Poop Signs

I finally have an American on my side at Badvertiser. It seems to surprise him as much as it surprises me.

Wino calls me into his office, and I’m thinking that he is going to request that I make up another “Don’t poop in this bathroom” sign. I wouldn’t be all that surprised, really.

There are two bathrooms here, and one doesn’t have a window. Wino gets pissed about poop in the unventilated bathroom, and he regularly asks me if I can make a “tasteful sign” to deter the poop culprits. The first sign read: “Please use other bathroom for ‘heavy duty’ activities. (Mind the double entendre.)”

Oh the homophone, oh the English word adopted from the French language—it was the most elegant sign I’d ever written.

But Wino approached me, two weeks later. “McQ, can you please make another sign… I think that this one you put up may be unclear to the Eastern Europeans here in the office.” Perhaps he was right. Perhaps they didn’t understand the double-meaning that I had chosen so carefully to make the initial no-dookie demand.

The next sign was, I thought, more to the point: “#1 only. This bathroom doesn’t have sufficient ventilation for #2. If you don’t know what #2 means, please ask.”

During my lunch break that day, one of the Russians here, a sweet girl named Nastasya, asked me about the signage on the bathroom door. “Who keeps putting those up, and then changing them? It’s like a week-to-week calendar, something different every Monday.” I confessed that I had been commissioned to create these poop signs. “I actually think the first one was clearer. I am only recently familiar with the terms #1 and #2.”

An anonymous addendum written in permanent marker appeared the next week, proving Nastasya’s point:

Cheeky Eastern Europeans. It reminds me of a joke I heard on Everybody Loves Raymond. "If you're an American in the living room, what are you in the bathroom? You're-a-peein'!"

All of this poop sign baggage, two months into my employment at Badvertiser, explains my great surprise standing here in Wino’s office, receiving acclaim for some Badvertiser blog revisions I had submitted on my own accord. “Thanks for taking the initiative on this, McQ.” Me? Initiative? More like there were so many errors in the Badvertiser blog entry that I was more self-conscious to be working for this company, which I didn't think was possible.

Then Wino asks, “Did you graduate with a literature degree? It seems you have strong written skills.”

Oh, I’m sorry, weren’t my strong written skills apparent in the poop signs you’ve had me post on the bathroom door?