OUT OF ORDER

A few lessons from my time practicing the art of cleaning up and shutting down public bathrooms.

The other day, I was renting a car in Brooklyn. It was an out-of-the-way spot, a few fenced-in trailers and tents thrown up against a subway trench. I went into a conjoined doublewide office to get the car keys. In the back of the office was a bathroom with an OUT OF ORDER sign.

I was in a hurry with a long stop-and-start drive ahead of me. And I was a customer. I felt safe assuming I could use it. When I did, the bathroom was in good enough order.

The law

The OUT OF ORDER bathroom sign is an American institution. And I know about out-of-order bathrooms. I’ve brought disorderly bathrooms to order, I’ve declared public bathrooms off-limits, allowed for exceptions to the rule, tested and even violated the warnings of OUT OF ORDER signs.

A bathroom being in or out of order is as complex as society itself. It has to do with plumbing, hygiene, laziness, loathing, the law or the mercy residing within the often-abused heart of the person regulating access to the bathroom.

Starbucks, 1997

When I was twenty, I worked at a Starbucks on 2nd Avenue and 9th Street in Manhattan. At the time, it was a frontier outpost in a war that would price and vibe out most of the residents over the next decade. In my green apron and black ballcap, I was on the side of the bad guys.

The East Village residents, no dummies, knew it was a hostile incursion. But they couldn’t resist the coffee and the drama-free convenience of the place. I’m told I served Joey Ramone more than a few grande black drips. My mind was elsewhere.

That kind of inattention is probably what excluded me from waiting tables or tending bar. So, Starbucks it was. On my second day, a skeleton-thin woman sprinted from the back of the store with her arms full of one-pound bags of coffee beans - maybe a dozen of them - retail price ten or twelve bucks each.

My manager, the rare salaried employee, told me to chase after her and get them back. I said no way. He laughed. We went back to whatever we were doing in that first summer of Frappuccinos. The blenders never stopped. The company survived.

The battlefield

At that time in the East Village, Starbucks was an interloper. Opening at five AM, the prostitutes would come in and request a cup of water, which they’d chug down, and then fill with sugar and either milk or half-n-half, for their breakfast. Neither I nor anyone I worked with ever said a word. We were visitors in their world.

In some ways, the bathroom was corporate’s peace offering to the neighborhood. It was unisex and regularly cleaned, and it locked in a very formidable way from the inside. It was bigger than the cubicle where I work today.

We were regularly banging on the door to wake a nodding junkie. I remember one emerged accusing us of interrupting his immaculate dump, with the belt still in one hand and his trousers held up by the other. Over the course of my shifts at the place, I am sure it was home to the best and worst minutes in a few people’s lives. How do I know? I had to clean the place.

A few of the many messes stand out - blood syringe-sprayed on the walls, a watery shit deliberately dropped a foot and a half from a perfectly good toilet, and vomit tracing an arc along the wall - some eggnog latte for you, as my boss put it.

I bring this up to establish that I know a thing or two about when a bathroom is out of order.