bathroom attendants are the bane of my very existence…

Let’s just start out by stating the damn obvious. What the hell do I need someone in the bathroom for squirting soap into my hands and handing me a paper towel afterwards. This is quite simply a task that I learned at 2 years old when being appropriately potty trained. Furthermore, these attendants expect me to pay them for a task that even a kindergartner knows the appropriate cause of action. I mean, I’m already at a bar paying for over-priced drinks to start, the last stressor that I need right behind a growing bar tab is to have to pay to pee. I would think that since it’s mandatory for said establishments to provide me with a place to excrete, that I shouldn’t feel obligated to then pay for the pleasure of peeing.

And I have yet to come across an attendant that actually does what I would validate paying a person for a job as such. I mean, how many times are the bathroom stalls out of toilet paper? How many times are they just as dirty as they would be had there been no useless body in there pointing at a tip jar for their “services” rendered? Who the hell needs a sprits of some 2nd rate perfume before returning to a smoke-filled bar? Gum…maybe? Put in an effin dispenser already. Problem solved. Anything else that these attendants offer in there is 100% useless. Period.

Let’s talk about the scam that is the bathroom attendant.

ONE – who the hell carries money into the bathroom? Even if I did take my purse in there – I like 99.9% of the rest of the population function paperless, i.e. credit card-centric. Where’s the place to swipe my card should you even make me feel guilty enough to actually give you a damn thing? What cash only? Well sounds to me like you are shit-out-of-luck, sucker.

TWO – They conveniently remove all the soap from their ordinary dispensers making it impossible for me to refuse the soap they are trying to shove into my hand. Let me tell you a little secret… I don’t feel compelled to pay you when you remove my choice to pay you for a service that I don’t friggin need.

THREE – They remove all access to paper towels, except of course for the one roll that the attendant unrolls to hand to you. Shit, I will pat those suckers dry on the back of my jeans and be on my way. When you decline said pre-torn towel it’s accompanied by a scowl. I really just want to ask one of these people who THEY would pay for the exact same service.

FOUR – They ALL remove the tips from the jars as soon as someone puts them in there. This gives the illusion that they have made no money for the evening further initiating your quilt mechanism until you find yourself seeking out a dollar from your table of friends before returning to the bathroom just so you have something to put in there sans the nasty stink eye that is inevitable.

FIFTH – You’re at a bar. You’re drinking. I know me and when I’m at a bar and drinking, I’m in the bathroom 45x. Now, if I were to pay to pee every time I go in there – I’m into my bathroom habit for at a max of $45 and if I decide to pull a pay every other time $23. This could at times far outweigh the actual bar tab. Screw a bunch of that.

Now, I might even concede that if I am at a 5-star restaurant that I might demand a bathroom attendant present. I think the quality of service should directly correlate back to the type of establishment you are in. This is not to say that I expect shitty service at a hole-in-the-wall bar, but let’s face it… that’s exactly what you get. I’m also paying $1 per jello shot, $3 for a pitcher of beer and using a restroom that smells like the septic tank is a month over-due for a changing. I do not however, expect to see a bathroom attendant in a mid-level bar on your average bar strip.

This expectation leads me directly to my personal bathroom attendant experience this past Friday night.

Fine, I was in Uptown. A nicer area to be finding a bar to enjoy for the evening, but certainly not nice enough to have a bathroom attendant making me feel guilty about using the bathroom every 5 minutes.

We were at a bar call Cretias on McKinney Ave in Uptown. This place is nothing special, I will outright admit from the get-go. When I walked in, I needed to use the bathroom before I even got started on my bar tab. I was immediately put off by the fact that they had the bathroom door propped open with a bar chair. Awesome, I get to pee while still feeling like I am on the bar floor with pounding music at maximum capacity while I try to calm bladder down enough to get on the same page with me. Furthermore, the positioning of the bathrooms coupled with the doors being held wide open, really made me feel like anyone in the bar could see through the cracks in the stall door to get an idea, at the very least, of what was going on in there. None of this makes a bashful bladder act appropriately.

After inveigling my bladder to man up, I then have to leave the stall to find a bathroom attendant standing there. Well shit, awesome. She’s this tiny Hispanic woman who clearly had Spanish as a 1st language (and I determined later, her only language) standing there waiting on little old me. Well shit, awesome. Sigh. I need to give the illusion that I am a clean person so I walk over and turn on the water. Before I can even refuse the soap she is holding, she has squirted about 45 dabs of soap in my hand. Good lord… it was like trying to get shampoo out of my hair in a soft water shower… AKA impossible. While I am trying to get it all off, she begins rushing me… in Spanish of course, because there’s a girl at the other sink needing soap and I am cutting into her routine. Well shit… ok, bitch, give me a second here. Then I say to her that I don’t need the towel and begin to wipe if off on my jeans when she shoves… I repeat – SHOVES – the towel in my hand. Well shit. Do I friggin owe you money now? I have none on me… good lord. So I manage something like – I don’t have any cash, maybe next time. Then I bail out of there. Fortunately, on that trip, there was a line and she didn’t have the time to give me her sob story – in a completely different language. Whew… dodged that one.

The next time I had to go to the bathroom, I held it until the point of potential hospitalization. I was dreading having to go back in there and face her. I still didn’t have a single dime of actual cash on me, so this was going to be interesting.

I go in and quickly make it into a stall without her really noticing me as she was dealing with other girls at that point. Maybe I should have waited because I picked the stall with no toilet paper in it. Well shit, awesome. I tap the girls foot in the stall next to me and ask for some TP. She obliges. It was in that moment that I had decided that this bathroom attendant hadn’t done her job. And if you aren’t going to do your job, you don’t get a tip. Which worked out well, because I didn’t bring any cash. I wash my hands and TRY to decline the soap to use the dispenser on the wall. Shoulda known… empty. As I am dejectedly returning my hands under the hottest water I could get, she shoves 45 squirts of soap into my hand. Son of a BITCH… you quick senorita, you friggin got me. At that point, I just accepted the towel she’d torn for me and quickly walked out of the bathroom. She said something to me harshly in Spanish. I really didn’t care, because I had no idea what she’d said in the first place. What I did understand and what she DID say in PERFECT English was – TIP?! As she pointed to the tip jar while she had managed to grab me by the forearm. And I just said – I can’t hear you and I need to go. Then I walked out.

Good lord. Now I’m absolutely dreading having to pee. I mean, it’s becoming an issue of can I hold it the rest of the time I am here and pop-a-squat at that dumpster area I saw when we were walking up to the bar at the beginning of the night. Real lady-like I know… but peeing was starting to stress me out. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And really, let’s face it… I’m not all that lady-like to start.

Enter my need to be #3. This time, to avoid the whole uncomfortable situation, I beg borrow and steal for a 1-dollar bill. Which as I am doing this, I am pissed that I am. Regardless, bathroom trip #3 went smoothly. It’s like she had no idea that she’d blatantly asked me for a tip the last time coupled with her violating my personal space bubble by actually touching me. Which, that whole little scenario seems quite bathroom attendant unprofessional. She had everything available to you in that bathroom, except a comment card box. Real Convenient. REAL EFFIN CONVENIENT. And kinda clever. Don’t mistake that last comment about cleverness with respect for said “oversight”.

It was trip #4 to the bathroom that really put me over the edge. See, by now all the girls in my group were so annoyed with this bathroom attendant not only being there in the 1st place but now demanding a tip VERBALLY from anyone who washed their hands. We all agreed that while our next plan was slightly disgusting, it was hard to argue the validity of it all. We decided, if we don’t wash our hands, we don’t owe her anything.

Now let’s just talk about the logistics of what this little plan meant. I was purposefully and with premeditated foresight actually agreeing to be a dirty effin bastard. Trouble was, I saw this solution as more acceptable than being bullied by a 4’5 Hispanic woman who was becoming increasing more aggressive every time someone wasn’t tipping her – i.e. me.

Well, I couldn’t wait much longer after making the –no hand washing pact – to actually have to cash in on bathroom trip #4. So off I go. I sneak into a stall past the attendants gaze. I didn’t however properly plan. By the time I was done using the bathroom and redressing, I was the only one in the bathroom. Well shit. I’m not trying to be blatantly obvious that I am not washing my hands, so shit. This resulted in me waiting for a couple other girls to come in, use the bathroom and exit the stall – kinda in a pack so I could scoot out, unnoticed.

QUICK ASIDE – The other 2 stalls in the bathroom were now housing anywhere between 2-3 girls in each stall. You know how us girls do… all go to the bathroom at once then cramming all into 1 stall at once. Now let’s just say there were 3 girls in 1 stall and 2 in the other. This meant I would have to hang out, now for an uncomfortable amount of time in my stall (with just me in it) and wait for 5 girls to pee while gabbing incessantly and even taking a phone call or 2 to tell whoever was on the other end of the dbag in the bar that night. At this point, I was sitting on the toilet, pants complete up, with my head resting on my hands of which my arms that were resting on my knees. REALLY? OVER A FRIGGIN PISS TIP. Too far I say… TOO DAMN FAR.

After what felt like 10years, both stall doors open and the gals poor on out. Score. Here’s my chance. So I wait 2-3 seconds after they are all clamoring around the only 2 sinks in the bathroom and I exit thinking I am about to make my great escape. But no, no. The bathroom attendant spots me right off. I say – Oh no that’s fine, I’m not going to wash my hands. 10-eyes of pretentiously judgmental Uptown girls all meet me eyes as I am backing out of the bathroom in total and complete retreat. Dude, fine… I’m nasty. Whatever. I’m pretty sure you all just pee’d into the same toilet as one another without flushing you dirty bastards. So you know what… wash those hands, but I don’t see a bidet in here so who’s going to wash your nasty asses?!

I couldn’t even formulate that really rather ingenious comeback when the Hispanic woman started angrily yelling at me in Spanish. And I mean angrily. She had her finger pointed and had taken 2 (small as her stride was no competition for my own) steps towards me. Now where I come from when you point a finger as you are making a forward progression coupled with hateful angry words… thems is fighting words. I quickly evaluated that not only would I be charging up an older lady but that if I did in fact hurt her, she’d totally use the whole – hate crime – bit on me. Add that to the fact that she’d claim she was elderly, though she wasn’t that I could tell – and I woulda been screwed. So instead I backed out of the bathroom saying I don’t want to wash my hands thanks. I then found myself at a hurried pace making it back to my table of friends. I ½ way thought she was going to follow me out of there and make an announcement to the whole bar in perfect English that I hadn’t washed my hands. Then I would have to take the chance of a hate crime and beat the shit out of her. Didn’t happen, but it could have.

Bathroom experience #5 was going to be different. I was going to walk in stating my objectives. You know, get them in the open right from the get. I walk in and say – I won’t be washing my hands so please don’t yell at me in a foreign language and point to your tip jar and demand I tip you for a bodily function. She pointed to an open stall for me to use and I chose the one she didn’t point to so as to say – hey eff off, I can pick my own damn stall. Then when I came out, this crazy ass met me at the door and squirted soap in my hand before I’d even fully exited the stall. Alright abuela, 2 can play at this. I waited for her to set the soap down and she turned around and with palm up was attempting to guide me to the sink to wash this soap off. Yeah, well that open palm was calling to me. Without thinking I wiped the soap she’d put in my hand back on hers and I said – tip yourself. I didn’t hang around to see the aftermath – I literally ran out. Like a good old ding-dong-ditch back in the day.

By this time it was approaching 1:30am and honestly the stress of having to mastermind several different bathroom escape plans had finally made its mark on me. I couldn’t handle a 6th episode. And while I had the pee leg-shake going (AKA the pee dance)… I conceded that I would be able to make the 30-minute drive home. Well make the effort, anyhow. I made it, but my bladder damn near burst. I sure showed her. Eat shit angry bitter Hispanic bitch.

I just feel like the bottom line here is… that I should not have to be that calculating and/or stressed when doing something that my mere biological make-up dictates I should. And I certainly feel that it’s absolutely absurd to have to pay for such a task. Sure you can mask it by saying that I am paying for the soap and towel. But to you I say – AGAIN THE RESTAURANT LEGALLY HAS TO SUPPLY THOSE THINGS TO THEIR GUESTS AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. You stick a body in there and boom, I owe you to pee.

From now on I’m gonna bring latex gloves and pop those bitches on all surgical-style… but not until I get into the bathroom. I really want her to know I mean business. Then when I walk out, I say – didn’t touch a thing in there. I owe you shit and I’m not a dirty bastard. OR maybe I will go into the stall and put them on quietly. Then when I come out and she goes to aggressively put soap on my latex-ed palm, I’ll have some clever line like – You thought you had me… but I remember who you are and now I bet you won’t forget who I am.

I’ll leave this blog with this… Casey (a guy friend of mine) and on the topic of bathroom attendants said (while I was reliving my traumatic experiences of that night) – You know, if they put a hot young scantily clad dressed chick in the men’s bathroom as the bathroom attendant, the flu would be eradicated within 5-years. HAHAHA! My response was put a hot dude in the women’s bathroom and he’d likely be as angry as the Hispanic woman demanding tips from the chicks. The only way a hot dude as a bathroom attendant in the chick’s bathroom is in cougar central – i.e. Sambuca @ the Shops of Legacy.

I hate with a passion… the mere concept of bathroom attendants… especially the pushy ones. C’mon now. For shits sake, you work in a bathroom… just be happy with the fact you have a job. Unemployment in Texas went up a whole point in 1 week, you fortunate ungrateful bitch.

-Rant over.