A Lack Of Roll Models

In my company, seven men and two women (me and a coworker who does part-time) share one unisex bathroom (containing both a toilet and a urinal in one stall, with the sink outside of the stall). The company has a cleaning service that comes once a week, but no in-house janitor or anything like that. The supply closet for cleaning supplies, hand towels, and toilet paper is in the breakroom, only two doors down from the bathroom.

Shortly after starting there, I noticed that either my female coworker or I are the only ones replacing empty toilet paper rolls. I asked my female coworker about this, and she said something along the lines of ‘oh, technically, the rule is that you replace the roll when you use the last of it, but the men don’t care’.

Now, the toilet roll holder was designed in such a way that you couldn’t immediately see if the toilet paper was empty, so I sat down numerous times with my pants down only to then realize there was no toilet paper, redress myself, go to the break room to get toilet paper and then finally get to pee! And then it happened that I needed the bathroom really urgently and didn’t notice there was no toilet paper until it was too late. Luckily, I had some tissues in my pocket, but that was the proverbial last straw. 

I talked to the rest of the guys working there about the issue but got shoulder shrugs and ‘what’s the big deal?!’ in response.

So, I figured if it was no big deal, then I could stop replacing the empty rolls. And I convinced my female coworker to do the same. Instead, we just kept a roll of toilet paper in our desks and took it with us if we went to the bathroom and then back to our desks again.

About three days later, I overheard the following from the neighbouring office:

Coworker #1: “I really don’t know what you want from me.”

Coworker #2: “I know it was you in there last! I had to figure out how to wipe my a** with a cardboard tube! Replace the d*** roll!” 

Turns out that once toilet paper stops just magically appearing in the bathroom, men are pretty capable of enforcing the ‘replace it when you use the rest’ rule among themselves.