The evolution of workplace bathroom reading.

Youngsters today have no idea what we went through to secure reading material back in the day.

I work in an office building that has an east and west atrium. Each atrium has three floors. Each floor has two men’s bathrooms. Do the math and you have 12 bathroom options. In truth, there are 5 additional bathrooms hidden in the bowels (I’m good) of the building so we have a grand total of 17 bathroom options when the moment calls.

For research purposes, I’ve sampled them all and one stands out from all of the others.

On a consistent daily basis, one individual stall (the middle of three) on the third floor of the East Atrium brings me back to a simpler time. A time when going to the bathroom wasn’t as easy as shoving your phone in your pocket, walking, entering an empty stall that had hopefully just been cleaned, lining the seat with tissue paper, squatting and then taking care of business at the exact time another toilet flushes so all sounds could be muffled.

A time when this was a common object in all public bathroom stalls across the land.

Without fail, there is an entire newspaper on the floor of this stall each and every morning. I haven’t seen one anywhere else for years now and I haven’t a clue as to who delivers this one each morning.

I don’t want to know, I enjoy the mystery.

I’ve purposely set up camp in the stalls next to this one just to observe how men react to this strange siting. Some throw caution to the wind and without fear of disease, pick up the paper with their bare hands and proudly read.

They even do that thing where you shake the paper for purposes of making it conveniently fold for ease of reading.

I like those old school types.

The majority of users who have no choice but to use the middle stall (I may or may not close one of the stalls to simulate occupancy in order to force use of the middle stall) ignore the newspaper completely. They even go so far as to violently kick it with disgust. If it comes my way, I like to push it back under their stall as a game of bathroom footsies.

One time I had to physically hold my mouth to keep from LOL’ing. A younger gentleman entered the stall clearly in a rush and upon spotting the New York Daily News on the floor, yelled out “Are you fucking kidding me?”

It was awesome.

I wish I had recorded it but that probably would have been illegal. Still, it was a reaction with such vitriol that it made me realize this was a youngster who had no idea that this was a common occurrence not too far in the distant past.

It forced me to relive those early days and how we ended up where we are now with bathroom reading. It brought back memories of characters from the past who made bathroom trips an event and even provided comedic relief.

It made me look back on some of my own bathroom reading strategies and how they evolved as technology has evolved.

Some of my favorites:

The guy who proudly carried the newspaper on his way to the bathroom.

My personal favorite. He gave zero fucks and never considered hiding his intentions.

The guy who tried to hide the newspaper under his sports coat.

This became increasingly more difficult as business casual dress took hold but it was a serviceable strategy in the 90’s. I saw through it, but most probably missed it.

The guy who hid the newspaper under his portfolio.

I had a close friend who would do this and every time I would ask out loud if I could borrow the “funnies” section. Beyond calling him out in front of coworkers, I loved seizing the opportunity to say “the funnies”.

I was always too self-conscious to even attempt to bring the newspaper in with me and other than reading the front page or whatever I could maneuver with my feet, I was disgusted my the newspaper left behind. I opted for no reading and a quick exit.

But then the internet arrived and that all changed.

Post internet arrival, there were three distinct stages of bathroom reading before we settled on current day reading through our ridiculously convenient cell phones.

Printed pages off of the internet

I remember the day when this realization came to fruition. It changed everything. You mean I can bring up an article online and ultimately bring it into the bathroom with me without anyone noticing?

Life changing.

But it required a specific and carefully carried out series of events.

1. Locate article
2. Print something work related before and after the printing of said article
3. Speed walk to printer and pray no one else was printing at the same time
4. Take all of your printed materials, with the work related pages on top, back to the cubicle
5. Fold the bathroom reading to fit into the pocket but not too bulky so that it would draw eyes to the bulging pocket
6. Wait a few minutes post printing to make the bathroom trip seem spontaneous
7. Walk to bathroom in route that shielded pocket from view and casually allow the hand to cover the pocket while walking
8. Read in stall
9. Throw away in bathroom garbage but also cover the disposed pages with paper towels because printed pages often had our names printed within the bottom margins.

Sounds complicated I know, but it still beat the humiliation of newspaper reading.

Flip phone reading

I didn’t even know that I had internet access on my flip phone back in 2006.

It may have been virtually impossible to read, but I so enjoyed the challenge of tying to bring up even one page on CNN.com while in the stall.

Secretly transporting the phone could not have been easier so the challenge was in gaining internet access and keeping it long enough to make the bathroom trip a pleasure.

I remember sitting down, holding the phone over my head thinking it would pick up a better signal. Once I got it, I couldn’t page down easily so I would cherish the words that remained on the screen. Through trial and error, I discovered ways to maximize my reading pleasure and I became a huge Bill Simmons fan to this day through utilization of this specific reading method.

Smart phone phase 1

Current day, there is WiFi throughout the building so assuming one is not on an undesirable site, we just bring our phone to the bathroom and read our favorite articles on Medium, like anything by Roy Schlegel or Gail Boenning or RZ Cole or James Altucher. Simple as that.

But when smartphones first became a thing, and I don’t know if this was true at all places of business, it was difficult to access the internet from inside the building. It killed me to know all of that great reading material was right at my fingertips and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Or could I?

A simple stroll outdoors, under the guise of corporate stress relief, would allow me to access long form articles on the internet and they would remain available on screen after heading back indoors.

If I could only put that ingenuity to good use.