Some people call the bathroom their “second office,” but in the workplace, New Yorkers seem to do everything besides their business once they enter the porcelain palace.
Judging by the goings-on, the office bathroom is more akin to one’s private living room than a public library. Colleagues yap on their cellphones, brush their teeth, even take naps in there. Why? Similar to how you might have claimed a certain stapler or a specific corner of the break room fridge as “yours,” you’ve also subconsciously claimed the bathroom, too.
“In environmental psych terms, the office bathroom is perceived as a ‘secondary territory’ — regular users see it as theirs even though it’s public,” explains Steve Schiavo, professor of psychology at Wellesley College. “No visitor would do those behaviors there.”
A cursory search of OverheardInNewYork.com reveals the scope of intimate conversations going on in office bathrooms: a Park Avenue Plaza trader making deals via cellphone while on the toilet, two NoHo women discussing the possibility that one of them may be dating a pee fetishist.
Mark, 21, recalls hitting the bathroom at his Long Island workplace only to hear a co-worker having a heated cellphone conversation — in Russian, no less — while locked in a stall.
“I sat outside in the break room for about 15 minutes, hearing him babble on and on,” he says.
Flagrant phone calls aren’t the only transgression. Others treat the office bathroom as if it were their personal grooming quarters. Like Tanveer, a 27-year-old programming manager who used to bring his electric razor to work to shave in the morning.
“Sometimes I brushed and flossed my teeth, too,” he adds, “but I think a lot of people do that.”
And that’s not even to mention the technological goings-on. In an AOL poll, 61 percent of New York e-mail users said they’ve checked their e-mail from the bathroom.
“It’s the only place I use the video capabilities of my iPhone,” says Joe, a 30-something tech worker.
Most frequently watched? “Seasons 1 through 6 of ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ It’s the only location where this entertainment seems appropriate,” he explains.
David, 40, who works in sales, enjoys more intellectual pursuits, reading NYTimes.com and playing Sudoku on his iPhone.
Still others prefer to catch up with their friends via social networking sites or text messaging.
Some, however, use the work commode as a means of escape. When her morning grande latte starts to fade, Mitch, 25, occasionally nods off in her marketing office’s single-occupancy bathroom. Settling herself on a nest of seat covers blanketing the toilet, she rests her face on her knees, carefully avoiding telltale zippers or buttons, lest it be obvious that her face was just pressed against a pair of Theory pants. While she typically just grabs a few-minute “super power nap,” sometimes she’ll snooze for as long as 15 minutes.
“My biggest fear is that I’ll fall into a deep sleep — deep enough to not be woken up by repeated knocks,” she says of her biweekly habit.
Joe, the tech worker, notes that the bathroom is the only spot in the building without security cameras, making it “your only option” for an escape.
Unless, of course, you’ve got a boss like the Kentucky insurance agent charged last month with spying on employees through a camera hidden in the bathroom’s smoke detector. Lewis Maltby of the National Workrights Institute has tracked a number of such cases, and notes that while some bosses have been sanctioned, in other cases courts have upheld their right to spy in the stalls.
Business etiquette consultant Jacqueline Whitmore says it’s not surprising to find a range of unbusinesslike behaviors in the office loo, given that “we’re spending more time at work than ever. The lines between personal business and work business are getting skewed,” she says.
In that vein, behaviors like brushing your teeth, doing your hair, text messaging — things that are brief and won’t disturb others — are all acceptable, she says. Things best saved for home: shaving, eating food and talking on your cellphone.
As for in-person conversations, while small talk with someone at the adjacent sink is fine, save longer discussions for happy hour. And if your boss launches into a full-blown conversation while you’re sitting in adjacent stalls, you have every right to deflect the exchange.
“You can say, ‘Hold that thought, and we can talk about that when we get back to our desks,’” Whitmore suggests. “You need to recognize there are other people in there.”