– The Bathroom Monitor –

I am the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor has sat at his post for either four hours or 75 flushes, whichever comes first, the Bathroom Monitor’s work day is done.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. Sarah, the bookstore’s owner, gave me this little computer that doesn’t work so well so I could look like I was just another writer, working in her bookstore. But that is just so her customers can feel relaxed. In that sense, I am an undercover Bathroom Monitor, but only until the fights break out. Then I spring into action. I run up to the upper level of the bookstore and get help. This is the main job of the Bathroom Monitor.

The funny thing about using the little computer is I have to balance it on my legs. To do this I have to bend my legs in a little. In this way, the Bathroom Monitor resembles the women who are waiting to use the bathroom since, piss-swollen, they too must turn their knees inward to keep the pressure of their enlarged bladders from pressing too much on their lower front parts.

The Bathroom Monitor gets off on the women standing around. I know they have to pee or worse. I like knowing what’s going on inside their bodies, inside their bladders, connected in some mysterious way to their lower front parts.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. I can’t play favorites even when the women say that if I could let them into the bathroom before the other people in the line, I could come with them.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. What would I do in the bathroom?

I am the Bathroom Monitor. The toilet I oversee sounds like a jet taking off when it is flushed. This is useful to the people waiting in line. It is like the plane they are flying on has moved one plane closer to take-off on the runway. Before Sarah installed the Flush-o-meter, it also made it easy for me to count the number of flushes.

There are hardly ever any fights, sometimes not even harsh words, on the weekdays. I must still be at my post during my appointed shift, but there are very few fights on weekdays. But fights do break out on the weekends.

I think it is because of the Jerseys. That’s what we call them. They only come in on weekends. They are often in a bad mood because they are worried about their parking spaces and the inevitable traffic jam at the Holland Tunnel on their way home.

When the Jerseys swell up with piss, I guess they aren’t used to having to wait in line. But they do have to wait in line here at Sarah’s bookstore. And on the weekends, it’s usually a long line. If the Jerseys start fighting about whose turn it is, I know what to do.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. I sit by the bathroom in the left-most, round-backed, wooden chair, the one with the ripped leather seat. Sarah has placed two of these chairs under the stairs. When the fights break out, I’m never confused about where to run. After all, I sit right under the stairs. I am the Bathroom Monitor. I have to remember that when the fight breaks out or even when the harsh words start to get loud, if I jump up, I must lean forward first. Otherwise, I bop my noggin on the stairs before I can run up them to get help.

One time that happened. I forgot to lean forward. I bopped my noggin and got so dazed, and I was bleeding too, that when the police got there, they started to arrest me, because they thought I was in the fight. They had me in handcuffs before Sarah was able to explain to them that I am the Bathroom Monitor.

Sarah always says that the use of the bathroom at her bookstore is a privilege, not a right, and customers should be reminded of that when appropriate.

Sometimes the Bathroom Monitor has to say that a bookstore customer has been using the bathroom too much. Sarah says you can only use the bathroom, three times in each four-hour period. If the Bathroom Monitor sees someone, and it is always a woman, who is lining up to pee a fourth time in that period, I have to tell her, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you have used up all your bathroom privileges for this four-hour period. I can’t let you use the bathroom again.” Then I consult my watch so I can tell the lady when the next four-hour period starts.

Some customers stride so confidently down the stairs above the head of the Bathroom Monitor, swollen with piss or shit, expecting to use the bathroom without waiting, their boots or high heels making a loud noise on the wooden floor. Then they see there’s a line and it’s like the wind is knocked out of them for a moment. Then they get in line.

But what the Bathroom Monitor disapproves of is when these customers act like they are just browsing in the mass market, artless novels section of the bookstore, which happens to be where the line for the bathroom forms, and then act like, “Oh, since we‘re here, we might as well go, but we really don’t have to go as much as the people already in line.” The Bathroom Monitor finds this attitude to be disingenuous.

I have been the Bathroom Monitor for a long time. I don’t think anyone has had sex in the bathroom while I’ve been the Bathroom Monitor, but, as I said, my main job is to report when fights break out. There is certainly room for sex in the bathroom.

Bathroom policy at Sarah’s bookstore is rather laisaire faire. So maybe there has been sex in there, but I must have missed it. Anyway, that isn’t the reason I’ve been stationed here, in the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped leather seat that, despite the rip, testifies to the importance of the Bathroom Monitor.

Sometimes customers sit on the wooden, round-backed chair next to the Bathroom Monitor after they’ve come out of the bathroom. They’re joyous at having relieved themselves. If the Bathroom Monitor is unlucky, they talk on their cellphones. On the way into the bathroom, when they are swollen with piss and shit, the bookstore customers, even the Jerseys, usually are quite respectful of the Bathroom Monitor. But after they have relieved themselves, it is a different story. They don’t care that I’m pretending to work right next to them. They don’t care that I am the Bathroom Monitor.

Labor Relations As They Concern The Bathroom Monitor --

Labor’s Position: The Bathroom Monitor’s union rejects language to include, as an austerity measure, in the new contract, an addition to the job description of the Bathroom Monitor that says he must distribute toilet paper to the people in line.

If the union is asked to increase the tasks assigned to the Bathroom Monitor such as handing out toilet paper, the union will be forced to take action to defend its members’ interests, which will include, but not be limited to, work actions, slow downs, work stoppages and if worst comes to worst and we continue to face a stalemate at the negotiating table, we reserve the right, and there is little doubt that the National Labor Relations Board will back us up, to reassign the Bathroom Monitor away from his seat on the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped leather seat, to sit on the toilet, thus shutting down the bathroom for customers entirely.

Management’s position, Sarah’s position, is that these people, many of whom don’t even buy anything in the store, use way too much toilet paper. Management sometimes comes across big, softball-sized wads of toilet paper and this practice must be stamped out. Since we are paying the Bathroom Monitor to just sit there and report outbreaks of violence, why shouldn’t we also task him with the job of handing out toilet paper?


The Bathroom Monitor’s Response to Periods When The Bathroom Is Closed For Repairs

I am the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor reports to his work station, to the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped, leather seat under the stairs and he finds that the bathroom is closed for repairs, it forces him to question the usefulness of his existence.

When customers ask me about the reason for the closure, I tell them that it is because the wrens and the chickadees have again started to dominate the soundtrack of birds that Sarah has installed in the bathroom. Sarah insists that, and the Bathroom Monitor concurs, no one species should dominate the bathroom’s soundtrack. That would be as unfair as saying that the Jerseys didn’t have to wait in the same line as the other customers just because they are double-parked or using those dodgy parking spaces under the Williamsburg Bridge.


Baby Drops Rattle Right On Bathroom Monitor’s Noggin

I am the Bathroom Monitor. The Bathroom Monitor likes the way his work station, the wooden, round backed chair with the ripped leather seat, is tucked under the stairs, making a slight nook for his, not exactly privacy, but a tiny bit of seclusion as he pretends to work in the sometimes crowded bookstore.

The downside of this location is that when people drop things on the stairs, they sometimes bounce once or twice and fall through the spaces between the stairs and bop the Bathroom Monitor right on his noggin.

In addition to the potential for injury, these things striking the Bathroom Monitor on his noggin tend to undermine the authority of the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor has been hit by a dropped rattle, a cell phone, or anything else that has fallen through the stairs, it makes it hard to maintain the serious, dignified demeanor that is needed to oversee the bathroom line.

The Bathroom Monitor’s gravitas, his moral authority is all he has to do his job. Remember that the half-broken computer Sarah gave him really suggests very little clout at all. The Bathroom Monitor is not armed, nor is he equipped with a uniform. Hence, his serious demeanor is all he has. When a baby’s rattle bops him right on his noggin, it can take many flushes for the Bathroom Monitor to regain his authority.