Safe Haven

for some, going #2 at work is a big ordeal. ideally, you'd do it in the privacy of your own home, but when you gotta go, you gotta go, even if it means going at work.

it happens all the time. you're working away when you start to feel a lil rumbling...yeah, something's stirring alright! but you don't want to go to the bathroom until it's just about time to make the drop. (like, it's at the "door," if you know what I mean ;) let's face it. if you go to take a seat in the ceramic office too soon, you run the risk of clamping up the moment you hear someone enter the bathroom. clamp up -- game over. hello, constipation!

so there are a couple of strategies to productive poops in office: timing and location

timing: so there's timing in the sense of going to the ceramic office prematurely, as mentioned above. then there's the time of day. I can tell you with 100% certainty when not to go - don't go just before lunch time, starting around 11:30 or just after lunch time (anytime between 12:30-1:15). too much traffic in the bathroom and too much chit-chat. oh, and maybe avoid the 9-10am hour. you know how it is. after that morning cup of coffee, sometimes it makes you want to "drop off kids at the pool"...and P.S. -- you're not the only one drinking cafe in the morning, so you won't be the only one dropping off kids in the late morning time. also avoid going 10 minutes before the hour. you'll find people making a pit stop before their next meeting. generally speaking, there's little to no bathroom traffic in the early part of the 4 o'clock hour. everyone's too busy trying to wrap stuff up for the day to take potty breaks.

location, location, location: like buying good real estate, location matters. when it comes to strategic pooping, location matters on 2 dimensions: the bathroom location within the building and stall location inside the bathroom. both are important considerations for a good dump. for instance, in the building where I work, many of us unknowingly deemed the 1st floor women's bathroom as a "safe haven." you see, the cube farm on the first floor is much smaller relative to the other floors. so it would seem that the traffic to the ladie's restroom would be minimal. wrong! first of all, though the cube farm is smaller on that floor, most of the inhabitants are female. second, apparently other ladies in the building came to the same false conclusions, so they trek down to the 1st floor to drop a load. case in point: my cube neighbor gleefully announced that she was going to the "safe haven" one day. she and I thought the "safe haven" was our little secret. until that day! she goes to the "safe haven" only to discover another cube farm inhabitant from our same floor was there dropping off kids too! they each knew exactly what the other was doing...the plop-and-splash sounds were unmistakable. lesson: when possible, avoid doing the doo in the restrooms on floors with a disproportionate number of women.

as for the second aspect of location -- stall location inside the bathroom -- just don't pick the Frequently Used Stall (F.U.S.). you know the one...it's the one that you inexplicably veer into without giving it a single thought. in the restroom on my floor, for example, the F.U.S. is the first one on the left. don't know why. it just is. even if you drop and flush right away to minimize the stink, you have to avoid the F.U.S. just out of consideration for the next person who comes into the bathroom. nine times out of ten, that person will go to the F.U.S. and you don't want the lingering aroma of your deed to cause that person to gasp for air. not to mention, that the person who unknowingly went in to the gassed out F.U.S. will eagerly tell the next person coming in, "it wasn't me!" just to clear the air, so to speak. some of us (myself included) are kind of childish when it comes to office pooping and will go so far as naming the offender to anyone who'll listen. and the story will be re-told with slight embellishment time after time, the ingenue of the story never shaking the label of being the offender that dropped a real one at work that stunk up the whole place.