Please Don't Talk To Me Right Now. Not Here.
I have the good fortune to work with some fairly laid-back people, and though some of them can come unglued pretty quickly in stressful situations, for the most part it's smooth sailing. Unfortunately, this attitude of general pleasantness carries over with some of the men whenever they go the bathroom, which is down the hall. I, it should be pointed out, don't like to talk that much, or at all, when I'm in the bathroom, even when I'm washing my hands, but especially, especially, when I'm actually emptying my bladder. (I haven't yet had the misfortune of someone trying to talk to me while we're sitting in adjacent stalls, since this is an office and not a dorm bathroom, but I'm not ruling the sick possibility out just yet.)
As I walked into the bathroom one day I knew I was being closely followed, and as I sidled up to the stall, sure enough, my boss took the urinal next to me. Then he starts going, and he starts talking to me, as well, and all I can think about is (1) how much I don't like making small talk while my pants are unzipped, (2) how I really have a hard time going around other people, especially when they're trying to engage me in conversation, (3) how now I'm not going, since I'm gun-shy and trying to talk and having a difficult time squeezing out drop one, (4) now that I can't go, I wonder if my boss can tell I'm not going, and if he's wondering why I can't go, so now maybe he's just continuing our meager conversation on a superficial level while most of his thoughts are actively trained on just why I seem to be standing in front of a urinal doing exactly nothing, (5) what does it say about me that I allow myself to function daily with this level of neurosis, (6) [fill in the blank with some general doubt about my personality].
But he finished, and I managed to go, and that was that. I even managed to act like talking in the bathroom was something I enjoyed, or at least felt comfortable with. But as I washed my hands at the sink farthest from my boss, I realized that next time I had to go, I'd check the crowd first. The men's room one floor down is almost always empty.
