Mats - How to Poo at Work

PREFACE

A crucial meeting or the man who ruined his career...

My first contact with the issue of how to use the bathrooms in a workplace goes back to the period when I was an intern in a big investment bank on Wall Street in New York. I was making databases on risk capital.

My boss was a very capable man. He had answers for everything and was a true professional. And yet, at 42, he was still on the lower rungs of the banks hierarchy ladder. I couldnt understand it. At the time, I had not yet discovered the issues linked to the use of work bathrooms.

I worked quite closely with my boss during my internship and we became very close. Eventually, during our morning coffee, I gathered the courage to ask him why he had not yet managed to get a higher post in the bank. My question was met with a long silence. I could see in his eyes that he was annoyed by my question, but after about 30 seconds that felt like forever, he finally answered. He told me that one day, 11 years ago, he was hit with a bad case of gastroenteritis. Due to his infallible sense of responsibility, he decided to go to work anyway. At 10 a.m. he was overcome by horrific stomach pains. He went to the work bathroom to try to get some relief from the pain, but as soon as he got into the stall, all of the members of the managing board of the bank, there for a management meeting, walked into the bathroom where he was.

But the pain was simply too strong, and despite the presence of all his bosses he had to relieve himself. The noise he made and the odor coming from the stall were proportional to the pain that he felt. Naturally, he wanted to get back to his office as soon as possible, but his bosses were still in the bathroom when he emerged from his stall. He looked everyone in the eye and greeted them, apologized twice for the disturbance, and tried to start a conversation by asking them how the meeting went. Only one of the bosses answered, by mumbling monosyllables.

Immediately he could see that he had just made a series of errors. In his panic he had broken all the Golden Rules of the use of bathrooms in a workplace.

I was stunned to hear that the use of bathrooms at work was governed by a series of rules that nobody had ever mentioned to me before.

He explained to me that from this miserable day onward, he was nicknamed stinkor by everyone in his department and none of his bosses wanted him in their team despite the obvious quality of his work. I was sad for him but I knew that it was too late for him too. His career was finished; I could not help him.

On that day, I threw myself into the search for these Golden Rules and I decided that once I found all of them, I would share them with the whole world in a book, so that nobody else would ruin their career as my boss did. My success today is in part thanks to him. That is why I dedicate this book to him.

ENZO

INTRODUCTION

The life of a company is a mix of written rules, public-spiritedness, hierarchy, good behavior, often sympathy, sometimes hatred; of power but also influence, tasks, and more. It is a tangle of complex rites that employees try to use as well as they can to achieve their personal goals within a company.

The codes of life in a company have become so complex that many magazines now exist that specialize in giving advice on how to survive, not to mention hundreds of books that deal with this as well. It is clear that it is now essential to read all this advice if we want to succeed in a company. We must educate ourselves to know how to be and how to do.

Many employees, executives, directors, and so on invest much of their personal time in such reading. In their quest for perfection, these overachievers read everything that comes into their hands. Yet many of them will have wasted years and years of efforts to rise up among the best in mere seconds. The sad truth remains that none of these books give any advice whatsoever on the one place that many consider cursed: the bathrooms in the workplace.

What is the problem? None of the researchers, journalists, authors of books, or philosophers have devoted their time to the question of the workplace bathrooms. Yet going to the bathroom has been a real dilemma in the life of the modern employee. It is here that, confronted with the most primitive need, the hierarchy of the company is leveled; its a place where the colleagues, bosses, secretaries, and others all gain equal footing. Smells, noise, frequency of use, and bathrooms that dont work are all factors that can ruin a career. It is also highly likely that the first serious study to be made on this subject will find that hundreds of thousands of misadventures that happened in this seemingly innocent place have led to canceled promotions, total loss of credibility for managing executives toward their secretaries, dramas that will not be forgotten and which cant be told to anyone. In your opinion, how many executives coming from big companies with separate bathrooms, for ladies and for gentlemen, lost their credibility when they moved to head up a smaller company and were faced with a unisex bathroom? How many others will abruptly finish their ascent to the top due to lack of education on this subject? And how many secretaries gave their bosses porcine nicknames just because they met in the bathroom at a bad moment?