This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2025-02-21 05:04:01+00:00.

the men in our office use the women’s bathrooms … only for pooping

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Thanks to u/cathlaslwyd for suggesting this BoRU

TRIGGER WARNING: misogyny, hostile work environment, gross

Original Post Nov 19, 2018

This is something that has bothered me for quite a long time, and I don’t know if there was any way to address it differently. I no longer work in this office, but I am still close with several people there, and am at a loss that this continues. To be blunt, the men in the office specifically use the women’s restroom when they need to … take a #2. (I can’t believe I have to say that.)

It’s a small business with about 20 people and only three women. There are two restrooms, one for men and one for women. Now seeing as how there’s significantly more men than women, I would not be against gender neutral restrooms. Whatever. But that’s not the case. And here’s what’s happening: when the “gentlemen” need to use the restroom for that longer period of time, they use the women’s room. Not just a few of the guys (we started trying to get a pulse on whether or not this was one person being weird or if it was a more widespread issue, and it’s widespread). This is probably half the men in the office.

Why is this a problem? Well we have a cleaning crew that comes in once a week and restocks the restrooms and all that. We women do a little extra cleaning, make sure we have toilet paper, etc., while the men do not. If I have to use the restroom and it’s occupied by a dude taking his time (seriously, 30+ minutes sometimes), I do not want to use their gross restroom with pee on the seat that doesn’t have toilet paper in it. Somehow they are able to make it disgusting within a day of it being cleaned. And if I wait for the bathroom to open up (they will use the women’s room even if the men’s room is open), doing a potty dance at my desk, the smell is HORRIFIC. Because I lived close by, there were times I literally went home to use the restroom because I was waiting for so long.

I have no issue with the guys using the women’s room if the men’s room is in use. I get it. If you have to go, you have to go. But using it exclusively as the place you take a dump for 30 minutes is just beyond crazy to me. So we women talked to our boss (who is the CEO) and an email was sent out saying hey, if the men’s room is occupied, sure, use the women’s room, but please keep it clean and please do not utilize the women’s room when you “need some extra time.”

Did things improve? Not even a bit! And what’s worse, one day when we were potty dancing around, out of the women’s room walks the CEO! We mentioned it again, and he said he would bring it up with the manager of the tech team (all dudes) to talk to them again, but there’s been no change.

Like I said, I don’t work there anymore, but my friends do. We are brainstorming trying to come up with something, anything, to try and get through to people that this is weird and shouldn’t be done. Please Alison, do you have any advice for this insanity?

Update 1 Dec 17, 2018 (1 month later)

I have an update on already! First off, thank you to all the commenters who confirmed that our feelings that this whole situation was ridiculous were valid. Sometimes we felt like we were going crazy. The AAM community also picked up on something quite accurately – there were serious issues of misogyny taking place in the workplace beyond the bathrooms (I could spend a ton of time on that but I will just leave it at this). I didn’t particularly consider the bathroom issue to be related to those issues of sexism, but some very valid points were made. Seacalliope nailed it on the head in their comment: “Is anything actually more petty than pooping in a place that is specifically delimited for use by other people? It is literally how animals assert dominance.” Also, I don’t know why we never just suggested that the bathroom be cleaned more often. Seriously, such a simple solution and it never occurred to us that once a week wasn’t enough, for some reason.

Well I have some exciting news that is not directly related to the bathroom situation but a change to the overall workplace which has made an impact. The owners (including the CEO who was a culprit in the bathroom situation) decided to sell the business. The new owners, 2 men and 1 woman, are wonderful and immediately stepped in and made changes for the employees that were incredible. Better benefits and even better pay for people who after learning about their duties they identified as underpaid. Everyone there is really excited! But here’s the really fun part. Former CFO, a blatant sexist who made inappropriate comments and called people (mostly women) stupid, apparently had… a little trouble letting go. He tried to refuse to give his passwords to the financial systems over AFTER the sale was finalized. He came into the office after he was supposed to be officially out and went to his old office, continued to refuse to give over his passwords and his building key (he had the only master key). The only one of the new owners who was in the office was the woman, whom I will call Shera. Shera excused herself from a meeting when she was notified that old CFO was in his old office and went to speak to him. According to my friend there was door slamming and screaming (from him). I wish I could be a fly on the wall as a woman told this sexist jerk that he needed to act like a grownup and get out. After he left they called a locksmith to change the building locks, changed the security codes, disabled all his accounts, etc. etc. It was truly a glorious day that I lived vicariously through my friend.

So in a short period of time the new owners have already changed the culture of the workplace. It’s no nonsense and the employees feel taken care of and respected. The bathroom issue specifically isn’t resolved necessarily, but I have a feeling that just the new atmosphere of respect will have an impact.

Update 2 Dec 17, 2019 (1 year later)

I am sad to say that Shera and the other new owners were not all that that they seemed. By all accounts, things were pretty great for a couple months after the old owners were out, and the entire debacle from my last update about her having to throw out the former CFO who was having a tantrum was pretty wonderful. Employees were happy, there was pay parity, and good benefits. Sadly this is not a fairy tale.

Quick back story: The new owners also owned another business and this one is their second. The other business is the “home office” and they spend most of their time there, and it’s a couple of hours away. The business is similar but not the same. Because of this, I guess they now started to look at everyone in this office as “working remotely,” despite them working in the same location they’ve always been working in, with the same managers, etc. But they didn’t hire those managers and they had trust issues. Work started being distributed in ways that made no sense, and they started interjecting into client communications and negotiations without really being fully present and understanding the situations, which resulted in some losses, and then they decided that firing some of the existing managers and bringing in new ones would solve their problems.

My friend was pretty unhappy with the way things were going down, including some issues with a new PTO policy (which was illegal, by the way) but she was sticking it out as any type of acquisition is expected to cause some turmoil. Then Shera (and I now regret giving her that pseudonym) made her stance on things particularly well known by accidentally emailing my friend instead of one of the other owners, and the email contained a list of complaints about her (things like not responding to emails fast enough, fast enough being within minutes) written in a … less than professional tone. They were trying to micromanage from a distance and just refused to trust people to be adults and do their jobs, even people they previously identified as high performers who they even gave raises to. For my friend, there was really no coming back from this, and she decided to resign (and she wasn’t the only one).

As far as the bathroom goes, we will not know if it ever gets resolved as all of my friends who still worked there have now moved on. That said, Shera is now the only woman left in the office, and is only there one or two days a week, so it’s probably a non-issue now.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP’s OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7