Bathroom Monitor

This funny story popped in my head a few days ago. I can’t even begin to tell you what made me think of it, but I just had to laugh when I remembered it. I didn't laugh when it happened, but I laughed yesterday.

It’s a work story. (Not my current work, thank goodness.)

This was not my most favorite job. One day I was sitting at my desk and the owner of the company comes up to me. He asks me if I can come with him. “Absolutely,” I replied and I picked up my notebook and a pen. He looked at the notebook and said, “Oh, you don’t need that.”

I follow him down the hall and he walks into one of the bathrooms. Uhm…yeah. About that…I don’t make a habit of going into bathrooms with creepy men…

I just kind of looked at him from outside the bathroom, and he looked at me. He looked at me like “what are you waiting for?” and then motioned for me to follow him. I did.

We’re both in the bathroom now – it was one of those one-seaters. He points to the toilet and says, “Do you see that?” So many things were going through my head right then, but I replied with a simple “see what?” He leans down real close to the toilet and motions me closer still.

{Breaking away from this story for one brief moment: when I first started that job (hadn’t even been there a week), I was sitting in my boss’ office, when a coworker walked into the kitchen across the hall from the office. He was my age, seemed kind of cool. He dressed nicely, and as he turned around, I saw a dip can circle in his back pocket. I did a double take because I thought, “surely Brad doesn’t dip.” As I was staring at his bum, he turns and catches me. And then he asks “Can I help you?” as he backs up against to the counter to hide his rear.} Not even then was I as uncomfortable as I was with the owner. In the bathroom.

Back to the story at hand: He points, I look, I see nothing. I look harder. Still nothing. I look up at him. He points out this teensy tiny stream of water rolling down the inside of the toilet bowl. (What? Is that not supposed to do that?) He asks if I see it now, and I reply yes.

It seems that trickle indicated a slow leak…no, not even a leak…I don’t even know how to describe this. Somehow, since the water was slowly running, the offices below ours could hear a slight trickling sound in the pipes. No leak, mind you, just a slow trickling sound. That, apparently, was embarrassing to the owner of the company. (Nope, I still don’t understand why.)

He informed me that he was pretty sure he had fixed the problem, but that I was to keep an eye on that for him – I needed to check it a few times a day, and be sure to let him know if I saw anything.

Yeah. Riiiiight. I’ll stay right on top of that. Do you know how many times I went in that bathroom after that?

DUDE! We had a janitor!!! Why would you think that would fall under my job description? Seriously. Not even under “other duties as necessary.”