinkle noises, no flushing, no evidence of life other than a pair of motionless feet.

And you are left to go about your business with your own shuffling and toilet papering and flushing, as well as possibly making a couple of more embarrassing noises, and you know that the entire time the person in the other stall is not in fact attending to their own damn business, but is neurotically listening to all of your sounds so that they’ll know when you’ve left so that they can continue without the humiliating truth that they may make a Noise that a stranger who knows nothing about them except what shoes they’re wearing will hear. It seems to me that a little noise is a lesser embarrassment than that of sitting around listening to other people unload their burdens, and it also seems more comfortable to get it done with.

Although one of these days I may do a study involving sitting in a stall with a stopwatch and seeing how long it takes the other person to cave in. I can be mean like that.

*Or, in the case of the people who come in after you, a very fresh corpse. Or a zombie.