The 10 Commandments of using a public washroom

And on the eighth day the Lord said, "Stop smearing your shit everywhere"

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Illustration by Carolyn Yip

By: Gabrielle McLaren

 

I’m going to have to engrave these rules on the brutalist stone walls of this institution, or scrawl them on the bathroom mirror with that one used tampon you left on the floor because these regulations are important. All of us would rather be taking care of business in the comfort of our own homes, but we’re going to have to cooperate to make the best out of the one single bathroom not under renovations in West Mall.

  1. Thou shall flush used and unused toilet paper instead of plastering it on the floor like a five-year-old who has just discovered paper maché.                                                        
  2. Thou shall also flush the toilet itself.                                                                                  
  3. Thou shall aim for the inside of the toilet bowl. Not the outside. The inside. And definitely not the floor.                                                                                                          
  4. Thou shall wash thy hands.                                                                                                          
  5. While washing thy hands, thou shall not splash water everywhere so that the rest of us have a dry place to put down $100 textbooks and $1,000 laptops while we cleanse ourselves.                                                                                                                          
  6. If there are under three sinks, thou shall not block one of them by standing next to thy friend while they cleanse the bacteria from their hands, so that the poor unfortunate soul with back-to-back classes will have enough time to empty their bladder and grab coffee.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
  7. If thou layeth thine eyes on somebody else using the bathroom, thou shall mind your own business and thou shall not question their right to use the bathroom that they pick.                                                                                                                                                              
  8. Thou shall not sit on thy throne of porcelain to finish a Sudoku, check your texts, or, heaven forbid, spiral into the rabbit hole that is Facebook in the interest of those of us who have places to be, damn it.                                                                                                                                      
  9. In the event that thou decorate the walls with thy romantic exploits, thou shall keep the graffiti up-to-date in case thy stops hearting TIM (5EVER), as to replenish our community reading material.                                                                                                           
  10. While in line for thine opportunity to go, thou shall stand against the wall so those of us who have clean hands and satisfied bladders can still leave the bathroom because do you want to see my schedule?

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