Bathroom Sex

At work, we don’t stock paper towels in the bathroom. Instead, we use those roller towels that you sometimes see in public restrooms. Ours are usually a lot cleaner than the ones you see in public restrooms, because, again, as a chemical plant, we take our shit seriously. Once a week, a laundry service comes to my building and washes all the uniforms, towel rolls, carpets, shower towels, etc.

The men’s room in the admin area (where the manager, secretary, and myself work) has two of these hand towel rolls. Recently, the one on the left stopped rolling up the crank on the bottom as you pulled fresh towel from the top. This resulted in a pile of roll towel laying on the floor next to the sink.

The next morning at shift change, in the crowded room before the formalities of pass-off began, the building manager asked me to have our laundry service guy fix it for us. I thought about this quietly for a second. It was 6:00 AM. I had not yet had a cup off coffee (and I was more or less an addict that week). He had not yet had his cigarette (and he’s an addict outright).

I mention this because his request was silly on a couple of levels. The guy he was speaking of is basically a delivery serviceman for fresh and soiled linens. He shows up with fresh towels, picks up the dirty ones, and repeats. He does not fix things.

In contrast, the maintenance department next door to my building fixes many things.

It took me a second to realize this myself. Again, it was early and I was not yet drugging it up. Rather than thinking of the maintenance department, I instead thought of the laundry guy the manager had mentioned. I imagined myself asking him to take care of this for me. It was a somewhat amusing mental image.

The guy who handles the linens for my building is a skinny blonde guy who looks about 16, but is probably closer to 22. He does not give off an aura of a maintenance guy, or of any outright masculinity at all, really. He wears shorts all year round, excepting only the deadliest winter days. He’s actually pretty cute and he smiles a lot. But he does not fix towel dispensers.

A few seconds after this thought occurred to me (but before I decided to tell the manager I’d have maintenance fix the problem instead), he realized the same thing and suggested I see if I could have maintenance do it first.

I agreed, but then had a thought.

End of year reviews are right around the corner. There would be just enough time for me to try to get the linen service guy to fix this anyway. And if I did…

I would be able to honestly put, “Talked the towelboy into mounting my crank in the men's room.” on my review. I think it would look good in the “Teamwork” section.

I figure that one item alone should be worth an extra 2% raise.