RICHMOND, Va. – The nation’s coworkers reportedly resolved to hold an extended conversation in the general area outside the employee bathroom at the exact time that you are taking a shit, horrified sources huddled inside bathroom stalls confirmed.
“It’s the official plan of this country’s coworkers that, just as you’ve finished your morning coffee and ducked into the bathroom in full view of us from the hallway, we will happen upon one another and proceed to engage in lengthy dialogues within full earshot of the goings-on of the bathroom we know you’re occupying,” said Ian O’Daly, spokesperson for the National Coworkers Alliance. “It’s common knowledge that the particularly echoey corridor outside the seldom-visited bathroom on the floor you don’t even work on is the best place to have a casual back-and-forth about our kids’ sports teams, the weather, or our recent car troubles.”
You expressed dismay at this recent policy, but due to gastrointestinal distress could not make it to the meeting to voice your opposition.
“It sucks that I couldn’t make it to the meeting yesterday,” you said while unwrapping your second 7-Eleven Three-Meat Breakfast Burrito. “I’m really not looking forward to timing my flushes to hide every sound emanating from my body, then avoiding eye contact while making some feeble comment about how it ‘smelled bad when I got in there’ as I’m exiting the bathroom. I hope the Coworkers Alliance reconsiders their policy and starts holding meetings in the back corner of the warehouse where the squirrel died in the wall. I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”
Organizational psychologist Zara Milner noted that this is simply the latest in a progression of quickly evolving professional customs.
“Given the advent of meetings being held almost exclusively on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, it is now much more common for employees to feel genuine excitement upon seeing each other in person,” said Milner. “Unfortunately, that excitement can result in a lack of awareness of where they happen to be located with respect to their physical environments. With that being said it wouldn’t kill them to move their conversation just a little bit down the fucking hallway and let us shit in peace.”
At press time, the nation’s recent sexual partners also announced plans to sit in total silence without watching television or perusing their phones while you’re using the bathroom in the morning.