More on Bathrooms

“Many of the worst things in the world happen in and around Starbucks bathrooms.”- Tina Fey

The bathroom issue at Starbucks is a big one for me. The Starbucks Bathroom seems to be the Bermuda Triangle of Civilized Behavior. Humans enter, are briefly transformed into rabid goats, and reemerge still anthropomorphic, but somehow changed.

My biggest question to my dear patrons is this: “Why is there always paper everywhere?” I have never been to the home of another person and seen paper all over the floor. I have never festooned my own water closet with sheets and wads of tissue. And it’s not as though there isn’t a perfectly good garbage can in the bathroom. It’s always there, and rarely full. There’s also a toilet, designed to whisk away toilet paper to a magical, underground location. Is there some great catharsis to be had, flinging toilet paper around the restroom after you shell out $5.00 for your coffee? Help me understand!

There are issues bigger than tissue, though. Your baristas, especially inner-city baristas, are tested daily in ways for which we are never prepared. For instance:

1. A friend working in Chicago found a dead man in the bathroom.

2. Someone pooped on the floor on my last day in New Hampshire.

3. At any given moment, a homeless person is evicted from a Starbucks bathroom.

4. People have sex in there. Often. Sometimes with employees.

5. Oh, the vomit. Oh. The vomit.

The junkies, the crazies, the nauseous, and the jerks who shave in there all make up a delicate chain of challenges, which many o’erleap. When Starbucks says, “It’s more than coffee,” this is what they really mean.