Skip to the Loo

Finally! I watched the movie Hidden Figures (and enjoyed it). 

However, seeing Katherine Johnson’s routine twenty-minute dash from her desk to the ‘Colored Ladies Room’, triggered a conversation about my own ‘Ladies’ experiences at the beginning of my career.

My first assignment was at a sprawling chemical site where only two buildings had women’s facilities.  One was located near the main gate and the other was at the center of the plant.  There were times when it took up to 15 minutes to get to where I had to go, to do what I had to do.  Thankfully, my younger bladder was much more patient than that organ is today.

Unlike Mrs. Johnson, I was not required to wear high heels in the workplace.  I wore safety shoes.  (Safety boots were not available in my size at that point in history.)  Any mad dash I made to the Ladies was done with an inelegant clunk.

The women of Hidden Figures may have been excluded from the use of nearby bathrooms because of their race.  In my case, and after hours of lost work time, it occurred to me that I was not excluded from the use of the facilities by virtue of my gender.

I concluded that the toilets (to be found in all the control buildings) weren’t restricted to the use of men.  The plant was so old, that the rooms were simply labeled ‘Toilet’.  Gender was implied when you opened the door and were confronted with a row of urinals.

To imply something is not the same as explicitly stating it.  Being me, I determined that I had as much right to use the convenient conveniences as my male colleagues.  To do so, I adopted a technique which exploited my feminine voice:

Step 1: Hammer on the door labeled ‘Toilet’.  Await a response.

Step 2: Crack the door. Yell I’m coming in to use the toilet.

Step 3: Stand back for approximately sixty seconds while the men evacuate the space.

Step 4: Thank the exiting men in the hope of quelling their blushes.

Step 5: Enter and use the facilities while singing in a jarringly loud fashion.  (Being tuneless is an advantage.)

Final Step: Welcome the port-a-potty (sporting a graphic of a girl) that magically appears some weeks later.

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