Speaking of Bathrooms

The other day Marisa Jean posted her thoughts on public bathroom use which gave me such a good laugh it almost made up for me not doing sit-ups that day. This post made work so much more hilarious when I found myself having a somewhat embarrassing encounter with a shower at work that afternoon:

I work in a physical therapy clinic that has a therapy pool and of course a locker room with showers. It is not uncommon for the floor to get puddles of water that need to be squeegeed and mopped. Now for some reason Friday was much worse than usual. Water had pooled way out to the opposite end of the bathroom. I wondered why it had done this, but not so much as to investigate the matter. After some intense squeegeeing and soaking several towels the floor was adequately dry so I took the towels I had used back to throw them in the washer. I figured as long as I was doing laundry I should fold the towels in the dryer so I got started on them and about the time I got done (it had probably been 30 minutes) a patient informed me that the bathroom was flooded! I couldn't believe it-- what had this patient been doing in there to single handedly flood the locker room in less than 20 minutes? I checked the showers which at first glance looked fine but decided to turn them on and watch. I found that one of the showers drains was not draining. Good thing we have a shower plunger just for cases like this. I got the plunger, took my shoes off, rolled up my pants (the shower was now a wading pool), positioned myself in a squat position right over the drain and started plunging... and plunging... and plunging. Eventually the water started to slowly recede down the drain, but unfortunately it oozed back up. I thought maybe I wasn't plunging hard enough or fast enough so I upped the vigor factor to force the water down the drain-- it was working. Hooray! I had beaten the shower. Or so I thought.

I removed the plunger from over the drain and watched with a smile as the water swirled around and slid down the drain. Well I think I made the drain sick or something because it SPEWED the water right back out. Remember I was maintaining a squat position directly over the drain. Douched-- literally. All the water that I had forced down the drain came rushing up in a fountain right under me.

I was soaking wet and looked very much like I had peed my pants. I always keep a change of clothes in my car for emergency situations such as this but it had been such a nice day and I know I need the exercise so I had walked to work that day. My options were these: 1- have wet crotch pants or 2- put on a hospital gown and have my butt show. I voted for the former and took my time finishing laundry in the back room.