bobafred

It seems that at least a few times a week both the cleaning lady at work and my schedules sync up such that we both need access to the men’s room at the same time. I don’t really think I have a problem with us both being in there at the same time, but society doesn’t like that. So what happens is that whoever is in there first wins. If I’m there first, she just steps over to the lady’s room and works there. But, if she is there first then I have to find alternate men’s room accommodations. I can tell that she is there because there is a very polite sign on the door that says that the restroom is being cleaned and should be ready again in 15 minutes or whatever.

This isn’t a huge problem. Like most people, I enjoy walking up or down the stairs to explore parts of the building that I am not in often. But, I always have to guess as to which floor’s bathrooms she has just cleaned. Did she start at the bottom and work up, or the other way around. If I had to make that decision, I would start at 1 and goto 5. But, do she and I think alike? I’ve never really said anything except ‘hi’ or ‘how are you?’ to her, so I can’t really get a good feel for her thought process.

Enter my idea for a good idea: The very polite sign should have a movable arrow on it that points up or down and added verbiage that says, ‘Hey, I just cleaned that floor’, where ‘that’ points to the just cleaned floor. And to prevent workplace jokesters, they could make it so that you have to have some kind of special key, similar to the toilet paper dispenser key, to move the arrow. With this, I believe that everybody wins. She doesn’t have to wait for me on another floor because I guessed wrong and can more efficiently clean the bathrooms. And I can be directed to the next closest, and best, men’s room option. And by ‘best’ I really mean ‘cleanest’.

I did a quick Google search and didn’t turn up any results similar to this.