Fear of shit

One of my co-workers is deeply afraid of shit (or piss or the more elusive "germs"). How else would you explain the necessity of building a toilet paper nest every time you take a dump? Listen, if you think a layer of toilet paper between your ass and a public toilet seat is going to help you live longer, more power to you. Knock yourself out! But if you're going to indulge in this neurotic behavior, please have the courtesy to dismantle your nest once you're finished. Leaving your nest behind for someone else to deal with is just plain rude.

This isn't the first time I've had to deal with bathroom neurosis. A few years ago, another co-worker approached me at my desk with panic in his eyes. After a lengthy description of the design of the toilet seat in our bathroom (it's not a complete oval, there's a gap in front that exposes the rim of the toilet bowl--a fact that I had remained oblivious to until this incident), he revealed that his ass had somehow come in contact with "moisture" in the gap in the front of the seat. Five seconds into this conversation, I realized I was talking to an insane person. What I always do when I find myself in this situation (and it's happened more often than I would like to admit) is go with it. In this case it was easy. I had a germ nut on my hands. "Should I go to a doctor to be tested for HIV?" "Of course," I said, "that makes sense to me." I mean, if you're going to flip your lid, why go only half-way? The most important thing is to move the crazy person out of your vicinity as quickly as possible.

At my previous job another co-worker went nuts with toilet paper, but in a different manner. We dubbed him The Draper because he valued his privacy in the stall so much that he draped toilet paper over the thin cracks along the stall's door frame. He didn't clean up his neurotic mess either. If you didn't know it was The Draper ("The Draper strikes again!"), you would have thought a bunch of kids, out on a Mischief Night lark, had passed through the men's room.