Women: Lean In and Poop at the Office, Already
 

Raiduhs

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/lean...e-already.html

Lean In and Poop at the Office, Already
BY MAUREEN O'CONNOR


Public restrooms induce a certain low-level anxiety in users. There are etiquettes to observe; puddles to dodge; sounds to ignore; dilemmas surrounding flushing. But the anxieties of the public restroom need not induce shame, because they are also universal. We are all at the mercy of public restrooms — supermodels, world leaders, regular gals. Shared toilets are equalizers. Sit or squat, we do it in solidarity.

Nonetheless, the Daily Beast's Laura Dimon (daughter of Jamie) reports that "the last office taboo for women" is "doing your business at work." Really?

[W]omen report going to different floors, or walking roundabout routes from their desk to the bathroom. And some say they’ve experienced the “standoff,” when two or more women are in the bathroom, but all decline to do their business until the others leave — instead waiting awkwardly, in silence, writhing in emotional and physical discomfort, until someone surrenders.

These anxieties are not exclusive to females. In seminal guide "How to Poop at Work," Brian Moylan, a man, also describes the "unspoken shitting toilet" phenomenon. Still, women are widely believed to experience greater pooping anxiety than men. Dimon continues with the sad story of one such woman:

Jill, 28, a Vancouver native now working at an insurance company in New York City, said that if she absolutely can’t avoid the act entirely, she lifts her feet off the ground and props them up against the side of the stall to avoid the “chance that the person next to me would recognize my shoes and forever hold in their heads that I was the girl” defecating in the ladies’ room.

How is that even possible? Wouldn't the angle and leverage be all wrong? I'm picturing Jill pooping like a ping-pong show. Her effort is unnecessary: Nobody peeks under the edge of a stall to identify a pooping woman by her shoes. Nobody. (Several Cut staffers note actively avoiding identifying details in that context.) If anything, Jill's actions are counterproductive: If I had reason to believe a woman was pooping in a contorted pretzel position like Jill's, I would stick around to ask for yoga tips. But back to Dimon:

The office environment takes this anxiety and kicks it up a notch. “The workplace still remains men’s space. Women may be more hypervigilant of not breaking rules of gender by monitoring their femininity even more,” [sociologist Samantha] Kwan says. Harvard anthropologist Kimberly Theidon agrees. “Office space is already pre-determined as a masculine space and women enter it,” she says, adding that there is a “long history of women trying to manage their bodies in their workplace,” and a struggle to not be identified with or associated solely with their bodies.

This logic doesn't make a lot of sense, because the workplace that requires a woman to poop right in front of a man is pretty rare. (Ally McBeal's co-ed bathroom notwithstanding.) But since Dimon managed to find a few neurotic females terrified to the point of contortion at the prospect of pooping at work, let's make sure we make this really clear: It is okay to poop at work. Nobody is judging you. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit about your shits — we're too busy shitting in our own stalls.

Go poop in your office bathrooms, everyone. It's what our feminist foremothers would have wanted. Every woman deserves a poop of her own.

(more poop links at the original)

Can I watch?

I poop in the ladies restroom to try and help them become more comfortable with it.

:facepalm: Get with the program ladies. Getting paid to defecate is a part of the compensation program. It's not about having to shit at work, it's about reworking your bowel cycle to make sure you excrement at the work place. Between the paid time, and the cost of sewage, it creates a great deal of added income to your bottom line.

The Closed For Maintenance sign outside the womens restroom every other day at my work is in direct conflict with this article. Coincidentally, my employer likes to counteract low morale with onsite food vendors.

Wait? Women have to sit to pee anyway, how on earth do the other women know if she's dropping a deuce or just peeing. Unless she's tearing that shit up. And besides, if you've ever cleaned a women's public restroom, they sure aren't shy about leaving their personal hygiene products laying about every where. This article is stupid.

'Eh, on a side note, I hate public $#itting.

After my 6th grade year there was an "incident" and they removed all the $#itter doors.

Really?

Pissing is one thing but, really, come on, I need my alone squat time...

Women are scared of pooping with someone else around.


Men are proud of spreading the stink.


Venus, Mars, something like that.

I see what you did there.

I've heard rumors of women shitting before, but it can't be common enough that they need toilets at the office, can it? What kind of women are you hiring?

Hell, in boot camp, there were about 5 stalls. In front of those stalls was a wall that was about waist high. We would be told ‘ok, Port side, ‘Pump and Dump’” etc.
The port side of the barracks would single file line into the the head. The line would snake around the waist high walls and you’d line up in front of the toilet.
No doors.

So if you had to shit, there was a dude standing in front of you about 4’ away, until another stall opened up ahead of him in line, then he could move. …..then another dude would take his place.

I didn’t shit for about 4 or 5 days because of this. Got back from Chow one day and we were about to start doing something, and I got up and hauled ass to the head; had no choice, and didn’t care of the consquences of going without being told. Absolutely DESTROYED the toilet.

I'm out.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm ONLY an interwebs badass?

Interwebs ONLY...

People in their 20's still give a ****, by the time you are 30 you just want a good shit and who cares who sees you.

I'm glad my wife doesn't poop. That's disgusting.