Re: Liberal Intellectuals and the Coordinator Class
On Jul 12, 2007, at 9:02 PM, Dennis Perrin wrote:
I’ve cleaned women’s stalls that had popcorn and stray chips on the tile.
public enemy number one. and two. The Office Annoyance No One Really Talks About
Forbes has a piece up today about the office habits of the clueless
and the obnoxious, and the story started off with an anecdote about a
young Wisconsin woman whose female coworker yaps too much on her
cellphone, unwittingly sharing such intimacies as the status of her
menstrual cycles, her relationships, and her problems getting
pregnant. (Apparently, cell phones are not only an annoyance outside
of the office, but in it as well! Where did we hear this before?).
Forbes went onto list other office pet peeves like using a
speakerphone with the office door open; smelly food; unkempt communal
kitchens; and intrusive instant messaging alerts. But strangely,
(suspiciously!) there was nary a mention of bathrooms. Which is funny
because, as many know, there’s almost nothing more disgusting than a
workplace restroom, particularly one shared by women. In fact, for a
gender that’s notorious for fastidiousness and cleanliness, many
women are almost as disgusting — if not more than — men when
they’re at work. But why? And who are they?
Back when we worked at one particular ladymag for a particular
company notorious for its high-gloss sheen (and hatred of garlic), we
routinely encountered things like vomit, leftover cocaine lines and
unflushed toilets… sometimes with no toilet paper in them. (Yeah,
we don’t really want to know either). Professional positions
elsewhere yielded similar (though not so raunchy) results: Blood
splatters on floors, paper strewn this way and that, and, that old
standby: Urine all over the toilet seat. All of it was enough to make
us want to call the company’s corporate office managers and demand
they give the after-hours cleaning crew big raises. It was also
enough to make us take a closer look at just who the hell we were
working with, and wonder if the mousy, quiet assistant down the hall
was in reality public restroom offender Number One. We never figured
out who was doing what, but we did collect some theories!
One friend says she thinks women trash office bathrooms because it’s
one of the only ways for them to express their anger or assert their
power in the workplace. Another (a philosophy major, she!) wonders if
it isn’t the The Tragedy Of The Commons, where, when something
“belongs” to everyone, everyone treats it like, uh, shit. We wonder
if it has something to do with former NYC mayor Rudy Giuilani’s
belief about graffiti (that the messier the environment, the higher
the crime-rate) or contemporary corporate arrogance, i.e. the fact
that there’s always someone lower on the food chain whose job it is
to clean up after you, no matter how minor or major the mess. But
maybe, as a certain other Jezebel puts it, it’s simply about female
bonding: That is, women leave messes in order to encourage
conversation with other women. After all, who hasn’t run into a
colleague in the bathroom, seen or smelled something disgusting, and
(assuming the co-worker was not the culprit) began bitching and
moaning about everyone else she works with? “The bonding process is
that much quicker and more intense when another woman’s stuff is
there messing up the place,” explains the Jezebel. “Bonding in the
bathroom is just about having a convenient common female enemy, like
an olfactory version of Ann Coulter.”
How Loud Is Too Loud? [Forbes]
Related: Another Problem With No Name: Gals In Public Stalls [NY
Observer]
The Ladies Room [Media Projects]
Earlier: Smart Phones, Foolish Women
4:59 PM ON WED JUL 11 2007 BY ANNA 2,718 views