What Would Anonymous Do?

On an average, a person spends more that 500,000 minutes on the toilet. That’s over 8,000 hours. That’s around a year. A year of your life on toilets! Imagine that!

Why pull up this quintessential piece of random yet depressing information? To warn you of the dangers of eating incorrectly. Just kidding. It’s to remind you that life is short. True, but kidding again! It’s a planned seg-way that leads to the glorious topic of… da da da!… Public toilets.

I travel a lot. Therefore, I experience public utilities a lot, restrooms being at the top of the list. Sometimes you end up in a restroom with high tech gizmos that go as far as asking you about your ‘experience’ of the facility. Sometimes you are left fumbling for that leftover Subway napkin in your purse, hoping they have a trash can where you can throw it. The variations are baffling and sometimes temporarily paralyzing but there is one certainty to every restroom facility. The invariable presence of dirty stalls filled with the remains of the ‘anonymous’ user. People who just forget that they are capable of superior conduct. People who forget that they can use their opposable thumbs to just ‘push the button’ and FLUSH!

It’s a situation when ‘what’s the right thing to do?’ conflicts with ‘who cares?’ or ‘there are people who are paid to do that’. A situation when what you do is off the record. A situation when your acts are anonymous and someone else pays for your actions. For now anyway.

People will walk about with theoretical knowledge of all things ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. They might preach a religion or subject. They might condemn others for not being ‘cultured’ etc… But if given an opportunity to get off scott-free for being lazy, they would jump on the ‘anonymous’ card. What they don’t know can’t hurt them, right? Or me?

I’ll let that simmer over in your conscience. I’ll let you tie this in with you’re personal ‘anonymous’ dilemmas. I’ll let you picture yourself in a similar situation.