Take a Deep Breath
One of the things about my new office building that I'm generously filing under "charming quirk" instead of "unsanitary labor conditions" or "workman's comp" is the smell of the bathroom. It's not a pleasant odor--it's eau de stale pee and...something else, something specific and familiar, and I can't quite put my finger on it, and I hate that I can't quite put my finger on it (tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon a la bathroom smells! ew!), and so, even though it doesn't matter AT ALL what, precisely, the bathroom smells like, I've made it my insane mission to figure it out.
Every time I visit the charmingly quirky (and quirkily charming!) bathroom (which is a lot), I go through the following process: sniff, recoil, and then sniff reeeeally reeeeally deeply because what is that? It's stale pee and...something. Stale pee and...I don't know what, but goddammit I'm going to figure it out.
Also, you might recall that my last office had views of the Berkeley Hills, Mount Tamalpais, downtown San Francisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge (especially lovely during fall sunsets). Here is my new view:
That would be a pile of industrial waste outside the always-open door of an industrial wasteyard restroom. How quirky! And yet charming! It's so bucolic the way the breeze tickles the loose end of the paper towel roll! ("Bucolic" is the actual word my officemate used to describe our view compared to the view from the office across the hall, which is of a perfectly mundane apartment balcony housing a perfectly mundane grill.) Anyway, so deep is my obsession with our office bathroom smell, I sort of can't help wondering what that bathroom of an industrial wasteyard smells like.
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of my life.
ewwww! stop sniffing. get bleach! have simon bleach it for you, that is a sign of love. a man who bleaches the ladies room at his pregnant girl's office! ewww! stop sniffing.
My guess is that the secondary mystery smell is that of dead hobo.
Every office I've ever worked in has had a problem with FridgeStank™. I have a feeling it's just something that always happens ... that leftover meatloaf someone brought from home is waaaaaaay left over. Maybe the renovation didn't include dumping the food from the Reagan era.
Worst thing found in the fridge at a former office: a 50-pound slab of bacon. Seriously. It got tossed, but the Dumpster was right outside the employee entrance, so we smelled its Six Degrees of Dying Bacon for weeks.
Oh that is lame, why did they move you? Seems like a downgrade rather than an upgrade to me.
I bet it's barf.
And yeah, you've turned into a regular Jack Handy.
mold? mildew? never-emptied sanitary napkin receptacles? oh no wait, you're not talking about MY work bathroom.
Get this: It's not even a ladies' room--it's unisex! We've gone from an office with two stalls for each gender to two stalls for the entire office, all shared. I have a feeling that it's stale BOY pee I'm smelling.
And yeah, it's not an upgrade but a downgrade. Our lease ran up at the old place and we got priced out by the evil new evil landlords, who are evil.
That pile of junk made me laugh.