The all-seeing eye is everywhere: I once had a boss who would monitor the time we spent in the bathroom. Those who spent too much time in the water closet faced a stern talk on the value of work. He reasoned every minute spent pooping was a minute stolen from the Company. It was our jobs to be shit upon, not be the shitters ourselves.

There is something subtly indignifying in being forced to perform one's most intimate bodily functions in so public a facility. Whether it's the fact that the stalls, so reminiscent of high school, hardly afford enough privacy to do one's business, or the fact that someone inevitably dribbles on the floor, going to the bathroom during work hours has become a degrading ritual. What do you think about, after all, while you're on the pot? Do thoughts of work invade your excretory fortress of solitude? Do you wonder if sitting at a desk all day is making your ass grow fatter and fatter, until it droops over the side of the bowl? Do you read the sports section? Remember what you had for dinner last night?

The cheap toilets themselves are hardly worth mentioning. Perhaps it's that companies inherently want to get as much as they can for as little as they can, or perhaps they fear that Smokey the Bear will stop taking dumps in the woods and come in to inspect the facilities, but those lo-flow toilets seem to be all the rage. These damn things, as deep as the skin stretched tight over Cher's wrinkled visage, are hardly capable of flushing Mini Me, let alone something brought on by the company cafeteria food. Thus this sign:

No shit, Sherlock. YOU try standing there cranking the handle, waiting for your anal love child to align itself to go down the pipe in some kind of obscene turd ballet reminiscent of the shuttle-docking sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The toilet paper, however, is the worst of it. I truly believe that in a cost-cutting method, my employers started importing rolls of Cold War-era paper from the former Soviet Union. One would think that the sandpaper-like texture of this stuff would be more efficient at getting one's bum clean. Not so. Rather, it's more likely to cause you to start bleeding.

Yet, the bathroom is also a democratic force. Those shoes under the stall door could be your boss'. The mailroom clerk can find himself taking a piss next to the CEO. Even though some companies maintain the class system with an executive washroom, where only the divinities in management get to take their holy craps, you can rest assured that everyone, no matter how anal retentive, has to go now and again. And, no matter if it's ramen noodles or foie gras you're recycling, it all winds up in the same place.