This One Is About Toilets and Their Fans

The office where I work has a small custodial crew, hired from a cleaning company by the building owner. There's one guy on this crew who's a real piece of work.

You know that slightly weird but altogether harmless-seeming kid who sat at the very front of your algebra class in eighth grade? The one who thought he was everyone's friend because nobody really picked on him, yet it was all more out of a shared desire just to avoid him? Ever wonder what would happen if the kid grew older, but never grew out of his social maladjustment? This man is what happens.

The man of whom I write is almost as wide as he is tall, balding through an already-thin scraggle of curly gray hair. He does not walk. He can only waddle, and I don't mean just hints of a waddle or a waddly-type walk, either—you can see the effort he puts into lifting his leg from the hip and setting it down again. It is the quintessential duck-style waddle, so pronounced it would be parody were it not tragic, tragic reality. He breathes from the mouth, and he talks to people halfway down the hallway, loudly, even if they're not interested in talking back (perhaps an extension of his inability to fall into step with people due to his waddle). Once, when I was unfortunate enough to have to squeeze by him in the hallway junction, I picked up the unmistakable aroma of vinegar emanating from him. Oh, and this guy is a total creep, too.

Hmm, I guess it would be wrong of me to judge someone based on their appearance, huh? Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm not.

This guy likes to clean the women's restroom. He really, really likes to clean the women's restroom. He's responsible for cleaning the men's room too, but he only gets in there twice a day. With the ladies' room he's like a goddamn cuckoo clock: he pops his head through the door every hour. I wish I were lying when I say he gets himself in there every hour, but I think that's all he's really there for. Whenever he's away from the women's restroom, it feels as though he's just killing time, going through the motions cleaning other not-the-girls'-bathroom things, waiting for the next opportunity to get into that restroom at such an interval where he doesn't seem creepy. But I'm onto him. Oh yes I am.

To truly convey the creepy nature of this man's modus operandi regarding women's restroom sanitation, I shall have to break it down for you. First, he shall knock, though I'm sure this is only because even he realizes you can't just walk into the women's restroom unannounced. He shall then (quite) cheerfully call through the door "maintenance department," though "mouth-breathing manchild janitor" would be more succint and fitting.

Here is where, when I first noticed the pattern, something really started to give me chills. If nobody answers, he will enter, the door will close behind him, and he will clean the still-clean-from-the-last-four-times-he-was-in-there-today restroom. If the restroom is occupied, however, he will call (still very cheerfully), "Oh! That's okay!" There will be a pause as he stares at the door, then "Take your time, no rush!"

The pause and the line that follows pushes my creep-sensor needle into the orange of the meter. There are variations to the line (e.g. All right then, I'll wait" and so on), but just its presence doesn't sit well with me. Want to know what pushes my creep-sensor into the red?

When he makes small talk, through the door, with whoever's in the bathroom.

Now, the small talk is just small talk, innocuous per se. If you were to read it as dialogue from a script, with no direction, it would be boring. However, the fact that a fully-grown man is talking about the weather with a woman who just wants to finish her business on the other side of a door should be enough to make anybody cringe.

Even when he doesn't chat up a lady on the can, he stands there, several feet away but still essentially in front of the door, waiting for whoever's in there to leave. He could just go dust something or wipe down windows or whatever and come back later, but no, he waits, a true man on a mission.

My theory? He wants to see the face of the woman he'd talked to while she was doing her duty.

The crew he's a part of has been here for several months, but I'm only now mentioning it because of something interesting that happened today of which both I and Manchild Janitor were a part.

Our restroom has automatic-flushing urinals. I'll explain how they work for any women or robots who may be reading. Essentially, it's the same sort of echolocation device on sit-down toilets, only used here to determine when someone has both approached and left a urinal. When you leave, it flushes the urinal. I had a whimsical streak in me today, and early in the day today I indulged it by standing to the side of the urinal while I did my thing, where I would be invisible to the futuristic auto-flush technology. I zipped up, backed away, and the urinal did not flush, for it had never known I had been there. For some reason, it felt like an awesome thing. Man still superior to his own technology and all that.

Later this afternoon I was the victim of one of Manchild Janitor's halfway-down-the-hall conversation starters. Unlike all that had come before, however, this one interested me.

"Say, buddy, has the flushing been all right for you today?"

"The what?" I replied. The thing I'd done this morning with the urinal was not registering.

"Didja use a urinal toilet today?" (Yeah, he called it a "urinal toilet.")

"Yeah, I did."

"Did it flush okay?"

That's what reminded me, right there. I read his face, and his look was one of bewilderment. I jumped on it. I lied.

"Sure did."

He shook his head, as might a chess player who knew he had a winning move but was denied it before his turn. "Dang. I think one of the urinal toilets is actin' up a little. Don't use the one on the end, okay?"

He didn't specify which end, but as it happens I already knew which end. I couldn't let this go; this was an opportunity to crawl into his mind, if only a little bit. I had to see. I had to see if he was truly worthy of the title Manchild Janitor.

"Acting up, you say?" I walked closer to encourage him to share more.

"Yeah, was in there just now* and the water had pee in it, like it ain't flushed. I waved my hand and it flushed, but it might be broke or somethin. I waved my hand a couple more times to make sure, and all th'other urinal toilets too. They all seem to work okay, but stay away from that end one, okay?"

I was actually mildly surprised that nobody had used the urinal after me all day. If they had, however, I suppose none of this could have been possible. I nodded and continued down the hall, in a bemused daze.

My not-prank had blown his mind. He truly is the Manchild Janitor.

*Remember what I said about him only visiting the men's room a few times a day versus his clockwork-like visitation of the ladies' facilities.