A little WHAT with my flush?
The other day I was at the dentist with my kids. Our dentist is located in a shared office building, so the common areas are shared by all of the tenants. As my kids were occupied getting their teeth taken care of, I mosied out to the restroom that is located in the center of the hallway, a few doors down from the office that I was visiting.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the restrooms had received a recent makeover. Although I wouldn’t say they were bad to begin with, I was thinking, wow, this is a pretty swanky update: granite counters, fancy hand dryers, hoity toity looking halogen light fixtures and then my eyes and ears wandered to the middle of the bathroom where a flat screen TV was now prominently displayed. Seriously?
First of all, something that fancy in a shared common area, open to anyone visiting the offices? Aren’t you running the risk of it being taken or otherwise mutilated by some uncaring individual? Second of all, there are stalls, with doors, in the restrooms. How much will you really be watching the TV while you are in there? Third of all, people, it’s a bathroom for god’s sakes. Certain things intrinsic to it being a bathroom do not necessarily lend itself to lingering in there if you get my drift.
So what exactly were the re-designers of this bathroom thinking? You’d wouldn’t want to miss one second of CNN or Fox news while you were occupied with your bodily functions? They were perhaps trying to make a pee break more comfortable? I can say I was at least somewhat pleasantly surprised that it didn’t just have advertising content, but it was actually some random TV program running on it. Although, in either case, I’m not too keen on the idea.
Isn’t the bathroom one of those few sacred places these days that you actually have the chance to be alone without distraction, with nothing but your own thoughts to occupy yourself as you are tending to more delicate matters?
So thanks again for the nice surroundings for my tushie, but I’d appreciate just being alone, and left unencumbered by our already overstimulated electronic world out there. I’d like to just do my business and I think a five minute break away from our hi-tech world would not kill anyone. Just sayin’.