Would the Real Hoverer Please Sit Down?
by EZitani
Andrea Siegel isn’t the only one at the Graduate Center who is obsessed with the bathrooms. Generally, toward the end of the day (either on the 5th or 7th floor) you will find me entering the ladies room, opening a stall door, then another, then another, only to curse under my breath — not the wonderful people who clean the bathrooms, but the not-so-wonderful people who improperly utilize them.
Women of the Graduate Center: stop hovering! This is not a bar or a ballpark, nor are ours the nasty toilets found at a public beach or park. This is the Graduate Center. You either work here or attend classes here or both. Either way, you spend a lot of time here — if you’re like me, probably almost as much time as you spend at home. And I know you don’t hover at home. Besides, even if you did, you would get out the Windex and clean up after yourself. As Ms. Siegel relayed (see “The Joy of Plumbing,” THE ADVOCATE, March 2006), the GC staff does an impeccable job of keeping this place far cleaner than many of our own homes — there is certainly no need for you to go and pee all over it. It’s just plain rude.
Most women understand the all-too-familiar “hover” that is necessary in most public restrooms. Whether executed facing the wall or the door, holding one’s self up on the metal bar or the toilet paper dispenser, the hover is always awkward, sometimes painful and can be downright dangerous. The main problem with this tricky maneuver is that 99% of the time the hoverer will pee on the seat. And 80% of these hoverers will not even bother to clean up after themselves. These statistics are proven and I did, in fact, get IRB approval for this extensive and conclusive study.
Chew on this. Does your butt cheek ever touch a newspaper? The handle on a subway? The door to Dunkin Donuts? No. It stays neatly inside your jeans or your J.Crew khakis, never to be exposed to dirt or germs. The only time it is even exposed to light in public (in most cases) is when you drop your drawers to use the toilet. While this may be too intimate of an example for some, I believe that the point is clear. The average NYC butt-cheek is far cleaner than its corresponding hands or face or feet (feet that are made especially nasty in the summer months, when New York women are happily parading around the city in flip-flops). And yet we have no problem shaking hands, kissing each other on the cheek or even walking barefoot across the office…yuck. Seriously, have you ever thought about the nastiness that is trapped in those carpets after hundreds of shoes stomp around on them day after day, depositing the scum of New York City on our floors?
In case my point has not come through in this well-intended tirade, I’ll say it explicitly: I am not a germ-o-phobe. I am simply pointing out that the fear of using the public restroom is completely unfounded when, and only when, the toilet is used as it was designed: and that is to be sat upon. So please, hoverers, I beg of you: sit down! Get comfy! Yes, your two pristine butt-cheeks will be touching the same surface that someone else’s pristine butt-cheeks touched three minutes before, but this is New York people! We are all exposed to so much filth on a daily basis — all I ask is that you not subject me to your urine. I don’t think that is too much to ask.
