The only thing worse than walking into a public bathroom is walking into a public bathroom where the previous occupants failed to clean up after themselves. For a person like me, someone who's an anal-retentive clean-freak, this causes a huge paradoxical situation. On the one hand there's a mess that needs to be cleaned, but on the other hand that mess is disgusting and I wouldn't want to risk germ transfer. Ordinarily my quest for germ-free self-preservation would win over my OCD, but there is a third factor that has to be weighed in.

You see, being born with the god given ability to piss while standing up, I could easily 'do my business' over the mess and not worry about it. The problem is that this would only really work at a ball game, movie theater, or concert where people expect the bathrooms to be destroyed. It's a lot harder to pull off at the office or at a friends house. Here, when someone notices a mess, they're going to automatically associate that mess with the last person they know was in the bathroom. Unfortunately, this means that any mess I choose to ignore I'm also choosing to take responsibility for.

So, even though it disgusts me, I often find myself cleaning up after other people when I use a public bathroom. It's extremely annoying, but at least it saves me the embarrassment of being blamed for other peoples inability to clean up after themselves.

posted by Christopher Schnese