Potty Emergency (part 1)

An unfamiliar customer, fiftyish, greying, mustached, eyes full of madness, marches toward my counter. Frustration radiates from his pores; I can feel it from eight paces.

"What kind of gas station doesn't have a public restroom," he blurts, half plaintive whine, half veiled accusation. Yep, I designed the building, quite precociously, too, seeing as this decrepit shack predates my existence by at least ten years. My hostile friend might have read the prominent, eye-level sign on the door on his way in rather than blaming me for his troubles, but that, alas, is ostensibly too much to ask.

I want so very badly to think of something incisively, marvelously witty to say, something that will convince Mustache, and simultaneously the entire soft-drink gulping, lavoratory-dependent domestic population of the error of their ways. I yearn to drive a steak into his petulant vampire heart, banishing him and his malignant redirected aggression out into the waning sunlight, to burst ablaze, consumed in cruel conflagration.

"This kind doesn't...sir," comes my rejoinder, much to my disappointment. The pause before "sir" and my chirpily obsequious tone do make it readily apparent that I'm taunting Mustache, but it's far from my best work. I have lowered my ladel in to the well of genius, only to find that it's been a dry Spring in Tennessee. Ah well. Even the greats have off days.

Mustache pays for his gas and sulks away. I chuckle at the fact that he's going to have to stop again at the next business, and at the grief that's almost certainly causing him. He's obviously not a local, as indicated by his distance-implying potty emergency, so I'll never see him again and am unconcerned that he's leaving angry--not that there's much I could have done for him besides being properly sympathetic to his plight, which I obviously am not. Perhaps if he'd been nicer. But the establishment's decision not to feature a public restroom was made, I kid thee not, without consulting your humble author in any capacity at all. The nerve of it, I say.

As this is a postwar building, we have a restroom, of course. It's just on the far side of the office and hence accessible only to employees, which is important considering the drinking-on-shift bit from an earlier post. The girls I work with at night will sometimes even let children and the elderly use it. I might be bothered at the erosion of my desired united front, but in fact most of the people to whom they grant access are travellers passing through and hence won't be likely to cite precedent and demand this privilege in the future. Furthermore, Vicki and Shayla understand my adamantine rule on the matter: if someone makes a mess in there in abuse of their kindness, their abused kindness will be accountable for the cleanup.

I am nothing if not fair.