Music City Bathroom Attendants.
It’s so aggressive, so damn intrusive!
A man meeting you in a bathroom with an extended hand is creepy.
It’s so freaking annoying, my buddy paid one of these guys $20.
“That’s it,” he said, shouting over the twang of a Garth Brooks medley.
“I’m done with you. Don’t f*** with me or any of my boys. We’re gonna take a piss when we want to take a piss and nobody is gonna pan handle us, got it?”
You know it’s crazy when you have to invite the piss attendant to your table and point out your posse so he knows who to leave alone in the rest room.
Really?
When did this practice begin?
At what point did someone think to themselves, “Hey, let’s put a creepy guy in the bathroom. Let’s dress him like an ass clown valet and cover the counter with potions, lotions and all manner of pungent fragrances that smell like kitchen cleaner.
This crazy story starts in a country music honky tonk in a glitzy little town far far away.
I walk to the restroom.
I push open the door.
It’s like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy pushes open the door to the Yellow Brick Road and the black and white yields to a technicolor burst of amazement.
Only this is the reverse.
The honky tonk is a rolling tumbleweed of dirt and 8 x 10 glossys.
Outside the beer stained floor, grease smudged wall, and aroma of moldy cheese, the energy inside is good.
I open the door to the bathroom and its like entering a petri dish full of Ebola.
The urinals are 8 inches apart. There is no partition. Can you say “EYES FORWARD PLEASE!”
The bathroom is a wreck, smeared with what appears to be mud and blood.
Looks like the DRIVE BY SHOOTING collection from the Home Depot, I think to myself.
The porcelin is stained, filthy. It makes a Tijuana bathroom look like an operating suite.
There are two men in this small bathroom. One man is one man too many. But there are 2 men in this refrigerator box with pluming.
They are wearing white shirts and bow ties like they will be dining with James Bond and Dr. No later that evening.
One of the men has what appears to be a glass eye. It wanders the room like a spy surveillance camera.
“Good afternoon sir,” he says.
The other urinal man suspiciously watches.
If I didn’t have to go so bad, I would have turned and walked out.
This becomes a business decision. Excrete here or on the dance floor?
I step into position and stare uneasily at the wall before me. There is no interesting periodical, no sports page for me to read, no video to watch. The wall before me is tired, stained with the number of a girl named Maria.
This bathroom has the feel of a back alley abortion clinic.
“why they book two of us at the same time,” one man says, his words hostile and cold.
The man with the glass eye mutters something that sounds like a curse word.
I am growing angry. This is a filthy swamp of excretion.
Why would any business owner think this bathroom needs an attendant. What it needs is a thorough cleaning, a check from the health department, a visit from the CDC.
I finish and move to the sink. While I’m still fastening my belt a bottle of something pink is thrust into my field of vision
“What’s that?” I ask annoyed at the sudden, inappropriate violation of my personal space.
“To make you fresher,” the attendant with the glass eye says.
“Make me fresher?” I say aloud. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Yes sir. Bring you some class.”
He pumps a pile of soapy goo into my hand.
I look at him like the tin man looks at rain. I’m pissed. I wanna say don’t touch me glass eye. I bite my tongue.
“Yeah, like this is going to class me up,” I retort.
I want to slap the guy in this head but my hand is full of cleanser.
He is standing almost on top of me while I begin washing my hands.
Glass eye is breathing pursively, talking in some guttural toilet gibberish I do not understand.
The feeling is uncomfortable. There should be a perimeter rule in a bathroom. This guy is breaking the rule.
I am seething. He picks up a towel and holds it out waiting for me to finish.
“Dry yourself off,” He says.
There’s a novel idea stench bag.
I grab the towel and dry my hands.
“Why are there 2 guys in this creepy bathroom?” I ask.
The two men grumble, wondering the same thing.
“It’s stupid as a motha f**** if you ask me,” glass eye says. His words are a train wreck, a run on sentence. He is speaking in morse code, a syntax more conluted than a swirling toilet flush.
There is a five dollar bill in their dish. That’s $2.50 per man. You’d make more money selling plasma? You’d make more money playing a one string guitar on the street. You’d make more money filing for unemployment.
Why would anyone do this job?
You work in a soiled bathroom and listen to the sounds of excrement all day. You violate the code of bathroom etiquette by staring, touching, talking to people with their pants down.
You breach the rules of personal space every minute of every day. It’s ludicrous.
Where do you even begin when you write your resume?
Job description: Restroom engineer, specializing in fragrance delivery and interpersonal interactions.
In my estimation; bathroom attendant is a job only slightly better than equine insemination attendant.
I open my wallet and pull out a couple of dollars.
I toss the dollars in the plate. Normally after I use the bathroom there is a sense of relief. But now I’m angry. I was just violated and ripped off. For what? Did I really class myself up?
I look at the nasty little bathroom that reminds me of a Tia Juana birthing chamber.
I stare at the two bathroom miscreants. They are deviants dressed in white, toilet paper and urinal cakes are their tools of the trade.
Everyone has to make a living but not at my expense.
I return to the club. I feel soiled.
Over the course of the evening I will visit a few more clubs and each is seemingly more disgusting than the last.
In one bathroom, the attendant is seated on the commode behind a shower curtain. That’s right, there is no stall door, it is an opaque, plastic shower curtain. I am unclear if he is tired of standing or actually using the john. Either way, he is muttering to himself.
I am scared. I am disgusted. I am amazed that world famous music venues of this city have such disgusting facilities.
By the end of the evening, I refuse to use the bathroom. Instead I walk into the cold night, walk a block up the street, and enter another bar that I am not even drinking in to use a bathroom that is normal, well lit, and clean.
Bathroom attendants are disgusting and unnecessary.
You know your club sucks when you will walk a block up the street to pee.
Life’s Crazy™